Over the last six years, we have developed innovative housing ideas, using democratic design thinking, computational methodologies and techniques to develop the design. Europan 10 offered us an opportunity to tackle an urban extension site near Aarhus and Denmark, and to test our our enabled self procurement ideas (see esp-sim.org). Our team investigated an enabled construction process using prefebricated components assembled by the community working as a collaborative team along with professionals. The ultimate goal - to build a sustainable community that endures way after all construction has completed – is then achieved by effective engagement with early adopter community members at the design stage, using web 2.0 technologies and online virtual environments to visualise design outcomes, but continuously growing the community before during and after construction.
The homes we envisaged for the competition were to be designed through identification of common goals, and consensus as to the appropriate distribution of privately owned and shared space. All dwellings are gathered around a semi-public space shared between 3-4 house holds; private outdoor space is provided on top of roofs and public private terraces looked out onto the shared public realm. All the proposed dwellings are designed to passivhaus standards, flexible and extendable so that inhabitants can develop their homes over an extended period of time following a pattern book of extension options and ensuring the high performance construction is maintained.
