 small lots, big ideas, or big ideas, small lots. So this, the idea of doing this gathering, this exchange, came about after a few of us. I think after a lecture, we were here upstairs and chatting. And a few of us discovered that we were under the same deadline, and hence that we had entered this competition. So we started talking about, we found a good angle, we flipped the stage, and the professors are all responding to one prompt. And they need to present following the same requirements. And the students can actually come and see and be the credits. So we started very much as a conversation between Daisy and I. And here we are. Yeah, here we are. So I'll just give an introduction of the prompt itself and show you guys who don't know and where the site is located. So we look at the site in Patton here and zoom in. The site is a south-facing site. It's 17 feet wide, 1,16.6 feet wide and 100 feet deep. And if we go to the prompt itself, you guys see that OK, starts out just an introduction between the collaboration between New York City Department of Housing and Reservation and the AIA in New York. And then moves into some of their reasons why they were put in postings of this competition, saying that there's an inventory of a big and underutilized city on the block land. And some of them are very narrow. And the idea that there's a crisis for affordable housing. So it stipulates in the goals of the competition. It gives you the idea that it's going to be a stage competition and there's going to be five finalists are very good. Frampton is the finalist moving into stage two. And they announce the winners or the finalists sometime in May. And I think probably the most interesting part of this package in the brief is the lengths they go into showing the number of different small, narrow, triangular lots that exist in New York City. So this is the lot on West 136th Street. And then we move to what the deliverables are, five of my own team pages with some additional material at the end. But if you just scroll down, there are all these types of infill lots, attached corner, attached interior, shadow, detached. And the list kind of goes on. The idea is that we put forth an affordable model for living and also pose on one of these other sites or a couple of these other sites how our model would work and be applied to other lots. So these are the lots and they go on for quite a bit. It's a detached, I don't think that's the bit. So each presenter is going to present for five minutes. Five minutes. And it'll be very strict. It'll be very strict because it's more about the discussion. But just to give everybody a taste of the images and what it goes into one of these kind of. So we're starting with Jacker of New Affiliates. So I'm going to put you on the clock here. I love you, good morning. I don't have much to say. Don't you worry about time. Thank you for coming. I love the spirit of this event. I'm really glad that you guys did it. So I just want to say that it's rare for those of you who have not had the privilege to practice a lot, which is actually a curse, to be able to submit a competition and then talk to other people who've done the same thing. There's a kind of weird veiled cloud of secrecy over the whole process. And so I love the idea of being able to look and share and talk and even more the idea that you guys can critique us. All of that said, I'm actually not really participating in any of this because I have to leave in about 10 minutes. So I project and then run out of here. So you guys can red herring me if you would ever want to. So my name is Joffer. I teach core one here for those of you who don't know me. And along with my business partner, E.V.D. Montabalu, we have this firm called Nefilius. We submitted to this competition because we were interested in engaging some of the issues around the city that we weren't really taking on some of our own work. And so we're not really experts in this typology. Do I want it? Yeah, I know, I got it. I don't know anything to show or say. So we're really interested in understanding this typology that we haven't yet worked primarily with, which is housing. And what our primary goal was was actually to take an absurd problem and make it even more absurd. So the idea of the infill lot being a super skinny thing, we saw as an opportunity to make even skinnier things within a skinny thing. And the premise was that certain typologies in housing have fallen away as we pursue modes of pure efficiency. So the idea of the micro unit to us unnecessarily precludes the idea of say the townhouse. So our proposal was all about reclaiming the townhouse as a kind of like micro living organization. And we built the entire thing around this kind of catalog of super skinny living arrangements. So here you see like a kind of skinny desk tucked in to sort of halfway under a stair. Skinny hallways that lead to bedrooms, bathrooms that are popping off of skinny hallways. The skinny hallway was kind of the driver of this whole project. And so we started with these, yeah, this kind of catalog and then we built out a kind of spatial proposal out of that that we thought would be a really interesting way of bringing the townhouse back instead of making this idea of everything being kind of one level. So this was our cartoonish diagram of what we were doing. We're taking three townhouses, compressing them in to fit the super skinny lot. And we sort of examined how we could subdivide many different lot types within the same kind of idea. Obviously this was, we were working to code in our defense but we knew it wasn't necessarily the most pragmatic response but we were really interested in kind of blending a conceptual approach and a