laneway specials
Project entry awarded honorable mention in Buildner's Vancouver Affordable Housing Challenge Competition
A metropolis blessed by its proximity to the mountains and ocean, many have come to consider Vancouver as a gateway to the great outdoors. The city has been consistently voted as one of the best places to live on Earth due to its immersion with nature, and the quality of life that entails. This feature has generated a global demand especially in the real estate sector, and within the span of a few decades, the prices of its housing market have skyrocketed to become comparable to New York and London. Unfortunately, its economic infrastructure has not expanded at the same rate, and as a result, has created an exodus for its lower to middle class inhabitants. With foreign investments continuing to trickle through, they are displaced further and further out into the suburbs. In the meantime, downtown and other urban areas like Yaletown and the West End have become overly saturated with unaffordable podium towers that disrupt the iconic city skylines. More often than not, a good portion of units within each remains empty, as they are seen as nothing more than vehicles of financial growth for the rich.
If the current growth model is allowed to persist, then Vancouver will ultimately develop to become exclusive for the privileged few…
Laneway specials are a proposed typology that challenges current residential zoning laws as a means to alleviate the ever-increasing demands for affordable housing. In essence, it seeks to transform the parking garage of single family homes into a series of modular multifamily dwellings. With downtown being overly saturated with expensive podium towers, there are a lot of opportunities in activating the other urban neighborhoods. Currently, most of the RS districts have a 40-45% maximum site coverage, which will undoubtedly become unsustainable as global demands increase. Thus, instead of perpetuating an existing model that would further widen the wealth gap, laneway specials seek to tap into underutilized land in order to better balance density levels throughout the city.
The goal is to increase the floor area ratio of each single family lot, but to keep the change in overall site coverage to a minimum. Unlike conventional laneway sheds, these will be independent properties allocated for the proletariat and not the well-established. Tax breaks will be provided for the principal homeowners befitting to the appropriation of their property, which in term, will be balanced by new streams of revenue generated by the higher density. This strategy, though not new in concept, can have a profound impact on mitigating the stress of growing populations, while combating the disproportion of wealth that makes many major cities unaffordable.
By devising a modular network of walk-ups, the design envisions the laneway as a holistic community instead of individual lots. Using an all wood construction, two single family units that form a module are fabricated where the garage once stood. They are standardized to allow for non-linear growth, and can be scattered throughout the neighborhoods. When aligned in sequence, these structures establish a new street front that has open parking flanked by access cores on the ground floor. Some of these cores can be converted into small businesses, while others become communal bike racks. The residences above are staggered to create pockets of greenery that act as buffers. Due to their proximity to one another, apertures are strategically placed to maintain private view corridors. A series of interconnected roof terraces link the buildings together on top. Public amenities such as patios, lounges, and communal gardens invite the fostering of community among the locals. The aspiration is that the openness of these spaces will not only allow for different scales of interaction to occur, but ultimately, will make a higher quality of life to be readily available for all to enjoy.
