Home_2121 Winners Announced!

Round House by Gyu Jin Kim, Da Som Park & Hyeon chae Song

I’m thirsty…….
I should drink the water I saved last night.
I think I can wash and drink this water for at least two days.
Although water gathers constantly from internal and external purifying rainwater systems, it is nice to see this amount that I barely use in a day by collecting it all the time.
After drinking water, I went out and saw large buildings that were built 100 years ago. After the desertification, there is no means of receiving water, so it is impossible to live in such a place, but sometimes I go up and look at the surrounding landscape.
As resources became run out due to global warming and environmental problems, countries fought for resources, and instead of acquiring resources, they self-destructed, and the earth became a huge desert without the current concept of a country.
The water quickly dried up, and people left the city one by one and began to wander around the world looking for water. Now, I should stop by the station and get some food and information.
After tidying up the surroundings, I went inside the house to reposition the structures that were supporting the house.
As moving constantly, I continue to search for possible water sources, but they are still nowhere to be found.
I was hungry, so I rotated the inside to bring the food warehouse down. I picked up the potatoes in the box and rotated the inside again to bring down the kitchen. After baking potatoes to fill my stomach and worrying about various things, I moved to the docking station. A lot of people gather at the station because it is a place where drinkable water is stored, food is grown and exchanged for goods. In exchange for food, I brought some books from the urban area. With this, I do not need to worry about food for a few days.
Going to the lounge, people were talking and exchange information. They said water cannot be seen from the north and northeast. Comparing the direction I came from, I should go west. I said good-bye to the people and went home. Now that I have food and information, I have to start looking for water again.
Looking at the gauge, I found the wastewater tank is almost full.
Along the way, I’ll take out the sewer and spray it in the desert. I don’t know when it will be, but this manure might make the land green again. It’s already dark as I follow the direction. I have to save solar energy that I have stored during the day, so I should get ready to sleep early today. I’m going to stretch the structure again and fix it to the ground before I wrap it up for one day.

Jury Comments:
“Satisfies most completely all attributes looking for: an appealing design idea, elegant and straightforward. The idea forged human connectivity and intelligently reinterpreted individuality dynamically. Iconic architectural design concept without being dominating, rigid and fixed, combining water and landscape integration. Appreciate the ‘void’ concept within the diversity of the environment as a strategy. The not conventional interpretation of a home; interior views looks open and immersive. Provide for a full range of living zones to experience. The graphics and board layout are very pleasing and clear to understand.”

“In a clearly inhospitable environment scenario, the idea and execution are a believable survival mechanism, although one could imagine technological prototyping to achieve this would be difficult under such conditions. Pessimistic entry but with very coherent world building.”

“interesting graphics & tumbeweed concept, but does not appear practical considering the fixed residential unit in the center. Residents are bound to feel motion sickness.
Not enough thought given to practical application.”

House of Dwelling or Leisure by Yu Fu

Due to the increasing of living pressure and the improvement of consumption level, more and more citizens living in urban leaving the city during the holidays, and return to nature in order to relaxing themselves. The phenomenon has promoted the renewal of the tourism and living mode. In the face of this, in 2121, the vacation home is not only a temporary shelter for travelers to survive, but a “home” that can be filled with rich emotions and accommodate diverse activities. The research tries to effectively combine the dwelling and leisure activities and creates a new type to improve the efficiency of buildings, promotes communication through sharing the dynamic space.

The design research of “The Home of Dwelling or Leisure” uses the method of typology. The problem of the research is how to establish a dynamic spatial relationship between dwelling home and leisure space in nature through the dynamic spatial characteristics, so that the multiple behaviors could be accommodated by sharing in the dynamic building.

It starts from the daily living experience and memory in home. The typical spatial relationships were extracted. Then, established abstract illustrations, lead to the discussion of spatial prototypes, and give the possibility of prototypes evolving in nature. The space can be used in the home and leisure.