conceptual idea with testing it against the rules of the city. So we were really proud of ourselves for actually just making this work an hour. Oh, that's more than enough. Just give me like 10 seconds, I'll just stop talking. So we were really proud of the fact that we were able to actually compress, in this case we did four units because we wanted to have an ADA unit at the bottom which doesn't quite participate in the super skinny kind of narrow staircase model. So the ground, the first floor is ADA compliant and then there are three of these narrow townhouses that kind of grow up from a main entry area at kind of the second floor, the first and a half floor. And as you see they kind of push and pull against each other all the way up through the building. They accommodate one another when spaces need to grow to take a bed or a bathroom versus when they're narrow placed as the corridor. So the three units are there, they work, they're in great sizes. Obviously the project finds its most resonance in sections so how do you actually use the typology of the townhouse to create interesting sections of vertical living and not just kind of accept the fact that we all have to just be on one unit per floor. So we got really into the sections and designing through those. Obviously there's a kind of cross grain so when you cut the short sections you see the three banded striation and when you cut the long sections, as you see here, you see the majority of one unit in each kind of laminated layer. It's pretty much it. The outside of the building was maybe the least interesting or least resolved part of our design but we sort of observed that the typical townhouse usually has like a set number of bays. We tried to kind of shrink those and multiply them so that you created a bit of a game of understanding that there was something going on with a proportion of interior spaces and to reflect through these sawtooths that there were sort of three bannies. That's all. Oh, good crowd. I'm Gordon giving. Which core do? And I'll be back in the spring. I've been here for over 20 years. What do I do, page down? Yeah, okay. So we started with four sites that were part of the competition. This is the primary site in Harlem. That's in East New York, Staten Island and that's another site in Harlem. So the primary site in Harlem, basically our scheme could be single family which we did in Staten Island. It could be two duplexes, it could be two one bedroom apartments, so one floor each. And I'm gonna just go out and live here. So what's fixed is this structural bay and then what gets adjusted is the end bay for accommodate the different sites. So what is this scheme is a cellar and there's two duplex units. We used mass timber construction for basically the panels which come in lengths of up to 40, 45 feet fabricated in a factory and brought to a site on a truck and hoisted into place very rapidly. So something like this would be a three day construction after a conventional concrete foundation. So you have the vertical panels for the walls, glulam beams. Again, the width is adjustable per site. Stair units are also cross laminated timber, the walls cross laminated timber and the slabs cross laminated timber would be sustainable and maintains the carbon unlike steel or concrete itself. And then as well, grounds are a seed pump. We're catching rainwater and radiant heating and cooling in the flooring. Here's the floor plans. So the upper unit here is, when you do it in New York, this is all exactly the code, no except for the CLT, the cross laminated timber which is in the process of being allowed as part of the code, but not quite yet. But otherwise it's code. So from the entry, you go up two floors above the first stuplex into the second. In New York City, you can have a two-family house without an elevator accessible by stairs and that's perfectly legal. The ground floor unit, in certain iterations, sorry, I know I'm gonna go over, right? In certain iterations, the ground floor unit for a full ADA wheelchair accessible unit would be just a one bedroom because there's no place for an elevator here, planting roof and so the interior, one of the beautiful things about this cross laminated timber, again, structural for the walls and slabs is that comes the inside finish and the glue lampings, comes the inside finish so you've got that healthy air of the wood environment. You insulate on the outside and then in our case, we clad in the last reinforced concrete, the last fiber reinforced concrete and each floor, let's see if we can jump back. So each floor or each room, kitchen, dining, living room, bedroom, bedroom has this kind of Juliet balcony where you can put planting and fresh air and yeah, it's a beautiful fountain up there. Floor plans for the primary site, so again, that's two duplexes, this is diagrammed at the right corner, construction details, a little bit of cross laminated timber, so this is, again, the primary site on the 136th, just an exploded axon of two units and then further blown out into each of the modules, which is totally repeatable and just adjustable wide dimension, but the plan maintains the same, stays the same, the zoning data that they asked for, adopting the project to a different site, so this is in East New York, so it's a duplex ground on the first two floors and then the upper residence, the one bedroom and this is the one in Staten Island, it's a single family house, two story and then this is the other site in Harlem on 129th, which starts to play with the plan a little in staggering, you can see the diagram, they're staggering the floors and that's it. So, thanks Dave and Daisy for letting me participate, I actually didn't submit to the