SHARED HOUSE

2018 Spring

Instructor: Jing Liu

33 Bond St, Brooklyn, NY

The House today is in crisis. As the increasing trend of urbanization and gentrification, the challenge is to rethink domesticity in urban life. Hence our studio's topic is to use 33 Bond St, a luxury apartment in downtown Brooklyn, as a site to reconsider the possibilities of domestic space. 

My precedent, Miller House, is completed in 1992 in Lexington, Kentucky. It is designed for an old couple and their two grown-up children. Because they live and work in different parts of the country, so the house is intended to be their home base. Hence Oubrerie designed 3 small double-height cubic houses suspended within a large cubic volume to satisfy the clients’ needs for interdependence as well as independence. 

What I’m interested in the precedent is its catwalk hanging on the second and third floor, because the catwalk creates distance in the domestic space, which is not a common move.

Hence it inspires me on my design of Shared House. It is a prototype that combines 4 one-bedroom units in 33 Bond St. It could be used by a large family with 2 or 3 generations who prefer to live more independently while living with family; or it can be shared by totally strangers, each person can have his or her own bedroom, bathroom and balcony, while sharing kitchen and living room with others. It also features a front yard and a back yard, which is more like a suburban life style but in an urban apartment.