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Old Posted Oct 14, 2010, 8:59 PM
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A Forrest of "Freakishly Thin" Skyscrapers to Democratize City Living

A Forrest of "Freakishly Thin" Skyscrapers to Democratize City Living


October 14th, 2010

By Suzanne LaBarre

Read More: http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662495/...tment-building

Quote:
In the densely packed cities of South Korea, where high-rises seem to outnumber trees, units with views of nature and fresh air aren’t just coveted, they’re fetishized. To offset the shortage, REX, the architecture firm run by Joshua Prince-Ramus (a disciple of Rem Koolhaas), has invented an entirely new type of residential structure: The "Freakishly thin" apartment tower, to quote Prince-Ramus.

The model is effectively a standard apartment high-rise split lengthwise into four towers and separated by green space. So instead of each tower having four or five units per floor (the typical layout in Korean residential buildings), you've got one, which you squeeze inside the central core.

This democratizes access to amenities for all the residents, ensuring that everyone has south-facing windows, cross-ventilation, and views onto a public park below. REX proposed the towers, called Block A4, in Songdo City, Incheon, a new urban center rising at a furious clip west of Seoul.

The layout manages to be good business, too. Since each of the units fit inside the building's core, you don't have to build a separate facade; the core is the facade. That slashes construction time and costs.













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  #2  
Old Posted Oct 14, 2010, 9:52 PM
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So the theory is "if we take the towers in a park scheme and make them taller, and skinnier and make even more green space, then there will be an urban utopia, even though the towers in a park scheme led to anything but."?

Yup, I'm sure just regurgitating the same ill conceived corbusierian urban planning from the 1960's will have a completely different result this time around... These people are morons...
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Old Posted Oct 14, 2010, 9:55 PM
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I'm not sure how it's good business. The structure/core is an expensive part of a building, so you'd want to get a lot of units relative to structure, and having one unit per floor doesn't seem like it.

Not only that, but from the renderings, one of the 4 sides of the towers are a blank wall, most likely where the stairs and elevators and bathrooms (the true core) are. You could put two of those towers back to back and you'd have the same units and they'd be able to share the core.

Also, I don't see how "the core is the facade" since you still need to buy windows and everything else you'd normally need for a facade, regardless of whether or not the outer wall is part of the structure.

Am I missing something? This doesn't seem very pragmatic.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 3:18 AM
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Oh cool, useless green space that will be devoid of life.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 5:31 AM
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That green space isn't going to get used much. I think it would be better to have 3-6 story mixed use, high density development around the base instead unusable "green" space that will end up looking like little nature splotches around public housing projects.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 5:34 AM
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Lame. Just because there is grass and trees in between the towers does not make it any sort of natural environment. Green spaces need to be uninterrupted to be truly natural and wild. Central Park is a good example. Even though it's surrounded by a sea of skyscrapers, it's relatively untouched within its borders. Some of the wildlife you can find in Central Park is amazing. Of course, it is over 800 acres, so you'd expect that. But anyway, to have any sort of natural environment it has to be undisturbed. That's more of a courtyard than anything, which makes Nowhereman1280's comment about it being similar to the horrors of 60s residential highrise "neighborhoods" accurate.

Cities are better off encouraging point towers and combining them with inviting streetscapes lined with trees and vegetation where ever they can place it. Then setting aside large undisturbed open space for true natural environmental settings for people to enjoy. It's also better for the environment, than these fake green spaces. It's also fake urbanism.

The "green space" shown there might as well be a golf course.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 5:54 AM
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Visualizing what I was just talking about:

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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 6:13 AM
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^Basically point towers. Buildings with podiums have really taken off here. Almost every one of them has been set up like that, although, not as skinny. The skinniest one in Austin is Spring, which was designed by an architect from Vancouver.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 4:47 PM
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I sort of envision it being like European style podium buildings one would see in Paris, but with those really thin one-unit per story towers. I think it would present a less crowded skyline as opposed to say a single giant skyscraper. I admit, I do like the proportions of the towers in the original plan.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 4:50 PM
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Maybe they could have adjoining cores, one for living space, and the other for elevators and maintenance stuff.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 5:08 PM
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the skyscrapers should be all along the edge (with midrises in-between?), creating one continuous 'negative' space or plaza in the middle. that would be much more likely to see use.

the current plan as skyscrapers in a park as so many of you already pointed out just doesn't work.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 7:45 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280 View Post
So the theory is "if we take the towers in a park scheme and make them taller, and skinnier and make even more green space, then there will be an urban utopia, even though the towers in a park scheme led to anything but."?

Yup, I'm sure just regurgitating the same ill conceived corbusierian urban planning from the 1960's will have a completely different result this time around... These people are morons...

my thoughts as well.
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Old Posted Oct 15, 2010, 11:34 PM
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I think towers in a park can work just fine, and can be pretty nice, but it depends on having a really well designed and well scaled park, with careful consideration of how parks actually work, and most of the time the park design is neglected. I think it's neglected here even more than it was in the typical projects from the 1950s.

I think having a mix and contrast of typologies creates diversity and is enriching.
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Old Posted Oct 16, 2010, 2:06 AM
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People would need a reason to go down there and mingle. If there were stores and services in the bases of the towers it might work but the towers don't look large enough to support a business.