competition, I had something, I was working on them, had the vision you can hear crying in the background somewhere, so this is the recently sort of still in progress, I mean because I didn't submit to the competition, it's a little bit of progress, but anyways, I think that a little bit, it's funny because Gordon and Duffer sort of set up the problem, on the one hand it's an exercise and a kind of perverse resistance to the conventions of the infill lot, on the other hand, I thought we could also do it with mass timber, but basically there was two competing impulses, the first was to maximize the density of units on the site, so it's 10 micro units, the other was to do a courtyard building or to carve out the interior of the townhouse and think about alternatives to the railroad typology, which probably many of us know very well from our own living experiences in New York. And relate to this, and to those of you who may be more in or saw the studio I did in the summer in a deep program, rethinking a little bit the legacy of new brutalism and a kind of aesthetic without any app or what the Smithsons might call architecture without rhetoric, so in terms of the kind of formal expression of the project, I don't like much of the work that Alfie and I have done over the past few years, there's no kind of rhetoric of the digital and playing with materials and all that stuff, it's just a kind of diagram of its internal organization. So the idea is that there's a kind of standardized core, the center of a lot that's consolidated into a nine foot width, which in this lot leaves about six feet of open space. And then there's two kind of generic loft spaces, which extend from either side of the course to the course standardized and repeatable across multiple sites. And then the loft spaces kind of reconfigure themselves to various sites. And the plan with the exception of the ground floor where the units become extremely small. I think this is not entirely up to code. It's not the ground floor, it's a few steps up. We respect the ADA problem, but in this first floor, because of the iteration of the proposal, allowing a kind of entry to a collective backyard, so there's a kind of common exterior hall or alley, which is also used for storage of various things and allows entry at the midpoint of the building. The units are extremely small, contained to that nine foot width, more like a hotel room than a typical New York studio, then up above the end base, they stand across the width of the site. So I mean, the plan is very kind of compact, spiral stair, a bathroom, storage fridge, kitchenette, and then a kind of flexible space. For living, and you know, the one purpose is that every bathroom as well as the stairwell actually has natural light, which those of you who live in town has types in New York probably knows a challenge. So sexually, it's staggered because of the spiral stair, which limits any kind of hallway to compensate for the fact that the center of the building's avoided out, with the kind of simple core repeated in the center of the plan, and then the kind of loft, and that's the interior elevation from the courtyard, showing the frustration of the bathroom stairs and the entrance to the project. Here it is on different sites, so it works, I mean, this is probably pushing it a little bit to the 14 foot width, but that would be by code as far as I understand the interior core rules, the limit given that you have to have a three foot passage to the exterior from that interior core. So 14 feet would be about the narrowest limit. This site's also only 85 feet long, so everything's getting compressed because of the 30 foot step back in the back, and I should say the core itself is very feet long to offset the windows in the interior of the loft spaces, but in either infill situations, obviously, that kind of loft-like space can expand and contract. It also could be reconfigured on an attached corner lot where you can flip the side, the fenestration from the end to the side or have fit on two sides on the exposed corner. But what we're most excited about was the idea that these things could start to aggravate into an alternative typology, like the kind of sawtooth of the townhouses we have today, but with a series of collected voids punched through them. And I mean, those of you who've had some studios that I've talked to know, I'm fascinated by Stephen Hall's Alphabetical City study of the kind of graphic figure ground relationships that developed in the early American Great Iron at the kind of competing pressures of economic development and environmental control. And so this is maybe a kind of homage to those figure ground diagrams, and that's the very understable interior. So I think that's more or less it. My name is Alexander Sini. I teach for one, and I teach practical, practical conventions with my partner, Nicaragua, who is here tonight. So our approach to this competition was purely, probably theoretical. We wanted to give a response, a typological response to the change of the typology of the townhouse, especially a reconfiguring the floor plan. And in particular, we were interested in analyzing those underutilizes spaces or elements of the floor plan, such as the corridor, the lobby, and then focusing particularly on the corridors. So in fact, our proposal is called Funny enough, Dwelled Without Corridors, which is kind of the opposite of what Jaffer did. So I guess we had to opposite view of the same thing. And so our idea was also kind of related to the promise of the few CD where the public space uses with the private space, and that hands the diagram. Below it, there's more of an urban diagram. So the composite, we tried to resolve the composition, analyzing