This research started with the thinking about social phenomena（sharing, communication and dwelling in nature）, using typology as a method, then designing the building through the extraction of types, the evolution of types and the translation of architectural spaces in future. The research proposes a flexible vacation home with multiple functions and flexibility. It is suitable for dwelling or leisure experience in the natural environment. “The Home of Dwelling or Leisure” will be a new type of building which has diverse functional program and dynamic space in 2121.

Jury Comments:
“Despite the narrative, whereas am not sure the design proposal was in direct response to the brief & it could be applicable to both now and 100year hence, the design works beautifully. Bonus points for photos of model.”

“Great connection between premise and concept. Dealing with population desity and the problems of tourism and extrapolating to a more exaggerated future. Beautiful presentation and a design that is detailed and loyal to multifunctionality and flexibility at many scales. The only thing that remains as an expectation is a more radical idea about the domestic space as a vacation/recreation space. To offer an alternative to travelling, the environment could be more appealing. Very coherent project overall.”

“This proposal goes beyond the iconic to start constructing a story or a fairytale that gets embedded in the city’s life. It emphasizes the building of the atmosphere and the experience through verticality and modular overlay.”

BLUE HALO
” THE OCEAN CALLS”

The earth’s temperature is rising and melting the glaciers at the poles, increasing the global seawater level. In about 100 years, many coastal cities would submerge underwater. Therefore, there arises a need to think about the future evolution of human habitation.
The earth itself has 71% of the water on its surface on which humans can dwell if designed sensibly by keeping marine ecology and human necessity in mind. Floods, unstoppable fires, and polluted air have embraced the earth, the food supply has collapsed, and the rising ocean levels have all forced humans out of their habitat.
Would it even be possible to live on the land the way we have used to live for thousands of years?
The year is 2121.
The settlement on Mars and the Moon will grow, so will the settlement on the ocean.
The land is no longer hospitable for humanity, and we have transformed our whole way of living to adjust to life in the ocean – the only safe place left. We have remodeled architecture into technological homes that react to dramatically altered situations, supplied with energy and clean air by awe-inspiring structures on the ocean. They are engineered to float on the surface. Filtered air and electrical power are provided through pipes connected to the energy supply structures underwater. The new way of existence might not certainly be easy for adaptation, but it probably is one of the only prospects of survival.

“An endeavor for survival with a unique approach to form a distinctive civilization on water.”

Our project aims to acknowledge that the world has a great deal of inequality, injustice, and misery and that humans need social interaction for survival at the same time. This co-living space is self-reliant for most of the needs of the inhabitants. It functions by harvesting its own resources. Artificial methods for soil cultivation have been used as alternatives for the lost land to bring back the green life. Conversely, humans are also the prime reason for the harm that has occurred to the planet.
The initial thought was to procure the extent we lost because of sea-level rise while taking on a more accountable lifestyle. The pod is a module with a photo-voltaic roof system that acts as the primary energy source.
The streamlined floorplate has a floating technology that lets the structure semi-submerge. The co-living project aims to provide the users with their private, semi-private, and public space, is self-sustaining, and makes a more responsible effort at living.

Jury Comments:

“A project that can be read both with an emphasis on individuality and belonging to a community. Modular dynamics and spatial diversity contribute to defining an interesting way of living. Interior images are powerful and evocative of immersive water and terrestrial landscapes.

“The design is quite holistic in technical and spatial terms and the presentation of high level. It doesn’t just use water as a necessity, but incorporates it in a poetic way. The main critique is the role of this living prototype in the imagined post-apocalyptic world. It is a technolgically sophisticated, potentially expensive, low density living space, with a very specifically designed social interaction. In the juror’s eyes, if the basic living concept would be a bit more universal, it would fit the hypothesis of a global society on water a bit more.”

“good representation and thought. Little thought to materiality, but details have been thought out and evident in drawings. This structure could actually work if built, with a few tweaks.”