Also, I don't think humans take too well to the "everyone lives in the same design apartment and there is nothing to do here" type of built environment. It doesn't work with townhouses, it doesn't work with small apartment blocks, it doesn't work with high rises, and it won't work for skyscrapers.
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Old Posted Oct 16, 2010, 3:21 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jasoncw View Post
I think towers in a park can work just fine, and can be pretty nice, but it depends on having a really well designed and well scaled park, with careful consideration of how parks actually work, and most of the time the park design is neglected. I think it's neglected here even more than it was in the typical projects from the 1950s.

I think having a mix and contrast of typologies creates diversity and is enriching.
Essentially the whole gist of the "Rem Koolhaas" school of architecture is that the discredited models of Modernism weren't all bad. (Prince-Ramus worked for Koolhaas)

Much of the failure of towers-in-a-park projects was caused by administration, organizational, and logistical failures. The buildings were often built to extremely low standards, policed poorly, and maintained rarely if at all.

Also - and I might take some heat for this - projects, by definition, were public housing. We can't stick hundreds of poor people into highrises together and expect everything to work out peachy. In fact, towers-in-a-park schemes have worked when the tenants aren't poor - look at Lafayette Park in Detroit or Lake Meadows in Chicago.

If architecture was to blame for the failure, it was only in that architects failed to refine the model to adjust for the realities of American cities. That's what Jane Jacobs missed... she correctly identified the factors that allowed American cities in the 1800s to be successful, but she was mistaken in deeming these factors as the ONLY path to success for urban neighborhoods.
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Old Posted Oct 16, 2010, 4:23 AM
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Massive public housing projects for impoverished people usually don't work very well. Ghetto's as a whole usually should be avoided. Instead of pushing lots of poor people into high-rise public housing, its best to stagger small pockets of public housing all over the place and within a few minutes walk of a well maintained public transit system.

Edit: Nice Avi change BTW ardecila. Yes I picked up on that within moments of you changing it.
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Old Posted Oct 16, 2010, 5:47 AM
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Quote:
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Massive public housing projects for impoverished people usually don't work very well. Ghetto's as a whole usually should be avoided. Instead of pushing lots of poor people into high-rise public housing, its best to stagger small pockets of public housing all over the place and within a few minutes walk of a well maintained public transit system.

Edit: Nice Avi change BTW ardecila. Yes I picked up on that within moments of you changing it.
Something that I have proposed (and what I thought Toronto was trying but MonkeyRonin said it isn't) is having houses that the city owns, and doing a sort of "rent to own" with them with families. They would start off as low income families needing a place to live and in a decade or so, they'd have their own home. Because it's theirs, they have more pride in it. My city has a mix of apartments and single houses just on their own, and the single houses on their own are by far more successful. Even just small groups of duplexes or a single small apartment building are much better off than the clusters.

Another kind of low income housing development in Toronto I would like to see implemented more is co-ops. Not sure how well that would work on a scale as large as this though. I haven't heard anything bad about them, though.
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Old Posted Oct 16, 2010, 6:04 AM
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I guess the problem with that scheme, or any subsidized scheme, is that it relies on the tenants getting into higher-paying jobs eventually.

At the rents that most public-housing residents pay, it would take them forever to pay off a construction loan/mortgage on their unit. And when their food, housing, and everything else is subsidized, where's the incentive to work harder, go back to school, or otherwise improve their income? Obviously, their standard of living is fairly low, but with no danger of homelessness or starvation, the impetus to improve their economic standing is much lower.

I realize I sounded pretty conservative there, but there is in fact a noticeable drop in real income that's created as people start to earn more money, but get stuck with higher taxes and qualify for fewer government benefits. That drop (the "poverty trap") acts as a big disincentive to aim higher.

Even if they could eliminate the drop, there's still a range of incomes at which an increase in income yields no net benefits.
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Old Posted Oct 16, 2010, 7:41 AM
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Indeed, such a model would have to have some sort of change to eliminate the trap. If there was a better way to help them get into higher paying jobs, or if there were deadlines and objectives for them to meet to maintain the assistance, it would probably be more successful than it is today. The model of just giving them money with low expectations and little incentive to help them improve is only hurting low income people. It focuses too much on short term comfort, and removes the responsibility that they need to get back on track so that they can live comfortably and independently in the longer term.

Of course that would be very complex, which is why we don't do it.
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Old Posted Oct 18, 2010, 9:20 PM
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I think that social integration is an important aspect of this. With concentrated poverty, you have a community with no good connections/networking (knowing the right people gets you jobs) and a culture of low expectations.

But then if you take a poor family and put them into a more affluent community, the kids at school will make friends/employment connections, and will be part of a culture that has higher expectations.

So I think one of the best ways to deal with poverty in general is high quality government services, like public transportation, education, and social services, in all communities, and a % of affordable units requirement for new developments. Ideally the requirement would be made at the highest level of government possible, since it's not as helpful if the inner city is the only place which has that requirement, since poverty is generally already concentrated there.

This doesn't fix the poverty trap, but it helps to make it more of a non-issue, since in this case higher achievement is driven by social factors rather than financial ones.


I like the idea of the government or non-profits running mixed income affordable housing though. I think it's a shame public housing in the US went the way it did.
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