I think it sounds great. For precedents, Charles Correa, WOHA, & MVRDV come to mind. Kengo Kuma has a new project in Asakusa that is a high-rise w/ the "house" shape. It's a cultural centre but I've been thinking with some tweaking it could make for an interesting highrise dwelling. There's lots of interesting dwelling studies done by Japanese architects generally. Also, it might be good to consider looking at creating a series of mid-rise buildings as well. You can get good affordability and more interaction w/ the street level w/ mid-rise buildings.

maybe its different at DAAP now, but when I was there any project having to do with OTR was a huge headache and issue of friction with the professors / critics. I would maybe look at a city with greater density already that would really need to go vertical.

Also, the further away your site is from the Nati, the less professors will pick apart your project

Yeah, I know the whole OTR thing has been beaten to death at DAAP... That's one of the reasons I'm focusing more towards the Central Business District. (The specific site I have in mind is a large parking lot on the southeast corner of Walnut and Central Parkway.)

I originally considered picking a site in LA's San Fernando Valley and doing more of a mid-rise project. One angle I thought about working into the project was about how the Valley, via Hollywood, has become sort of a proxy for middle-America suburbia. Lots of iconic houses from movies and television (E.T., Brady Bunch, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, etc.) were real houses in the Valley simply because it's in Hollywood's back yard, and have become ingrained in popular culture. But as LA densifies along new transit lines, the Valley is becoming more urban.

That said, Cincinnati is home, and part of me would like for this project to be something that people (not just faculty at DAAP) can relate to and envision in their own locale, rather than some abstract idea of a site on the other side of the continent. There are also pragmatic issues of being able to access the site for photos, and easily get lot dimensions from the city, etc.

Intotheloop: Thanks for the suggestions... I'll certainly keep them in mind.

LIG

I would maybe approach the project as though you were a developer and had profit and a marketable product as the driving force behind your project. These constraints will give you a great framework to work within.

you have highlighted a tension between the "American Dream" house and mid/highrise apartment buildings and by extension,,between the suburb and the city . this tension is something you could explore; by bridiging the gap between them typologically,  would you be able to creatively explore a hybrid dwelling? this will also go well with your interest in 'vertical (and if i may add, horizontal) neighbourhoods' interjecting differentiated outer and inner spaces that respond to individual and communal functions on more than the ground floor level.  the caveat is that its easy to err and make either a bland - or oversaturated-archi-paella that doesn't work. how would you go about exploring vertical routes of transportation ( pedestrian slopes, elevators, escalators, parking ramps...) and horizontal to acheive this.

of course, everything is in the particulars. bouncing ideas here.

Tammuz: You've done a good job of articulating what I have in mind. And I'm not sure if there's another city (maybe Detroit?) where the tension between city vs. suburb is as heated as it is in Cincinnati.

You seem to be on the right path. You have a general topic of interest that you can further narrow down. The whole dense high-rise (plus low to mid-rise) typology has been well covered by past projects and buildings. I'm thinking of Moshe Safdie's Habitat 67, Kisho Kurokawa's Nagakin Capsule Tower, both of which are playing off the ideas presented by Archigram in the Plug-In City but went off in different directions. Habitat 67 in particular tries to combine dense housing typology with the individuality of suburban houses. More recently, there's been a trend to use the gable roof as a prominent feature to recall the individuality of the suburbian house. Instead of hundreds of white vanilla boxes stacked on top of each other, you see hundreds of gabled roof houses stacked on top of each other. I hope you can avoid this. Lastly I'll just add that Kuma's implementation of this idea is brilliant, although different in concept, scale, and execution.

Hey LiG,

I really like your idea! I think you've found the kind of project that is interesting on both an urban, and private scale. I agree with those on here suggesting something resembling the scale of a mid-rise (in terms of height). Generally the 'tower' projects come across as infeasible, and amateur. That doesn't mean you shouldn't consider developing an entire block, as opposed to one lot...

Have you also considered making the housing affordable? I think that would be a nice gesture. It's been several years since I was studying at UC, but with OTR gentrifying so quickly, I wonder where the poor african-american demographic is being pushed to?

Your post made me think of a recent student project that I saw circulating the blogs.
http://www.bustler.net/index.php/article/flip_city_shanghai_by_pinkclouddk/

This project I think takes on much more scope than what you're interested in doing... it tries to create a self-sufficient community, in one building, from scratch. Cool ideas, which I don't want to critique. I am really repulsed, however, by the proposed architectural solution, which is basically an incomprehensible mishmash of familiar-looking solids and peaked roofs. DON'T DO THIS!

