Opportunities in Underutilized Urban Spaces
As I explore both my home city and those I wander through on my travels, I find it fascinating how many opportunities there are to better utilize land if only people had some creativity. This is one reason why I loved stumbling upon this incredible project designed by ISA in Philadelphia. The XS House is a 6-story apartment building with seven units squeezed onto a narrow sliver of land only 11 feet wide and 93 foot long. One of the best parts of this project is that it replaced a few parking spaces to create much needed housing. Utilizing creative design moves like bump outs, mezzanines, and a single egress stair, the architects were able to create beautiful, light-filled units despite the tiny footprint. They also creatively used spacial gymnastics to create a 6-levels with only 3-stories to meet code requirements.
I would love to see more project like this, where we find leftover remnants of land and create innovative housing developments. This is also a great example of how tight constraints can actually contribute to creating great architecture. After seeing this project I checked out other work by ISA and am impressed by their ability to design really fun architectural projects on leftover land. This is a trend throughout many of their projects which can be seen here: http://www.is-architects.com/leftovers
---
We are posting new content to our blog at Lucas Gray Design.
If you are interested in hiring us for design services contact us here.
If you would like to build an ADU purchase plans from Modern ADU Plans