historically the context or the various typology of sites. And we built a sort of a taxonomy of typical element, architectural element that there are basically composing the facade of the townhouse. So there is the window, the bow window, the entrance, the cornice, the different type of roofs. And then we imagined to repurpose them into extra large elements that were becoming programmatic elements inserted in the facade. So we wanted to try to reconfigure the space, but at the same time give the character to the facade. So these are basically conceptual models where the volume is the absolutely private space and the void in the middle. It's basically the communal spaces because the idea was to create sort of two doplexes, per each floor, one bigger and one smaller, and then with a large shareable space with different functions on every floor. So we have a communal kitchen, we have a communal living room and a communal library and a terrace. The strategy, sustainable strategy, well, I mean, this we're becoming from our experience on our static collaboration with Transolar, I will skip the details on that, but we try to sort of use different type of strategies from using the thermal massing or natural ventilation or photovoltaic. Some idea of the materiality and construction. We are currently working on a project that is done in Staco and Ceramic. So we were trying to employ the same material to also take advantage of the property of the thermal massing of the Staco, but also the sustainable aspect of using Ceramic. So this is sort of what came out from this insertion of this extra large bow window, but in this case, they are not windows, but they become programmatic elements of the differences and so they are not fenestration, the fenestration are part of the different sort of paradigm. Some study, well, we tried to be absolutely strict about code and so, yeah. So in the floor plan, you can see better that, yeah, I'm receiving warning, that we really try to develop this idea of the floor plan without corridors. And for us, it was, the corridor is an element that has been introduced in modern time architecture and has been used as a divisive element, usually used for also, you know, there is a connotation attached to the corridor that is socio-economical. And so we wanted to remove that particular meaning to the layout of the floor plan. So going up, I mean, coming to the living room and then the duplexes, and this is more clear in the section where you can see that there is a central space that is always communal, and then a larger duplex and a smaller duplex on the side. And that's it. I'm currently teaching for 3,000 studio and 14 next semester. I did this project in collaboration with Gabriel Verde, sometimes when we have big projects that come together and produce. The emphasis behind this project is to propose eight self-facing units and eight north-facing units that are prefabricated, stackable and primed on site. And a really important component of this project is really down here, trying to create as much green space as possible and connect the ground floor, which would be public, to this kind of private green space in the back. There is an elevator, and there's access through stairwells as well. So it's a project that really tries to think both in terms of stacking units in a kind of easy, cost-effective, fast construction process, as well as really designing the interiors of the spaces down to the millwork. So this is kind of one slide that offers three potential configurations of the same unit. So we designed the millwork such that on the top right-hand side, the big green unit would be the living space with a kind of pure, concrete topping slab that would provide heat to the living units, as well as a full-down table where you can have many guests over. And then the third one at the bottom would provide a TV and maybe an open environment to the bedroom. So all of the kind of details of where the steps would go and the millwork all try to kind of reinforce this idea that there would be some sort of idea of a pure space, but also providing flexibility. The building mass is organized in two different ways. So one would be just a simple extrusion of the available FRR, and then another one would be understanding the timber volume, which would house the elevator and the stairwell as one element, and then the other element being the screen wall. And so the idea behind the green wall really is to attract people into the back of the rear yard and also provide people with glimpses of the green space from within the unit. So it really kind of tries to connect a lot of the light and the air and kind of a fluid flow throughout the entire... So we went into the building assembly of these units and also the unit kind of individual fabrication layers of prefabrication layers. So one of the other kind of studios and interests of mine is understanding the full kind of life cycle of waste management. So a lot of incinerators produce something called a byproduct of fly ash. And so we wanted to kind of think about fly ash being used in this topping slab that would also have to be a heating. Another area of interest and excitement is also mass timber that would be a mass timber constructed fabricated unit, but it also have timber columns for shearwall. So we collaborated with another structural engineer, Christina Miele, to understand how we would offset shear in the building, and we kind of took another layer of understanding structure in terms of building assembly and unit assembly. These are some more detailed, funny diagrams, mechanical diagrams. One of the kind of subcategories of mass timber is NLT, male laminated timber, and it's a common practice of