Conversation around the future of housing is a topic commonly discussed within architecture and urban planning circles. Firms large and small have postulated where issues within housing schemes lie and how the industry can address them. However, as architects continue to dance around solutions for "smart housing" and urban living, there are reservations on what that looks like specifically.
While housing issues vary worldwide based on their social, political, and environmental factors, firms like MVRDV, Sidewalk Labs, among others, have presented ideas that aim to reimagine residential developments and their so-called "smart" components. Recently, UNStudio announced the introduction of their latest residential project in Munich called Van B. They claim their prototype for modern city-dwelling will "cater to changing demographics and multiple family constellations. With its highly flexible apartments, outdoor and shared communal spaces, and striking facade, Van B offers a new form of urban living."
Through modular "plugins," Van B implements a new apartment footprint using a grid layout that transforms conventional apartment square footage to become more flexible than traditional apartment interior layouts. The goal was to create as many customizable configurations for each apartment space with movable furniture systems and adaptable partitions. According to UNStudio, "The Van B plugin system allows you to easily change the use of the same floor space in a matter of seconds, making it possible to transform a room from a generous office into a cozy living room, or a bedroom."
The concept of "smart living" is often attributed to examples of tech-related components integrated within a space like the Ori System by Brooklyn-based design studio Ori. UNStudio's "analog smart" concept for living attempts to challenge these spaces. In short, the proposed residential project is another take on configurable interiors that doesn't necessarily embody anything we haven't already seen.
UNStudio's founder and principal architect Ben van Berkel explains, "What makes Van B truly special and unique is that it offers a completely new form of 'smart' living. This is not smart in the usual sense of tech integration; it instead involves reinterpreting ideas from the digital world in order to improve the analog, physical spaces we inhabit."
Take projects like Sim-Plex by Patrick Lam, for example. They exhibit similar design techniques that increase interior flexibility and adapt to the needs of the user. While their use of the word "smart" will most likely cause a response from the architecture community, van Berkel shares, "related ideas have been seen in architecture in the past, but Van B goes beyond traditional ideas of flexibility as we know them in architecture. It is more intelligent, adaptable and user friendly, while also providing high levels of comfort."
31 Comments
Not very ‘smart’ maximizing surface area and complicated waterproofing origami.
The deZign is looks beautiful. The resiliency, I suspect, will be awful.
#rickitect
I'd be more concerned about controlling where the water goes and then how that might impact the waterproofing. Seems like it's going to make a mess of itself when it rains heavily. I don't think the waterproofing needs to be that hard, there is actually plenty of space between these things that if it's done as a rain screen I don't see why it would be so wild.
agreed with @mrrightwilson... i work almost exclusively in building envelope design, and my first reaction to the exterior 'visualization' was FAIL. Maybe you get by with top-shelf construction materials and detailing in Europe... but you give this to a Texas developer: they will stick-frame it with wood, and it will leak and rot before the units' second lease renewal.
@cbiii. Looking at the renderings, and knwoing who the architect is, I highly doubt this is a low budget, low quality construction project. I would entirely agree if that's the case, it would be a disaster waiting to happen.
nah, i could turn this into a set of CDs. putting a balcony over living space in inherently a bad idea, but other than that this is fine.
LMAO are they just repeating developer verbiage " With its highly flexible apartments, outdoor and shared communal spaces, and striking facade, Van B offers a new form of urban living."
This idea is neither new, nor unique, nor "smart", *but* I think it's a good concept in theory and I'm happy to see more evolution & iteration by different designers. I think too many are trying to re-invent the wheel rather than simply making a nice, useful wheel. This is the latter.
Also I think it's rather beautiful.
Gotta keep yo shit clean ant tidy lest you break it as you go from office to bed. Also crush the cat. But I do like the idea.
Cats are un-crushable, they just slip right under.
balconies are a big architectural dilemma in my mind.. they're great from the inside, but often hideous from the exterior. i like that this tries to address that be enveloping them, but i think it overcompensates a bit by the boxiness of these things, which are starting to act more like the balconies i don't like.
the exterior looks like ass. sorry
All those fixture panels sliding around can only end one way:
"Put. The candle. Back!"
Looks like a run-down communist ski resort hotel from the outside, all that's missing are the skis on the balconies (they don't fit much else anyway) and the interior looks neither cozy nor generous...
lol spot on. I've always thought that the Grasshopper generated pixelated massing that the likes of BIG have made their "house style" looks hella like those Eastern bloc brutalist buildings of the 60s. Same language to justify the design too - all about buildig utopias and inclusion and equality.
The good news is that everyone gets one, the bad news is that it's shit.
Hmm, those "plugins" remind me of this project: https://arqestructura.com/2019...
I wrote Ben a public letter this morning to express my outrage at his unacknowledged use of those "plugins," which are someone else's intellectual property. https://criticalista.com/2021/02/16/dear-ben-van-berkel/
Sorry but equally as inelegant or even less than the Van B...the biggest space in the design is a non-space corridor, using up a third of the entire space. And there’s no way daylight will reach the back of the container, creating a dark and inhospitable prison cell.
Oh look, another home for rich people
It was better in the original French. Note the windows in the mansard section are vertical and will not leak. The windows on the other floors are parallel, not projecting out at an angle and much easier to construct. Yet this older Parisian building is much more elegant.
The problem, of course, is that if you tried to build this in the 21st century it would look like styrofoam.
And cost more than any client would pay.
Well, you could pay to build a Robin Hood Gardens or a Pruitt-Igoe, pay to tear that down, and then pay to build some other horror.
You could also, of course, build the entire thing out of straw and call it an argument.
interesting attempt from UNstudio, but architects should look at structuralists like Hertzberger and Kahn for more elegant solutions that create flexible modern systems within better configurations and better in-between spaces. The interiors here are an improvement over the status quo, but not because they are flexible--just bigger (tired of beige-ist wework style though). Here the "plug-in" ends up overwrought as an exterior aesthetic overshadowing whatever interior games they are playing. Where's the lobby? Hallways space? In between courtyard? BIGs W57 is much better not because of the stacking, but because they feature a social space courtyard as primary element and wrap the mediocre apartments around it.
The overall philosophy behind this does seem repulsive -- we will all live in a WeWork in the future, working for some parasitic startup like OnlyFans or TicToc. Hopefully architects can challenge this entire paradigm rather than going along with it.
It is similar to Paul Rudolph's Orange County Government Center in Goshen, NY, but with a mansard roof. Truly one for the ages.
You had trouble with this as a kid, didn't you?
Before you bitch about my response, consider that you volunteered your opinion, which opens you up to criticism.
Imagine this with a mansard roof to highlight the architectonic diversity and inclusion of styles. Oh, wait, you don't have to imagine, it's just been 'visualized'.
That's insulting to Rudolph. His interior spaces were far superior
Imagine this but without the pieces already matched up.
So difficult! How do people know which building to enter when they all look so similar?!
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