Low-Resolution Housing — Joshua Chiang

This Research Platform studio critically examines notions of cuteness across culture, media and art practices and maps them onto architectural approaches to contemporary housing. Taking the default developer typologies in Houston as a starting point (Considering the 5-over-1, or the Texas Donut), the studio problematizes the pro-forma as an aesthetic device that replicates housing not only in typified plans and sections, but in their formal and spatial expressions. The result—buildings that are bland, boring, and banal—an architectural equivalent of fast food or fast fashion. Cuteness, driven by a material focus on precast concrete, transforms the objectives of multifamliy housing, toying with its scrupulous pragmatism with humor and open-ended fun.

Low-Resolution Architecture

As a cultural lexicon, cuteness is often explained through form or scale: Something is obviously cute because it is round and fluffy, or perhaps because it is small and miniature. Working beyond these cursory definitions, this project reframes the visuality of cuteness through matters of representation and resolution.

Plan-Shape

Shape-Room

Room-Wall

Wall-Room

In the built environment, cuteness is low-resolution. Much like playsets or playgrounds, cute architecture is elementary in form and obvious in logic. In plan, domestricity is configured at the resolution of a room: Bed-rooms, bath-rooms, and living-rooms. At its lowest resolution, the plan is an assembly of shapes, a system of lines and points that solidifies as concrete walls.

Stacking Structure

1/4” = 1’ model cast using Rockite.

Concrete Blanks

From Surface to Space

As a planar complement to Jennifer Bonner and Hanif Kara’s elevational Blank (now in precast, instead of CLT), the primitive shape has the capacity to organize domestic program. The planar shape folds the Blank around its lines and points, transforming the Blank from surface to space. This is the constructive logic of Toy Housing: a low-resolution, loose aggregation of extruded rooms that shifts the expression of domesticity from units and floors to rooms and stacks.

Fabrication

1. Precast Concrete

2. Transportation to Site

3. On-Site Assembly

Taking on the Texas Donut

When sized up to the scale of a Houston housing block, the project metabolizes as a thickened, occupiable facade that envelops parking structures. This low-resolution residential wrapper brings forth the latent cuteness of the Texas Donut, producing a particular type from ubiquity.

Project Drawings

Ground Floor Plan

Wrapper Plan

Pile Plan

Wall Details

Building Sections

Software:
Rhinoceros 3D
Blender
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe After Effects