floor and large warehouses in downtown. So they really have a way of creating panels similar to CLT, but they're actually nailed together. So instead of laminated with glue, they're nailed together, and that would be the floor that the mass timber unit would be cranked in on site. This is the floor plans, the basement floor plan, places for storage, trash, and mechanical space. Ground floor plan, again, kind of like the idea that this would be like continuous strain for community-oriented events to the back. Trash and other kind of recycling things are here, fight storage, and elevator kind of reinforcing our ideas that all of the units should be accessible, should they. So this is the open to below space with a green wall and elevator stair and depth of all living spaces section. And many of these over here at the bottom, back elevation, and the crane in on site diagram, showing that. And maybe if you want to build further up, if you need to, and I think, oh yeah, the wonderful zoning table. Can I see through that? I'm Adam Crampton, I practice this course on the F, and this is our proposal, the competition boards, done together with my partner, Carolina Chomchak. So it's a little bit hard to present these, but I guess our project kind of starts looking very carefully at the context. We thought that basically there would be a real, there was a real concern about how to kind of integrate the project. On the other hand, it's also Jason too, a kind of early 20th century, late 19th century context of housing. So we wanted it to be different. The project here you can see from this elevation we reconstructed the kind of front stoop as an entrance into the second floor and try to work through brick and pattern to kind of align to Jason decoration. In our project, we consider a little bit, to be honest, actually in the context of a competition, I think our aesthetic perhaps was for sort of a facade without a quality score on Emmett, but in the context of a competition, we thought that that might be maybe too anonymous. Another idea I would say that kind of motivated our project, which admittedly is very pragmatic. We're working in the competition in a way more pragmatic way, I think, than I would say we would otherwise or in other contexts. But I think we recognize that within the given site it's imperative to kind of maximize the density of units. So we have dwelling unit density provided by zoning is eight units, we fit actually seven here. And not simply just kind of packing, packing as many as we can, but providing a little bit of sort of diversity of unit types and also hopefully residents onto the site. Another big idea or small idea is to kind of minimize the infrastructure that the building needs. So through really closely looking at the code and the kind of requirements for instance, for an elevator and for the corridor. We found that actually, although it's possible to create a kind of six story version of the building, we could also create a four story version of the building without an elevator. And that would actually yield a similar total net area of the whole project. Our construction is very pragmatic and conventional. We use a within the plans, which I haven't shown you yet. We kind of organize all of the storage and other things within the unit, kitchens, washing machines, stairs circulate between levels packed up against one wall so that they kind of maintain basically clear, as much of a clear floor plan as possible. So within these very small units, there's the perceived perception of more space, let's say. I won't talk about the capability. This is our competition submission. I think I would guess this page is quite important from the perspective of the journey, but I'm not going to go into it in detail. This is the elevation in the front, how it fits into kind of context here. In the kind of section, I just to say that there's sort of a two story accessible unit because we don't have an elevator, we don't trigger what's called a kind of speeding on the other floors. Therefore leading to kind of more compact and efficient units, two student rooms, kind of loft studios and a studio and one bedroom to the roof. The south facing terrace is public for all the residents in the building and this one facing north is a little bit smaller for the resident over there. So this is ground floor. And moving up through the second floor with the stoop, third floor, two studios and lofts on the third floor, mezzanine, four floor and roof. Payouts, as we all might have to see. For us, there was something significant in the fact that the loft was just being an comfortable two shipping containers in. Our work at Low Tech is very focused on the use of shipping container and for this project in particular, we thought we'll go for the space and for the ideas of modularity and possibly for aggregation. It was an interesting response. We developed the project thinking very much about a set of cards, a deck of cards, more than a specific response to this one building as a whole. So what you see here is all the floor plan and they explore, basically they start from the base in Polonia. The entire ground floor and the entire top floor are shared, they are common spaces and they want to complement the tightness of the small living room. And then we tested different kinds of typologies. They go from the two bedroom complex units at the bottom, the bottom two levels and the fourth floor is the one where you can see a little bit of the main structure which is studios on the two sides and shared tiny area in the middle and then at the very top there is a more conventional one bedroom. So I'm going to be nice to zoom in but I don't know how to zoom in. How do I zoom in? It's