Anyways, I thought I would share a cool social housing precedent, that I think begins to successfully create the kinds of differentiation and private outdoor spaces that you're envisioning. The housing below is by Jean Renaudie. Pretty avant garde, even now. The project does have some wear and tear... the concrete really gives it an aged appearance. Perhaps use a different material :P

The purpose of a masters program is to demonstrate mastery over a given body of knowledge, not necessarily to create new knowledge (that's what doctorate programs are for). As such, I'm not trying to invent something radically original, but at the same time I don't want to rehash some concept that's already been beaten to death by a thousand other M.Arch. students over the years. (Shipping containers as housing? Yawn

I totally agree! 

you have a couple problems to solve:

1.  large condo associations that involve lots of units in single buildings tend to create tense political environments where people are mostly looking out for their own self-interest.  Smaller condo associations are only slightly better in this regard.  how the building/complex is managed and divided is extremely important to its success - not sure if this is something that can be designed...

 2.  how to encourage social interaction within and outside the complex.

A high-rise in Cincy eh? Hope you get Larson or Bible as your advisor! 

Thanks for the feedback... I guess whether it's a high-rise or mid-rise will depend on the specific site I pick. I'd like for the project to be a good neighbor and in scale with surrounding buildings, so that will have a big impact. Up around Central Parkway, something in the 8-12 story range would probably be most appropriate, while further downtown, something around 20-30 floors or so could work well. Either way, I'm not trying to set any height records. Structurally, I'm thinking of a fairly regular grid that can then be infilled with a variety of housing units in a variety of configurations.

I've heard horror stories about condo associations (my current employer refuses to accept condo projects at all because so many HOAs are so trigger-happy when it comes to litigation), but I think those issues would likely be outside the scope of my thesis. Ideally, my project should work just as well as rental or co-op building as it would as a condo project.

very glad to hear you are in the groove with the education LIG

isn't any project that tries to counter suburbia with mixed use/mixed scale housing more or less in the same category as container architecture? pretty common theme for a coupla decades at least. 

if you want to keep it fresh you might try looking at all the bits that are not obviously about the architecture and start from there.  i know you aren't into theory so much but a clear intent beyond the building itself might make for an interesting project.

anything over 4 or 5 stories it gets really hard not to make into an exclusive gated community (or the worst sort of banlieue apartment block) in the sky even with retail on the ground floor.

are you looking to make an iconic tall building or actually try solve the real problems with hi-rise housing?

I think the "gated community" thing is pretty much a natural by-product of any larger-scale housing development that's taller than a row of townhouses, and in an urban setting, it's pretty much a necessary evil. This isn't to say it should be a fortress, but almost any mid-rise or high-rise building is going to have some form of controlled access. (If I were a tenant in such a building, I would expect as much.) I think the trick is to design it in such a way that it still engages with the surrounding city, both visually and programmatically, in a positive manner.

My goal would be to at least mitigate -- if not outright solve -- many of the real problems with high-rise housing, and if I happen to make an iconic tall building in the process, so be it. But even it it isn't iconic, it should at least be something of good quality.

and in an urban setting, it's pretty much a necessary evil

it's not a necessary evil.  Cincinnati is about twice as big as Boston in land area, yet has under 1/2 the population.  Boston has very few high-rise apartment buildings (although that seems to be changing recently) - and the densest neighborhoods in the city are all about 3-5 stories (this is similar to san fran, and just about any other dense older world city).  the only reason you build high-rise are if acquisition costs are high, and the developer knows they can sell lots of units at high market rate in that desirable zipcode - otherwise you'll kill your entire project with the parking requirements.

btw - structure parking is ridiculously expensive - think at least 20-30k per space (twice to triple that if you go underground) - and if cinci is anything like the rest of the country, parking requirements can be at least 1.5 to 2 space per unit.  it's a huge loss-leader for the developer if they're forced to go in building - and kind of defeats the purpose of dense urban living.

cars take up way too much space.  I'd be more interested in a project where you can replicate dense lower-rise buildings across all those parking lots in downtown cinci and connect them with alternative modes of transit - you know - crazy high-tech stuff like walking or bicycle.

One of the sites I'm considering is directly on the route of Cincinnati's under-construction streetcar line, and the city has cut minimum parking requirements by 50% for any new development located within 600 feet of the streetcar.

