S'14 Thesis: Milou Teeling

Milou Teeling
M.Arch Thesis Spring 2014
Faculty Advisor: Alejandro Zaera-Polo
Project Title: Mass Housing Strategies for Istanbul: "Anticipatory Preservation"

Abstract

Housing, one of the concerns most central to the history of modern architecture, is also, paradoxically, the most isolated, often located in distant peripheries, reinforcing systems of segregation. In its current state, the production of mass housing still adheres to the principles of modernism as it promotes the implementation of a mono-functional typology, (“towers-in-the-park”) that is removed from all other urban functions.

As a result, the global city has developed monstrous landscapes of homogenous residential ghettos. This thesis problematizes the mass housing tower as a mono-functional entity and subjects it to the mechanisms of hybridity that exist within the well-functioning, traditional city, making mass housing areas an integral part of the global city.

The project recycles the existing physical infra-structures in order to provide alternate strategies that transform the dedicated mass housing areas into hybridized modes of occupation. This programmatic re-envisioning of the mass housing tower resembles the complexity of traditional city, but incorporates modern technologies that are flexible and energy-efficient. By reprogramming and re-structuring existing models of mass housing, architecture aims to transform peripheral development into a well-functioning urban structure that is resilient to economic, social and environmental fluctuations.