fine. So I mean I just wanted to show it because for us the idea of using the container is not just about convenience in terms of prefabrication or spatial quality but it is also an idea of literally using the container. So in this case, we were interested in thinking about the cutouts on the container not just as a way to make windows on the outside but also as a way to really engage the interior space. So the wall of the container is inside, obviously there are two containers. There are actually four, two 40-footers and two 20-footers. Create these filters that sometimes is closure and sometimes is open to what's behind. Two, obviously, in the units of the bedrooms. And then, well, this is just to show the variety of the possibility in the way you combine and recombine always based on the common spaces on the ground and top. And then the color is also a placeholder. The template of cutouts is a placeholder. The idea is that it's a series of systems that can be applied. We were very interested in the large stock of lots and the idea that this was not something they related just to this specific site but actually could be applied multiple sites. So at the bottom, you see tests done on different kinds of geometries that could engage the space in similar ways. And then ultimately tests done in different lots where the layout can be carried over also to the side for different kinds of demonstration as well as a wider lot where we have your brain also on the back. One, go through this. And then last in the additional material that we put out, we did a series of end sketches that tend to explain more quickly both the idea of prefabrication, the idea of modular, the idea of upcycling but mostly really thinking about this shared space and the idea of the proposition for leaving that it is not exactly the proposition for leaving that is the end of the developers right now as well as the answers to the question that we have all the time, which is how do you leave in a container your whole installation? So we actually put the installation so that people can see. And teach housing studio core three as well. So, now that's what to add to this. The proposal was essentially called on common ground and the idea was to create a series of strategies or components that would add up to a system that could be deployed to different locations across the city, our lots, awkward lots, kind of strange geometry's in the city. And the first kind of element was this approach to the ground, which was kind of essential to kind of the proposal. This idea that the cost or the incidence of cost and doing foundations in a small building could be quite big. There was a way to perhaps rethink the way that foundations are developed. Especially in a small building like these would be quite important. So it was to create a structural system that would offset from the neighboring walls. And in doing so, it kind of avoid the need to create underpaying, shoring, and other kind of unknowns that happened in New York and dealing with existing foundations and neighboring buildings. In doing so, they create this kind of support that was almost on ground of this kind of asymmetrical strap foundation that would support a very light steel frame above. And then spanning and kind of cantilevering the structure, you have this very low-cost, hollow concrete plants that would essentially create the floor slabs for the apartments above. And the idea is to have this kind of framework above us to have the flexibility to then kind of propose perhaps different scenarios. And it wasn't really thought of as a particular building, rather different scenarios that could be applicable to different combinations of studio, from bedrooms to bedrooms, depending on the site of different kind of compositions. Here you can see the different kind of, some variations on how the system would fit onto different large shapes as well. And then the other kind of component was important was this idea of creating an indoor and outdoor relationship to what are essentially very small apartments. The idea that you could open up your apartment to an outdoor area, you know, it's limited to create that kind of thick and bamboo in the front and the back of the building. So it's kind of borrowing a little bit from the vernacular of the existing New York Street, where you have all these kind of fire states lining buildings throughout old walk-ups. And kind of creating this thick and balcony space that was screened by this kind of perforated elements that would provide shading, as well as create a little bit of privacy and making spaces of the living room as well. So this would be kind of from the rear. You have the rear facades of the buildings, a couple of balconies, and then this kind of open ground, which is the second one actually to approach the ground, which was kind of liberating the ground to common uses and creating a common use of the rear garden, there was some. And here's some use of the project kind of on the street that kind of changed what happened on the day and night from this kind of, of course, treatment, which could, again, it's kind of like, in other examples, of a placeholder, the idea that these elevations could change from different sites, so both the kind of materiality, Barassi, or even the shapes could be different, you could make a specific character to a building in different places, the kind of cross section of the building with this kind of central circulation going through the center, and this kind of living space is on either end. This is the ground plane kind of open, ended, connected to the back, couple of prototype apartments of Florida for Apartments, where they've got prayer levels, you've got the