Even in a down economy, and even beyond the 600-foot distance from the streetcar, there has been quite a bit of new residential development in downtown Cincinnati. (Most of it has been in the form of adaptive reuse of existing structures, but there have also been some entirely new structures, including one completed mid-rise and one proposed high-rise as part of a larger mixed-use development.) There are also quite a number of existing and proposed high-rise residential developments along the riverfront on both sides of the river and on the hilltops, in areas where density wouldn't normally justify high-rise development if not for the panoramic views. So I don't think high-rise residential development is totally out of the question in downtown Cincinnati.

I think one of the reasons I'm more drawn to a high-rise project is because of the unique challenges associated with that building type in terms of fostering a sense of individuality and community. I've seen quite a number of newer low-rise developments that already seem to do a pretty good job of that stuff, so I'm not sure that I'd really be taking on much of a challenge by proposing something similar.

All that said, I think the biggest incentive for me to take on a smaller-scale low-rise project would be the ability to really hone in at the detail level and give every space the design attention it deserves. A high-rise might involve biting off more than I could chew, and require me to pick my battles in terms of which aspects get thoroughly explored and which ones get glossed over. If I go the low-rise route, it would probably be an infill site somewhere within OTR itself.

if parking is a problem, either situate the building appropriately near public transportation and choose your market sector appropriately (young couples, students....therefore studios, lofts...manipulating the ambiguity of what a 'bedroom' is...of course, i have no clue what the laws there are like, generally the parking requirement corresponds to the number of bedroom units, no?...) or utilize unconventional parking strategies, mechanical stacked parking. but therein you face a blatant paradox in wanting to allude to the generous  spacto-economic allowance afforded by the  American dream house and the restrictions imposed by the urban condition.

also, rather than think of a ground floor band encircling the building, why not think of the distonction between functions volumetrically and the use the interface between both to afford the require privacy at time..and at other times, to afford interaction with the public space. the notion of a "gated" building is rather simplistic

"The purpose of a masters program is to demonstrate mastery over a given body of knowledge"

Well, that's a good start!

" make an iconic tall building in the process" 

This went down the toilet fast. Picking a site and doing a random schematic design removed from all financial realities is BArch land, son. What else you got?

Most MArch thesis' end up like this. Bunch of busywork that's of no use to anyone once you graduate. Good thesis will make you a highly desirable employee to certain firms. A great thesis will make the community take note. More memorable ones involved a graduate getting hired by the city upon graduation to implement his ideas! Another one lead to many awards and government funding to start the environmental cleanup part of the thesis. 

You? You are doing a condo. If you fully dive into the world of $$ / foot squares, you may get something out of this. Doesn't sound like you do.

Picking a site before flushing out your thesis statement is not necessarily a poor start, but most of the time it is :p

density wouldn't normally justify high-rise development

density doesn't justify high-rise - it's a combination of "market demand," area desirability, access (usually in the states this means situated close to highway on-ramp - but more recently transit nodes), and favorable political climate (either zoning allows it or neighborhood is weak or gov is strong and will push project through).  developers would build high-rise in the boonies if they knew the units would sell.

adjacent density (i.e. critical mass of activity due to horizontal density) might influence desirability - but not always.

 utilize unconventional parking strategies, mechanical stacked parking.

very expensive, and the building would need to hire a full-time parking attendant.  it's not worth it unless you can go super-high-end luxury.  again - if you are truly interested in doing a "real world" project, and you are going to go high-rise with lots of units, you will have to deal with parking somehow (hint - you really don't need all of it - but it's a challenge convincing many local govs - I think cinci might be pretty progressive in this regard).  for low-rise parking isn't as huge of an issue.

perhaps, toasteroven, although i,m not sure whether minimizing the parking area and giving over the surplus to retail or other profit making function might not actually be in a gain in the long run. an economic mind would be helpful here as its easy to make assumptions. now, does one need to carry over the unstudied assumptions made in real life in order to qualify a school project as being based on reality? again, i don't know...but an insightful economic opinion would be interesting.

yeah - when you start getting into a large amount of speculative program, you really need some kind of economic insight (more than what I can offer aside from my experience doing these sorts of projects)... maybe not something that could be part of a typical arch school project (and even most architects don't really get involved in pushing this because we're mostly just responding to the developer's brief) - but to me this is what is continually lacking from most school or even projective projects that deal with this specific typology (if they do - it's usually very superficial or utopian or ideological new urbanist).  even planning students don't really get into challenging the economics (or the questionable sustainability) of high-rise residential.

sorry - I might be projecting my own agenda...  just ignore me...

hey LiG- did you see this:

cincy's new comprehensive plan.