Blooming Ivy by Helen Cheung

From nomads to capsule hotels, we have always been trying to find different modes of living and different domestic lifestyles. People lived in extended families in the past, gradually transitioning into living as nuclear families. Recently, the new way of living in a collective group as individuals in share- houses rises alongside the exponential population rise.
Then is there actually an answer as to what types of social groups designers should be aiming to design for?
This led to an investigation into the design of council housings. What is noticed in the plans of the different typologies is like many other housings, the interior organisation is designed based on the organisation of a nuclear family. For example, the four person unit only has three rooms; one double bedroom for the parents and two more single bedrooms, possibly for the children. What is peculiar about this organisation is that this might not apply exactly to other types of families, one of which is the single-parent family, although it might consist of space for four persons, the interior division would not be applicable for one mother and three children having only three rooms…
A lot of single mothers in the UK are rejected from social housing applications, hence ending up in a shelter of poor condition or even becoming homeless. Apart from housing and economic difficulties, single mother families also encounter a number of issues, such as having a lack of time to simultaneously work, earn for a living and take care of their children. Studies have also shown how single mothers are more prone to receive stress from neighbours, which is one of the many factors of being the worst type of family in children’s diabetic control.
Southwark, a borough in central London, is encountering a series of socio-economic problems with a number of single mother families. The number of females in need of economic support is extremely high compared to London and England, where also high numbers of unpaid childcare is being offered. Furthermore, it was noted that the obesity rates in Southwark are somewhat highest in the country, with half of such population being children. Most importantly, the lack of affordable housing which only constitutes five percent heightens the social disparity.
So the question is, how can single mothers benefit from having a redefined domestic lifestyle？
Blooming Ivy is a residential tower that makes use of spatial characteristics to maximise opportunities for people to come together as a collective, promote use of public space for physical activities to tackle health related implications and redefine the way people are divided spatially, breaking the traditional boundaries. Made up of discrete modules, the skyscraper aims to minimise the sense of hierarchy, overthrowing existing social culture on land. Just like an ivy, the aggregation of modules grows on the perimeter of an existing building, negating economic problems regarding land and ownership. The tower is a self supportive system where single mother families mutually support one another, eventually blooming in the sky.

Jury Comments:

“A refreshingly original concept adressing ways of life and not extreme scenarios. The ideas are sophisticated and the response derived from serving the ideas and not superimposed forms. The superstructure is equally as conceptually supported as the units. A question that arises is the exlusive use of the superstructure by single mother households and what that segragation mean for the social environment. An adaptation of the typology to be more inclusive would benefit the proposal greatly.”

“A radical and playful approach. The concept wins you both through its idea and the process of generating the design. The almost uncompromising and random method of combining the modules and coming together gives it the integrity it needs to represent a viable scenario”

Home 2121 by Hanwan Liang

The houses people live in are too limited: all the spaces seem to have clear functions and purposes: the dining room is for eating, the living room is for watching TV, and the bedroom is for sleeping. Whether there is a form generated from the possibility: such a form is different from all the current geometric space. It does not come from the functional purpose, but from the result of the random expansion of the body. In such a collision process, the designer will add a certain geometric form, such as cube, to limit its expansion, resulting in a kind of conflict between complete randomness and complete purpose：the shape produced by the gray area between the two. Such a form may bring users a completely different living experience.

The design site is located in Chancheng District, Foshan City. The house is designed for the daily life of two families of seven. The designer defined the private space in the daily life of seven people, such as bedroom and bathroom, with a certain geometry: square. The rest of the public activity space produces an interactive space with random shape by doing the experimental research on the possible shape, trying to create a space experience different from the previous life. At the same time, the random shape also indicates the possibility of life.

Jury Comments:

“Beyond introducing an idea of orderly chaos, the concept could perhaps be a panacea in preventing degradation of the human condition – which is a fascinating idea. The idea of chaos could be a beneficial way of unravelling and revitalizing the quality of life while also removing the commoditized design of a uniform, identity-less format. ”

“The concept is focused on a different kind of living with different spatial qualities and different habits and the design fulfils those very well. The design process is very interesting and creative. The future isn’t specifically mentioned but hinted because of the entirely different living spaces. ”