studio, or the two bedroom apartment. All services or equipment would be then placed above, on top, but there's no cellars or basement spaces, so all the ground floor would be open, and this was also thinking, perhaps the opportunity to place buildings such as this in a zone where we had issues with flooding and hazards of the play. These are some of the alternative sites. Try that site, that's all. It's super great to be able to talk about it, because I can look at the PDFs as I collect them beforehand, but hearing you guys speak about it, I learned so much more, too, and also I understand how your personalities are sort of improving the projects as well. I guess the first question that I have is why do a competition like this, why kind of like risk it, why put the efforts into it? There are many kind of players to doing open call competitions. I guess I'll answer it first. I think we can kind of pass the mic, because that's maybe one way of doing it. But for me, I teach housing, and I have various research projects, and ideas, so I have ideas a lot, and I think one of the things that moved me about this one after bowing out to do competitions is because it's close to home, and I felt a responsibility doing it. I felt that without getting these ideas out, they would just kind of sit with me, and so I think responsibility being one of them, and also the responsibility of knowing that I can contribute to a larger discussion, given all of the things that I'm a human being. I'm just kind of curious how the idea of responsibility also plays into your practices. I think my question was, why? Why? Why? Okay, I'll get to the question. Why did you answer it? I think a point of, unless something's extremely interesting or we're trying to work out a problem or an idea, typically of a little new competition, if you think there's a chance of it getting built, and so our scheme was about building the code and bringing the costs down and realistically posing a scheme that we felt people would want it in, that it was a mixed jury, conservative, to land these people, to design people could appreciate. Not, and I don't find that a compromise, it was like by calling it a consensus scheme, I think that all of those constituents can be satisfied, including the residents, of course, primarily. So that, again, to make the short answer, we saw this as a real competition, HPV, I guess was administering it. They have a track record of building like Eric and Mimi's microhousing, and we thought, okay, they're gonna build this one, and let's do it. And responsibility, or was that best for me? No, that's their answer. Well, I think that's a competition with similar reasons of the potential of what they're being realized. And also, the way it was pregnancy, like it was a series, is to the subject, to the issues and to the idea of housing. It had multiple ways in, I think, and I clearly see tonight there were many different ways into the project. And it was open-ended also, like you weren't quite sure which one to go into, is it about sticking to the letter of the law, are they looking to ways to subvert or change it? So that left it open and made it harder to approach, but I think it was interesting to tackle that in a very focused way that made it feel good. Yeah, I think, I also share, you know, I think Gordon and Benjamin's position were kind of at the point where we wanted to do competitions that can be results in actualized projects. And actually for us, I think it was like more that we had to do it because we've been thinking about this problem and looking at it for a long time before it was identified in housing for now, we did a research project where we mapped all 3,600 of these vacant, irregular, narrow, small lots in New York City, 600 of which are remember by the city, not just HPD, but other agencies. And then we also have a 13 foot 4 wide house under construction right now that we've been working on for like four or five years. So we're like, I think it's of the question of kind of irregular leftover land is very personal interests in New York City and it's just actually because as a young architect practicing here, a lot of the ways in which we're addressing the housing crisis right now are through kind of big projects on big lots by big developers by established architects. So we're also, it's a very, I think just looking at it from our perspective, how can we get involved in building here in New York City? The leftover is maybe like a way, means to do that. Yeah, I think I agree with what Ben said. I think that for me personally, I saw it as a multiple ways in, into the competition and probably if you ask in my office the same question to my partner, that answer will be different, but I saw it actually as an opportunity to research. We do a lot of competition in the office and I saw it as the best opportunity to actually defeat the paradigm of the developer. I personally was not like, yes, of course, we were trying to make it buildable and we were interested in making it buildable, but for me it was just like a research project that could prove that the paradigm of the developer was not the only one. Following completely on that as well, I mean we entered the competition very late in the game because we kept looking at it and thinking like, no, no, no, we're not going to do it. Although of course this competition called for our work because our work is very focused on the small unit of the container and therefore we constantly deal with this narrowness and then I think walking in was really this double thing of when I had the sense of responsibility being in practice in New York for 25 years, we thought that it was right for us to answer and then the other one was also