See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/295927193

Passages through High-rise Living

Conference Paper · July 2014

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1626.0886

CITATION READS

1 9,352

1 author:

Oliver Heckmann
Urban Housing Lab
27 PUBLICATIONS   28 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Building Types Online View project

Urban Residential High-Rise Typology for Social Cohesion and Demographic Resilience View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Oliver Heckmann on 27 February 2016.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Passages through High-rise Living

Oliver Heckmann, Assistant Professor

Singapore University of Technology and Design – Architecture and Sustainable Design
20 Dover Drive, Singapore 138682, Singapore
[email protected]

Abstract
High-rise housing is a widely applied form of residence in Asian cities to accommodate growing populations.
Still, high-rise housing is often associated with anonymity and with a resulting lack of mutual empathy and
negligence of shared spaces. Given the tendency to build even higher residential high-rises it is necessary to
develop new typologies to diversify monotonous, uncommunicative structures. After discussing why the
residential high-rise – once a modernist repertoire promising new forms of communal living - turned out to be
an often replicated generic faceless and dislocated entity, and rather became an administrative instrument to
facilitate mass housing than an architectural form, design strategies for circulation systems that aim at
fostering social cohesion, will be investigated. This compilation of relevant approaches for cohesion-driven
innovation of circulation systems is to inform an upcoming design-through-research project, which intends to
develop implementable proposals able to contribute to a sustainable and social high-dense urban living.

Keywords: High-rise, Housing, Circulation, Access Systems, Cohesion

Introduction - Passages through High-Rise Living

Asian cities grew in unequaled speed and extent during the recent decades. Their countries' growing
economies in a global market and the fundamental social and demographic transformations of their
societies resulted in extensive migrations to the cities.
With the rise of population and the resulting need for further densification of Asian cities while at the
facing spatial and economical restrictions for further expansion, high-rise housing typologies are again
considered to be an optimal solution. While in Western countries high-rise buildings are mainly
considered to be a failed typology for social housing, it is still widely applied in Asia. Even though
high-rise housing seemed to be ideologically inseparably embedded in modernism-driven urban
segregation and standardization, its typological potential for innovation needs to be further researched.

High-rise housing is often inseparably associated with anonymity, with a resulting lack of mutual
empathy and negligence of shared spaces. It is the very configuration of circulation spaces, which can
play a significant role in fostering a sustainable sense of neighborhood. Still, due to economical
restriction and tendency for standardization the circulation systems of high-rise buildings - with lobby
spaces usually serving far too many people to set up routines of daily encounter, with highly efficient
elevator cores laid out to minimize the time spent within and with often compact and dark corridors on
the apartment levels – often lack the quality to become spaces of social encounter.

A research is pursued to investigate innovative high-rise building circulation structures - generating

spatially diversified hierarchies with sub-units of apartments small enough to motivate neighborhood
encounter, with decentralized communal spaces. Circulation spaces offer ideal conditions for
neighborly contact, for in contrast to the public space the number of local residents is manageable – an
important prerequisite for people’s willingness to socialize.
WS-17: Residential Buildings and Architectural Design - Passages through High-Rise Living

With the urge for ongoing densification of Asian cities and the resulting demand for even higher
housing towers, new designs strategies for innovative layouts of circulation spaces fostering social
cohesion could be applied as one of several approaches for sustainable urban high-dense liveability.

Structure

In its first part this paper will discuss how the residential high-rise - as an essential modernist
architectural repertoire for mass housing, that is widely applied in Asian cities to manage urban
growth - evolved to become both internally and externally a generic replicated entity, how it almost
ceased to be a domain of architectural innovation and rather became an instrument for administrations
to tackle urgent housing crisis, and why it is criticized to be disconnected from the urban realm and to
disconnect its residents.

The issue of connectivity becomes the lever in this argumentation. Both at the building scale, where
the methods of production with its efficient multiplication of plans and its compact accession cores
leave no gap to be appropriated for social cohesion. And at the urban scale, where the functional
segmentation disintegrate the high-rise residents from the vibrant potentials of urban communities.

In the second part architectural studies of exemplary built and non-built precedents, spatial analysis
conducted within other research works and debates pushed forward by conceptual design projects will
be compiled to gain a broad perspective on the issue and to identify and categorize strategies for
innovative circulation approaches.

