Archinect - News

Nendo-designed 'Stairway House' offers connected living for three generations

2020-04-06T12:15:00-04:00

Japanese-based firm Nendo has completed a novel three-story two-family home in Tokyo. With three generations of the same family sharing the space, the living quarters for the older couple is situated on the 1st floor, while the 2nd and 3rd levels house the younger couple and their child.

Spanning from the front yard ground level to the peak of the third floor is an expansive "stairway-like" structure that penetrates through the building. Offering separation with a degree of preserved connectedness.

Inside the stairway are usable spaces such as bathrooms and an actual usable staircase. Concrete was used for the exterior steps while steel makes up the interior steps.

The south elevation, which contains the protruding stairway, offers full-height glazing, allowing natural daylight into the home while further solidifying the continuous effect of the extruded steps.

Perkins Eastman reimagines NYC grid for increased pedestrian and shared space

2018-08-31T13:29:00-04:00

The city grid, which once served to organize the development of private real estate by providing access to land parcels, now has a more pressing role to play in making cities livable. Our reimagining of the grid starts from the premise that how we use public rights of way no longer meets the city’s needs, so we should transform the streets radically, dedicating them to pedestrians.

Jonathan Cohn and Yunyue Chen propose a new pedestrian plan for Manhattan's grid grouping blocks into larger neighborhoods and organizing streets into either thoroughfares or local streets. Cohn leads the transportation and public infrastructure studio of Perkins Eastman, while Chen received the 2017 Perkins Eastman’s Architectural Fellowship for the Public Realm.

Manhattan grid divided into thoroughfare and local streets. Image: Perkins Eastman.

Their plan is a combination of the Dutch shared street idea of woonerf and the Barcelona “superblocks”. Shared, local streets would include continuous, curbless, and textured surfaces with cues that conform drivers to speeds of about 6 miles per hour.

Example of a shared street with less vehicle access and more pedestrian space. Image: Perkins Eastman.

"Superblocks" are limited to local traffic inside and would be sectioned off by thoroughfare streets with local streets in between. Local streets would always be within a 5 minute walk of any...

Design Trust seeking proposals for “Public for All: Rethinking Shared Space in NYC” initiative

2017-05-01T16:19:00-04:00

“In today’s political climate, we must affirm and ensure that New York City’s public realm provides places of refuge and play, congregation and demonstration, and dialogue and exchange.”

In their latest community-driven effort, the non-profit Design Trust for Public Space recently launched “Public for All: Rethinking Shared Space in NYC”. The citywide call invites design firms, communities, agencies, and individuals based in any of New York City's five boroughs to send project ideas for planning and designing public spaces that are more accessible, resourceful, and can be sustainably maintained and operated.

Here are more details from the Design Trust:

The Brooklyn Bridge. Photo: Liz Ligon. Courtesy of the Design Trust for Public Space.

Proposals must be research, design, and planning projects that will unlock the potential of NYC’s shared spaces, including underutilized and under-resourced community assets. Projects may be site-specific but must potentially change the way NYC develops and manages public space citywide.

Although Design Trust efforts may eventually lead to built work, projects should demonstrate broad policy or programming goals, with potential for ...

Kentucky students defend shared living spaces over "innovative" new dorms

2016-04-27T13:28:00-04:00

with the rise of these innovative areas, traditional-style dorms, characterized by shared bathrooms and two or more students living with one another in a single space, are becoming less frequent on campus, and will soon be discontinued altogether. [...] living in a traditional-style dorm is important, especially for first-year students, because the living arrangements allow for greater communication between residents that may not necessarily occur in the newer dorms.

Related on Archinect:

Humanizing street design with 'shared space'

2015-10-12T14:35:00-04:00

The future of urban roads may be one where motorists, pedestrians and cyclists act as one. Spaces where these usually segregated members of the population live -- or move -- by the same rules. Most importantly, these rules would be social, not formal, to befit the increasingly popular trend of 'shared space'. "Shared space breaks the principle of segregation," says Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a street designer who [...] brought these spaces to the U.K., which now hosts more than any other country.

Related on Archinect: