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Moving House
by Clayton Artz
The adaptive matrix model utilizes a gantry to facilitate the movement of residential modules in response to ever-changing family structures in the urban setting.
This proposal seeks to provide a customizable and modifiable living condition which responds to the everchanging lifestyles of its tenants. The system is derived of an ‘infinite’ grid, composed of standardized, residential modules. The system is equipped with a crane, or gantry, that facilitates the movement (relocation, addition, removal, etc.) of the living units and provides incremental upgrades and an overall more flexible lifestyle for the inhabitants. As family structures change over time, the spatial and programmatic needs of a family will change along with it, requiring units to be added, subtracted, relocated, or shared between families/neighbors. The matrix model can be broken down into four fundamental components (street, front of house {front yard}, house, and back of house {backyard} that is adapted into a vertical living condition. This allows for the extended limb (gantry) to take not the physical form of machine made to move things and place them, rather it becomes a means to deploy modes of living within an urban fabric to allow people to live within the margins of an already existing environment.
The use of standardized building components and a modular framework bring with it a type of efficiency, on both the mega and micro scales. However, repetitiveness and an ‘industrial’ aesthetic are not always welcoming to feelings of comfort, homeliness, and personalization that are essential for healthy family and community structures. I investigate methods of design that can combat such sensitivities and provide a mode of living conditions that are more accessible and responsive to the needs of shifting family paradigms while maintaining a high level of spatial efficiency and adaptive competence.
The proposal imagines a system of orders and hierarchies with a larger, more permanent framework supporting smaller, transitional programs to solve issues of urban disorder. It embraces the idea of a system being ‘forever unfinished’ as units are constantly being added and removed depending on the residents’ needs. As buildable property becomes limited, especially in growing urban landscapes, this proposal seeks to fill the ‘in-between’ spaces that have been either overlooked or regarded as ‘unusable’ and ‘unprofitable’.