Evaluated and analyzed under the aspect of transferability, both parts will also inform the researcher's
ongoing research-through-design project on innovative circulation structures within residential high-
rise buildings. It is intended to develop case studies to derive and to evaluate applicable design
strategies.

High-rise Circulation

Residential circulation spaces link the private to the public and expand in between two thresholds:
between the city and the house and between the house and the individual unit. Within this stretch an
entire sequence of spaces with horizontal and vertical connections gives residents a common interface,
and either promotes or discourage encounters. Circulation spaces also act as a filter that controls and
manages manifold intimacies and allow for highly diverse ways of life in close proximity to one
another. (Heckmann, 2011)

They offer ideal conditions for social cohesion, as in contrast to the anonymous publicity on the street
the number of local residents can be manageable and as repeated encounters take place of necessity.
Both are important premises to build up and establish neighborly routines. Still, efficiency dictates that
circulation spaces should occupy as little space as possible in relation to the apartment surfaces - and
especially in social housing developments and mass housing predating the 1990s the urge for
economic efficiency generated circulation spaces that were spatially, functionally and qualitatively
insufficient. Often, too many units were connected to a single access system, thus becoming
anonymous and inhospitable - one of the reasons why often neglect and social problems occurred in
buildings of this kind.

Circulation as Separation

Effective prefabricated skeleton- or slab-structure in steel or reinforced concrete in combination with

efficient elevator facilities allow for extremely tall buildings also for residential uses - with a steady
repetition of the horizontal footprint of the building. The circulation core as the predominant vertical
access system for residential high-rise buildings - a constricted enclosed shaft containing the elevators
and stairs only used for emergency - almost acts as a means of separation. Using quick elevators in
access cores extremely limits the common time residents spend together in their common interface. To
this effect, vertical circulation cores disjoint the apartment levels with its inhabitants from one another.
The levels inhabited by “others” are only perceived briefly through the opening and closing elevator
door.

The Residential High-Rise as Modernist Typology

The residential high-rise originates in the urban and architectural typologies of 'Modernism', which –
as a side effect of its radical criticism of the existing cultural and social conditions at the beginning
twentieth century - often illustrated a tendency to depreciate, obliterate and to substitute the existing
fabrics.

Such connotation is also embedded in the very representations of iconographic modernist housing
projects - like as in 'Plan Voisin' by Le Corbusier (1925) or the 'Vorschlag zur Bebauung der Berliner
City' by Ludwig Hilberseimer (1929). Instead of presenting their proposal as 'New towns' simply
placed in neutral territories next to the existing, the illustrations claim the obliteration of the existing to
be an essential prerequisite for the implementation of something radically different - as if being a
verdict on its validity. Having emerged in a period of radical political and societal unrest following the
First World War the Modernist proponents radically questioned the misery of the present conditions -
promising newer, brighter and cleaner worlds if accepting a tabula rasa. This aimed at social settings
as much as at the built form.

Figure 01: Vorschlag zur Bebauung der Berliner City', Ludwig Hilberseimer (1929)
Figure 02: Plan Voisin', LeCorbusier (1925)    
 

Instrumentation

But it was essentially the extreme housing crises of the twentieth century that transformed the
modernist urban and architectural typologies into an instrument of radical alteration of the built urban
environments. Even though occurring in various global regions and historical epochs and for quite
diverse reasons, extreme housing shortage was always considered as societal crisis that could trigger
social unrest and that required immediate action. The process of instrumentalising the modernist
repertoire generated an essential shift from rather design-driven aspirations towards policy strategies
operated by powerful administrations. While Le Corbusier and his allies have been seeking radical
aesthetic and societal rejuvenation with their manifest-like designs, Peter Rowe states that the
modernism-driven housing schemes have to be rather seen in their political and strategic dimension: ".
Contrary to some interpretations of the modern period, the interest in housing aimed more at achieving
social stability than at radical reform." (Rowe, 1995, p159)

The thematic scope of the modernist repertoire offered a comprehensive set of strategies for the
control of a housing crisis - all embedded in the architectural and urban typologies it developed:

