2010
housing
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DINGBATOPIA
The architectural agenda for this proposal shares the same broad goal that the urban design agenda addresses: To encourage community and to promote healthy modes of city-dwelling. These goals can best be understood by way of contrast to the status quo for this and for other neighborhoods dominated by the dingbat:
We propose an alternative grid of circulation for bicycles and pedestrians, keeping auto access limited to the avenues and streets. By changing the alley into pedestrian and bicycle paths, these areas will become the 'front' for the communities that they give access to. With these limits imposed on the otherwise ubiquitous automobile, the denizens of dingbatopia are thereby encouraged to get to know their neighbors and their neighborhood on foot or pedal.
Where the dingbat's boxy mass built out to the setback leaves only the sidewalk and side yards as public spaces, dingbatopia provides shared, communal spaces at multiple scales. The individual apartments are deployed in a modular but irregular pattern designed to create intimate, shared spaces similarly scaled to the units themselves, encouraging chance and planned encounters between neighbors.
