Saad Ahmad

Advisor: Herbert Enns

Aerial view of suburb with clouds
The use of different urban typologies and architectural settings to experiment with possible solutions to the current real estate situation through densification, clustering, and rapid delivery to flatten the housing price curve.
Masterplan
By reducing vehicular access to the site to only 3 points for parking, the whole master plan is made more pedestrianfriendly. Above parking, cafes are placed where people can sit and work over coffee. It would also be an intersection level for socialization between the two levels. To benefit local communities, it could also accommodate small businesses, such as food kiosks and coffee shops.
Exterior rendering
The style of architecture reflects the essence of the working of the building, where the extroverted activities are encased in glass boxes, viewable from all around, and the living spaces are enclosed to provide privacy to its inhabitants.
Interior rendering of workspaces
This interior view of the workspaces demonstrates the optimal use of transparency; This brings the feeling of a collaborative environment, which is the advantage of co-working space brought into this facility like a creative container.
Rendering of stairway from outside
The vertical circulation towers are also used as emergency exits and are strategically placed at calculated distances from each apartment. In the case of a fire, building structural elements char layer on the outside, protecting buildings while preserving resilience.
Diagram of lightweight modules
Few workers can install lightweight, prefabricated mass wood building modules. These mass wood construction systems are assembled quickly, much like a kit-of-parts. Prefabricated modules go through precisely manufactured assemblies, providing energy efficiency and helping make building envelopes more airtight and energy-efficient.
Axonometric rendering of the building
Few skilled staff operate quietly and efficiently, leaving virtually zero wastage on the project site.

Autopoiesis: Urban Densification and New Work/Life Scenarios for the 21st Century

With the skyrocketing cost of living, homeownership has become increasingly unaffordable and unattainable, and the failure to fill the gap between demand and supply can be considered ‘A prerequisite for evolution.’ This gap in restricted supply and changing demands including new financial and social impacts of the new economy presents an opportunity for an urban and architectural reassessment of evolving ‘lifestyles.’ A new autonomous style must be created with an ever-evolving versatility, flexibility and capacity to organize and articulate an avant-garde social and economic framework. The intention is to foster affordability, diversity, social capital, growth and adaptability. A self-referential and inclusive social framework is vital for sustainable growth.  These prototypes will be driven by an auto-poetic framework, a system comprised of social capital, modularization, biophilic design and experimental architecture. Experiments with urban typologies and architectural settings will demonstrate possible futures and urban outcomes by analyzing densification, clustering, rapid adaptation and flexibility. The urban theoretical objective will be to form a non-hierarchical social framework and an urban oasis that will foster Community Development. This process will exploit industrial techniques, mass-production, new modular materials, and flexible manufacturing - as a catalyst for the next generation of housing.