With its focus on standardization and simplification the design strategies in general elevated the
conditions of economy and building construction to one of its primary aesthetic concerns and thus
facilitated efficient mass-production.
With its social agenda and its design proposals for the 'minimum subsistence dwelling' ("Wohnung für
das Existenzminimum") it offered feasible solutions for large groups in society in situations of limited
economic resources - both on the individual but also on the societal level, applicable for whole
societies being in a crisis.
And in particular with its strict separation of urban functions – following the "Charter of Athens" and
CIAM Paradigm - it generated an urban impact that went beyond the mere building scale. The urban
planning strategies offered at the same time a promising and enticing utopia but also simplistic and
pragmatic solutions. It’s radical segregation of the city into islands for habitation, recreation and work
turned out to be ideal for technocratic administrations being in charge of the implementation of master
plans. Reducing the city – an essentially often ungraspable unpredictable complex weaving of
intersecting economies, cultures, heritages and networks – into a pure matter of quantities and entities
enabled the bureaucracies to act as competent managers: satisfying basic materialistic needs, focusing
on economic feasibilities, working with predictabilities.

Necessity

That the challenges of an extreme housing shortage could have been countered only by the means of
mass housing is sound - even though often at the expense of the destruction of existing low-dense
urban fabrics.

The continuous reference to the crisis seemed to make a search for impactful architectural solutions
and a debate on the potential of the architecture to act as a catalyst of social interaction negligible.
Referring to Singapore, Clancey (Clancey, 2003) cites Housing Development Board CEO Howe Yoon
Chong speech at the 1967 'International Housing Conference Singapore', who explicitly rejected
"ideal solutions" to housing design, because ''urgent problems need immediate attention before they
get completely out of hand." Rather than anticipating the side effects of people's relocation from
accustomed functioning village communities and informally evolved residential neighborhoods to
anonymous housing estates, the housing policy had to be "action-oriented", prioritizing quantity to
quality.

Control

Arguing that the substitution of existing low-dense urban fabrics with its grown communities also
followed a policy aiming for controllable communities, Clancey analyses that Singapore's multi-storey
housing was at its beginnings intentiously “anti-communal” (Clancey, 2003). The existing
communalism of informally grown neighborhoods was inseparably connected with the little
appreciated unpredictability, vibrancy and impulsiveness. "Modern Architecture shared with many
governments a deep aversion to the street, on which crowds gathered. Modernist slab blocks with
green spaces between them eliminating all focal points that a crowd might gravitate towards".
(Clancey, 2003, p20). Consequently, housing policies were rather focusing on the family as smallest
societal nucleus than on an entire community cluster.

Urban Planning and Architecture evolved as two separated domains, with the building typology
subservient to and determined by the instrument of the master plan. The reciprocal impact of urban
context and building typology, the very potential that occurs at the interface between the building and
the city, had been consequently restricted. As essential part of a city, a building typology could also
evolve independent of a specific function and rather emerge as an 'urban house' in direct response to
local conditions, demands and pressures - as a variation and differentiation of precedents or as entire
new solutions, but still in touch with its place. Additionally, as a consequence of its condition of
production, the high-rise typology was only marginally one about housing but rather one about
standardization, - with the built form evolving as serial multiplication of highly efficient configured
floor plans, stapled often without any variation and designed to compress shared spaces as much as
possible.

Maki, (Maki, 1964,) one of the Japanese Metabolists, that with their concept of the "Group From"
proposed an architecture, that expanded beyond the entity of a confined mono-functional building and
proclaimed connectivity, programmatic complexity and openness, criticized the inherent Modernist
tendency for detachment: "Le Corbusier limits generative human qualities in urban architecture to 'air',
'green' and 'sun', while exponents of "Group Form" find a myriad of suggestive activities to add to this
list" (Maki, 1964, p41)

And even though Jacobs (Jacobs J., 2005) criticizes such stigmatization of the modernist residential
high-rise, she refers to similar criticism (Sandercock, L., 1998), that the modernist architecture has a
tendency to 'decontextualize'', and to deny 'history and everyday life rhythms'. Modernism and its
high-rises, a building type that was initially inaugurated as an offer to the masses to inhabit the city,
and its inherent culture tended to replace the city of diversity and displace otherness, difference and
local contingency. Its built form has come to be understood as a "malevolent monster which offers
nothing more than uninhabitable spaces from which tradition, real ornament, and community are
banished."

"Community in a high-rise environment"

But Jacobs (Jacobs J., 2005) argues that such stories on modernization overemphasize the non-
recognition of diversity and community. She refers to the Singaporean sociologist Chua Beng-Huat
(Chua, 1997), who with his accounts of high-rise living offers an undogmatic, experience rooted way
of productively demystifying the stigmatization of the high-rise form. With its evolution in the Asian
context and climate the residential high-rise has been radically “hybridized”, is not an "artifact of
sameness" (Jacobs J., 2005) but a vivid typology evolving as hybrid social space, as a potential
'contact zone'.

In his chapter on "Community in a high-rise environment" (Chua, 1997) in Singapore, the urban
sociologist Chua Beng-Huat examines the capability of its predominant residential Housing
Development Board (HDB) neighborhoods to foster social cohesion among its residents.
Singapore's Newtown housing estates, built and operated by the Housing Development Board pursue
almost prototypically the modernist urban planning strategies with its inherent generic building
typologies. Rather than ideologically questioning the urban settings in general, Huat anticipates them
as a status quo - as they became an ubiquitous, every-day context for 90% of Singapore's entire
population; a development that has led "to a certain homogenization of the social life of
Singaporeans". Compared to the - as he claims - failed high-rise mass housing estates in North
America and Great Britain, he identifies two major differences as inherent advantages for Singapore's
case: The warm climate does motivate residents to go outside more frequently into the shared spaces.
And the high percentage of homeownership across all social strata in the HDB blocks would support a
higher sense of identity and thus a more coherent willingness to socialize with one's neighbors.

Strategies

Beginning with Chua’s survey of a standard Singaporean high-rise estate, a series of architectural
studies of exemplary built and non-built precedents, of spatial analysis conducted within other
research works and of debates pushed forward by conceptual design projects has been compiled to
gain a broad perspective on the potential of circulation for social cohesion and to identify and
categorize strategies for innovative circulation approaches.

Analyzing events of social encounter in the circulation spaces of a standard Singaporean high-rise
estate by empirical survey on site to study how social cohesion evolved led Huat to the "general
conceptual conclusion", that community is an "unintentional product of daily life within a stable
physical location."
The recurrent coincidences of the residents' separate routines intersecting with each other and the
established multiplied and replicated routines of their encounter let visual familiarity merge into social
acquaintance. The high level of pedestrian usage of public spaces enhances these opportunities to
generate community sentiments in high-rise estates. By analyzing the spaces along the passages from
public to private, Huat explicitly refers to the circulation spaces as the stage for community building:

"Void-spaces"

Huat takes the "Void-spaces", the open ground level spaces of the typical HDB blocks, as an
exemplary space, that with its spatial and programmatic openness motivates multiple unintended
appropriation - for parents waiting for returning students, children playing, retirees and teenagers
casually gathering, people playing Chinese chess and many others. With these simultaneous presences,
an 'open' community is constituted, enhanced by an ongoing informal coordination of these
overlapping activities.

Corridors

Also within HDB's typical slab-blocks themselves an open corridor accession facilitates social
encounter: being shadowed and well ventilated on the higher levels they are a pleasant place to slow
down and meet. Divided into segments of six to eight units per they generate manageable neighborly
groups and avoid anonymity. Individual appropriation and territorialization of the immediate
foreground of one’s apartment is supported - like by tiling the floor and setting plants.

"Corridors of Activities"

Valuing the potential of intersecting daily routines and unintended encounter evolving towards social
acquaintance, Huat (Huat, 1997) conceptualizes the processes of how built environments facilitate
social encounter - he derives from the existing a strategy for "Corridors of Activities"

Each corridor is to be configured to accommodate a small community of resident-users offering them

a high degree of social and physical familiarity. With events of incidental face-to-face encounters
resident-users can continuously reaffirm and revitalize their acquaintances and generate a sense of
ownership. Implementing this into architectural strategies architectural designers would have identify
common activities to be placed within these 'corridors of activities', aiming to facilitate a sense of
community among the members of the identifiable groups.

Even though it is not entirely clear where on the passage from the public to the private Huat envisions
the "corridor of activity" and if a determined programming of these spaces would turn out to be
sustainable the very approach to conceptualize such architectural strategies from present societal
operations is promising. Strategies that could be derived are subdivision of a larger community to
manageable groups and offering spaces for appropriation.
Figure 03: Layout of the void deck on 5th floor, Bras Basah  
Figure 04: Diagram demonstrating spatial accessibility in Bras Basah Complex  

Bras Basah Complex - Detour and Gradation

Following an assumption that due to the densification of Singapore, public space on the ground will
decrease and new public space will have to increasingly appear also on upper levels, the quality,
locations and usage of such spaces in high-density conditions have been studied with a pilot case.
(Jiang, Rassia, Bastianello, 2012)

The Bras Basah Complex, built in the 1980s, has a 4-storey commercial block and two 19-storey
residential slab-block stacked on each other, with an in-between void deck as an interface. The void
deck itself offers a set of shared functions like as sitting areas, playground, fitness area, community
center and an old-people's home - as shared community spaces for all the residents of the two
apartment blocks. Even though also used by non-residents for a lunch break, the void-deck offers
spaces for social cohesion and spatial transition for the residents.

Above the void-deck level the residential lifts only stops on the 6th, 10th, 15th, 20th and 24th floor.
Only on these levels open corridors access 3 staircases that connect to a maximum of 6 flats each in
one section, on three levels with two apartments on each side. This enforced detour causes an
elongation and a deceleration of the journey to the individual apartment, and thus gives an opportunity
for more casual encounter. It also implements a subdivision of the whole block into a more
manageable number of apartments as potential core neighborhoods.

Overall, this spatial hierarchy facilitates a subtle gradation and filtering of publicity - from an urban
and commercial public via the semi-public void deck, followed by small apartment clusters.

Figure 05: Mhada, Mumbai, typical floor plan and 8th floor with common rooms

Figure 06: Mhada, Mumbai, Cross-section Figure 07: Mhada, Mumbai, Common room

Mhada apartment towers – Detour and appropriation

In this low-budget mini-apartment high-rise project, designed by Charles Correa in 1999, a single
elevator core in the void space between the two building wings only connects to the landings between
third and fourth as well as between seventh and eight level.

Walking half a level up or down from here, residents pass double-height or roof-top "communal
rooms" and open corridors, that access three stair houses per wing – with them leading to the
apartment levels with 4 mini-apartments at each landing. The communal rooms are programmed to
serve different functions associated with various resident groups, like as for a women’s co-operative or
for children to complete their homework.
Only on the two levels with communal rooms and the elevator access all staircases are connected to
one another. Residents are forced to make a detour and will necessarily pass through this space on
their daily routes and potentially meet. The communal rooms offer spaces and programs for
appropriation but with their spatial quality also facilitate casual informal gatherings.

Figures 08 - Bedok Court condominium Block 2, Floor Plans

Bedok Court Condominium, Block 2' - Spatial Porosity' and Interface

Bedok Court Condominium, Block 2, a 14-storey apartment complex completed by Design Link
Architects in 1985 in Singapore, has an open multi-storey circulation space with a single-loaded
corridor running along two parallel building wings, that generates a “joint comfort zone for various
forms of activities” (Bay, 2004).

This multilayered space with staggered air wells, courtyards as lobbies to each apartment and wide
corridors is distinguished by its "porous spatial continuity" with visual connectivity, light and
ventilation. The fluent transition from the open apartments via the courtyard as an interface to the
common circulation offers the residents various modes of appropriation - for gardening and others,
either individually or joint, casually or intended.

Even though Bay emphasizes that this comfort zone is also facilitated by its tropical climate, 'spatial
porosity' as an open spatial mesh with semi-private interfaces, with intersecting views, passages and
specific places that offer but don't enforce social encounter is a valuable strategy. Enhancing its three-
dimensionality breaks the linearity of a mono-functional and encased circulation system and converts
circulation to a multiperspectival space for social cohesion
“Morgenstond” – Atrium as joint space and Individual Loggia as Interface

The residential high-rise building “Morgenstond”, completed in The Hague by Henri Ciriani in 1994,
has in its center between two building wings an "inverted core": an open atrium extending over all
levels and thus connecting all apartment units to a joint space. With the generous ground level surface
of the atrium as a sheltered joint space, with the transparent elevator core and the open stairs in its
middle, it creates a common transparent interface for all residents.

On every level with four apartments each, bridges connect to the landings and lead to individual
loggias, which are like an open interface and vestibule to the apartments. Beyond the loggias, the
atrium opens on to the city and complement the gradation from the city through a joint atrium to a
semi-open interface - from the public to private back to the city.

Figure 09: “Morgenstond”, The Hague - section Figure 10: “Morgenstond”, The Hague – plan

High-Rise in Berlin – Subunit Shared Loggia

Van den Broek Bakema’s high-rise, build in Berlin in 1958, is a complex residential split-level
structure with rather short internal streets on every third level. These corridors access only 12
apartments and thus already generate neighborhood subunits with a manageable number of residents.

The internal streets receive light from both sides and opens onto a two-story shared loggia on the
south side - with sun decks and playground terraces. Spatially and programmatically, the access area is
consciously designed as a communal area. Being complimented by a generous lobby in the ground
level and a joint roof terrace a variety of joint spaces are on offer.
Figure 11: Vd.Borek Bakema, High-rise in Berlin, plan
Figure 12: Vd.Borek Bakema, High-rise in Berlin, sketch of loggia

Vertical Village - Mirador –

Figure 13: MVRDV, ZhongShan Vertical Village

While these case study surveys and often singular built and unbuilt projects offer promising strategies
for circulation structures to facilitate social cohesion, “Vertical Village” initiates a more fundamental
discussion of how top-down administrated mass housing can be reconciled with the informal
dynamics of communities.
"Vertical Village", an international workshop curated by MVRDV (MVRDV, 2008) criticized how the
generic high-rise blocks in Asian cities have often replaced and eliminated traditional low-rise
neighborhoods with all their informality and diversity, which is considered by the participants to be
deeply embedded in Asian culture. Compiling the essential properties of communities - with attributes
like collectivity, density, diversity, flexibility, informality, human-scale, evolutionary, identity and
individuality - criteria are identified which are almost antagonistic to the conditions of high-rise mass
housing.

The 'Vertical Village' projects tried to bridge the urge for urban densification with the dynamics and
cohesion of a grown community. Concepts for an evolutionary urbanism - with conglomerates stacked
vertically as three-dimensional 'Vertical Village' communities were to combine the need for growth
and density with informality, individual freedom and collective qualities. Even though the projects did
conceptually rather simulate processes of vertical informal clustering with the evolving void spaces
emerging as potential communal connection space, it raised relevant issues how to better balance the
divide between top-down determination and bottom-up openness.

The concepts and issues raised are also translated in projects built by MVRDV - like as Celosia, (not a
high-rise) completed in Madrid in 2009, where the resident community pass through a sequence of
joint spaces: from a communal court for all to open double-storey lobbies only accessing six apartment
units; these with semi-open loggia as another interface. Celosia tackles similar questions: how can a
built structure facilitate cohesion, what level of hierarchical segmentation and subdivision is necessary
to facilitate manageable neighborhoods. More relevant to the topic of this paper is the Mirador high-
rise project in Madrid.

Figure 13: MVRDV, Mirador, Diagrams of 9 neighborhoods with plans, Circulation & Shared spaces
Mirador

With the Mirador housing project, completed by MvRdv and Blanca Lleó Associates in Madrid in
2008, similar concepts have been implemented in a realized high-rise project. The typology of an
urban block with its courtyard as a communal space has been flipped upwards to become a twenty-
two-storey high-rise building - with the court evolving as a shared resident loggia 40 meters above the
ground.

The high-rise is divided into nine "neighborhoods", that with different floor plan typologies intend to
accommodate various social groups and lifestyles. Both on the exterior and the interior of the building
these stacked blocks” are easily recognizable with their volumes and colors as autonomous units,
giving residents a sense of identity.
The slits in between the blocks connect to form a complex circulation system - a sequence horizontal
and vertical spaces for the residents to move through; with access cores, cantilevered stairs, central
corridors, communal garden and loggias. This agglomeration of typologies, interwoven with a
complex passage space as if to connect "small suburbs", is intended to generate a
"vertical neighborhood". (MVRDV, 2014)

The design strategy generates a level of complexity that questions the linearity and seriality of
conventional high-rise hierarchies. It breaks with its inherent efficiency, both in regard to replication
of plans, minimization of access spaces - and also the time-span residents usually spend in circulation
spaces. The process of de-linearizing the circulation system, of connecting it to shared spaces and of
dividing the overall volumes into identifiable units with a social and architectural diversity could
significantly support social cohesion between a community, which is not homogeneous but versatile.

Conclusion

Extracting strategies for innovative circulation system from relevant architectural studies, from the
interpretative analysis of other research on related issues and from anticipating the debate pushed
forward by conceptual design projects on balancing the urge for higher urban density with informal
community, could be a valuable approach.

“Conceptualizable”, as Huat phrases it, are strategies like:

- Void spaces, subdivision to manageable neighborhood units and spaces for appropriation as
identified and proposed by Huat.
- Detour and elongation of passage space and time to offer more opportunities for encounter, well
considered gradation from public to private as identified in the Bras Basah Complex.
- Again detour and elongation, but also offering joint programs like in the Mhada high-rise
- Spatial porosity and interface between public and private as in the Bedok Court
- Joint atrium and again visible and spatial gradation from public to private as in "Morgenstond"
- Again subdivision to manageable neighborhood and joint leisure spaces like the loggia in
Vd.Broek Bakema's high-rise in Berlin
- A more conceptual claim to informally evolve as a sustainable community in space and time like
as in "Village City"
- Again detour and elongation of passage space and time, identifiable subunits as division into
"neighborhoods, a complex weave of vertical and horizontal circulation and joint spaces as if to
pass "small suburbs", as in the Mirador project

For the ongoing research this strategies have to be critically evaluated and translated into transferrable
pattern diagrams. Other issues will have to be considered, like as anticipating economical and other
constraints. Consequently, data on economically feasible relations between accessed and access spaces
has to be evaluated and to be taken into account

It is intended to apply the results of this research into a research-through design project for innovative
high-rise living. Facing the demand for ongoing urban densification in Asian cities with concepts for
increasingly higher residential high-rise such proposals could contribute to a sustainable and cohesion-
focused urban high-rise living

References

Asche,Von, Peter "Vier Farben, zwei Scheiben, ein Atrium - Wohn-Hochhaus in Den Haag, in: Bauwelt, Issue 10
"Fuer immer modern", 8 March 1996, p502-505

Bay, Joo-Hwa, “Sustainable Community and Environment in Tropical Singapore High-Rise Housing: The Case of
Bedok Court Condominium” Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 8 / Issue 3-4 / December 2004, pp
333 – 343

Chua, B-H. "Community in a high-rise environment", in: Political Legitimacy and Housing: Stake holding in
Singapore, Routledge 1997

Clancey, G, "Toward a Spatial History of Emergency: Notes from Singapore", ARI Working Paper, No.8,
August2003, http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/docs/wps/wps03_008.pdf, On 28 January 2013

Halflants M.:“Tropical Housing Typologies - Public-Private Transitional Spaces In Multi-Family Housing”,

University Of South Florida, School Of Architecture & Community Design, Tampa, Florida, United States,
20XX

Heckmann, Oliver, The Path toward Access and Circulation, in: Floor Plan Manual Housing, Fourth, Revised and
Expanded Edition, edited by Oliver Heckmann, with Friederike Schneider – (Birkhäuser 2011)

Heckmann, O., Schneider “Floor Plan Manual Housing”, Fourth, Revised and Expanded Edition, (Birkhäuser
2011)

Jiang Y., Rassia St., Bastianello D., Glaser M., Public Spaces in High-Density HDB Housing in Singapore - ETH
Wohnforum / ETH Centre for Research on Architecture, Society & the Built Environment, ETH Zürich,
ETH Chair of Architecture and Building Process, Zürich 2012

Jacobs, J., “Hybrid Highrises”, online papers archived by the Institute of Geography, School of Geosciences,
University of Edinburgh. 2005

Maki, F Investigations in Collective Form, A Special Publication, Number 2, The School of Architecture,
Washington University St. Louis June 1964

MVRDV, “The Vertical Village – Manifesto”- http://www.jut-arts.org.tw/theverticalvillage/eng/about_2.html

MVRDV, “The Vertical Village - Individual, Informal, Intense Taipei, Eine radikale Stadvision im Hamburg
Museum, Eine Ausstellung in Rahmen IBA Hamburg” - Hamburg Museum, 2nd August 2013 – 29th
September
2013http://www.hamburgmuseum.de/documents/hamburg_museum/1656/original/Brosch%C3%BCre_%2
7The_Vertical_Village%27.pdf?1374479432, accessed on 8.1.2014

Rowe, P.,”Modernity and Housing” Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press

Sandercock, L, “Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities”. John Wiley & Sons, Chichester. 1998
 Figures

Figure 01: Vorschlag zur Bebauung der Berliner City', Ludwig Hilberseimer (1929) - Source: Dom Publishers,
“Das ungebaute Berlin”)

Figure 02: Plan Voisin' , Corbusier (1925) - Source: Colin Rowe, Prof Fred Koetter, Collage City, The MIT Press,
198)

Figure 03: Layout of the void deck on 5th floor, Bras Basah, - Source: Jiang Y., Rassia St., Bastianello D., Glaser
M., Public Spaces in High-Density HDB Housing in Singapore - ETH Wohnforum / ETH Centre for
Research on Architecture, Society & the Built Environment, ETH Zürich, ETH Chair of Architecture and
Building Process, Zürich 2012

Figure 04: Diagram demonstrating spatial accessibility in Bras Basah Complex - Source: Jiang, Rassia,
Bastianello, 2012)

Figure 05: Mhada, Mumbai, 8th floor and typical floor plan, Source: Halflants, M.:“Tropical Housing Typologies -
Public-Private Transitional Spaces In Multi-Family Housing”, University Of South Florida, School Of
Architecture & Community Design, Tampa, Florida, United States, 20XX

Figure 06: Mhada, Mumbai, Cross-section - Source: Highrise housing in India,

http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/1018/news_2-1.html, accessed on 1 May 2014

Figure 07: Mhada, Mumbai, “Common room” - Source: High-rise housing in India,
http://www.architectureweek.com/2000/1018/news_2-1.html, accessed on 1 May 2014

Figures 08: Bedok Court condominium Block 2, Floor Plans – Source: Bay, Joo-Hwa, “Sustainable Community
and Environment in Tropical Singapore High-Rise Housing: The Case of Bedok Court Condominium”
Architectural Research Quarterly / Volume 8 / Issue 3-4 / December 2004, pp. 333 – 343

Figure 09: “Morgenstond”, The Hague - section - Source: Von Asche, Peter "Vier Farben, zwei Scheiben, ein
Atrium - Wohn-Hochhaus in Den Haag, in: Bauwelt, Issue 10 "Fuer immer modern", 8 March 1996, p502-
505

Figure 10: “Morgenstond”, The Hague, plan - Source: Floor Plan Manual Housing, Fourth, Revised and Expanded
Edition, edited by Oliver Heckmann, with Friederike Schneider – (Birkhäuser 2011)

Figure 11: : Vd.Borek Bakema, High-rise in Berlin, plan – Source: Heckmann, O., Schneider, F. “Floor Plan
Manual Housing”, Fourth, Revised and Expanded Edition, (Birkhäuser 2011)

Figure 12: : Vd.Borek Bakema, High-rise in Berlin, sketch of loggia – Source: Heckmann, Schneider 2011

Figure 13: MVRDV, ZhongShan Vertical Village - Source: (Hamburg Museum, 2013) The Vertical Village -
Individual, Informal, Intense Taipei, Eine radikale Stadvision im Hamburg Museum, Eine Ausstellung in
Rahmen IBA Hamburg, 2nd August 2013 – 29th September 2013
http://www.hamburgmuseum.de/documents/hamburg_museum/1656/original/Brosch%C3%BCre_%27The
_Vertical_Village%27.pdf?1374479432, accessed on 8.1.2014

Figure 13: MVRDV, Mirador, Diagrams 9 neighborhoods with plans, Circulation Spaces & Shared spaces –
Source: Heckmann, O., Schneider, F. “Floor Plan Manual Housing”, Fourth, Revised and Expanded
Edition, (Birkhäuser 2011), with additional diagrams by Zahedi, M., “2A: Precedent Study – MVRDV:
Mirador, Madrid, Spain 2004” Source: http://housing2009.wordpress.com/author/mzahedi

View publication stats