the one of saying, can we show another way? And it's another way in terms of technology of construction, another way to think about responding to a problem like this, but also another way in terms of space, like another way to think about organizational space. Maybe I follow with the next question that could be a little bit of a prompt which is also very connected and maybe something that I'm particularly interested in which is in which way a month's strength like this is an inspiration. So how did you find working on, how did each one of you find working on a type lock like on a 16 foot lock where once you put your core and everything, you're dealing with really difficult spatial constraint. What way was that something positive, something that generated unexpected solutions or discoveries or? As I'm going to David and I am, I think I'll sit in the competition I don't know if they wanna present it, but about the fact that you could do a very conventional New York City townhouse on the lock. Like in a way it's a small lock but it's actually a totally conventional lock which could accommodate a high level of variety of interior organization within the general confines of the townhouse type as I think of the various entries displayed. And so I think in my case like there was almost an impulse to further constrain it, to force it to become something other than with the townhouse typically or with that same one format. Adam correct some of my students for mislabeling townhouses in the summer so I don't wanna get in trouble, but let's say resisting some of the conventions of that lock type which is so familiar both in New York and in any other American and other cities. So in our case it was like a desire to even further constrain it in order to find a different kind of technology in which the way it was obviously what we were doing, but in which some have a depth of a lot isn't treated in the. I don't know for us I think, I'm not sure it was an inspiration but it was definitely that element, the constraint was that element that made us focus on the vernacular at some point in time. And after a while we were trying different schemes. Those elements like the bow windows became like a great inspiration, inspiration that like sort of started to resolve things but also let us really go deeper into the history of the technology. And so I think that that was like one of the most important thing. And the constraint is also an interesting thing in a relationship to this word luxury that is connected to all new real estate in New York City, right? So the idea of this maybe something that is more modest was also inspiring for me. Yeah, I think I naturally have a obsession with my governance. The idea that you would actually minimize some of your belongings and try to work within the strengths of the city. And I think you can tell from my proposal that it's like I'm a little bit of a curious in that respect that there might be kind of a sustainable, environmentally friendly approach towards like how we actually live, like having less and using less. I think that was one of the strange constraints of the project for me is just like how do you take that idea so far that every single inch of your migraine is designed in such a way that it is absolutely sustainable and with the mass timer but the top of its lab and the fly ash coming from incinerators. So I think this kind of proposal or competition asks for a little bit of detail that a lot of kind of competitions, ideas competitions, other competitions can be one act, don't ask, of course, especially ideas competitions. So I think that was one of the constraints or I think opportunities that I was able to expand on that. I think I'm not the strange kind of like very productive and I don't know if the Spaniards are aware of that. Definitely maybe you think of getting the project in a different way in these structures. It was actually a starting point which was weird. I was working with Sylvan and just trying to like what is a different way to what you were doing and not really work. But the idea that you could kind of think about it differently came out of the strange which I think was the whole point of the answer to that in the beginning. And also then it became like an extra type of gap because something that's modest but it can be nice if you have like a nice place to live. Having a small lot that's not precluded, it wasn't that small of a lot of people in other cities around the world. It was like, yeah, it's tight but it's just a little narrow kind of a deal. It's like a mindset that I was kind of just trying to get into the work because we're tied to one way of doing things. It's certainly the experience of the gentleman. Maybe a little bit of a different perspective. Like what project doesn't have constraints like whether it's a building code or a program given by a family. I think that everything is doable within the constraints that you're dealing with. But just to give a kind of anecdote of what not to say to a client in regards to constraints, I was approached a number of years ago by a division of Parker Pan's to do a kiosk, a pop-up kiosk and Rockefeller or something. And it had to be designed though. So we had to design it and construct it and they said, you know, they have $150,000. And I guess they talked to some of the components from other designer architects. And people had said, ooh, that's a really tight budget. And they asked a question. Do you think that's a tight budget, i.e., a constraint that we have that is challenging? And I said, oh no, you can change the budget to $10,000. I'll go down to the corner, go to the second hand shop, buy a table and paint it white and you're done, right? So it's like, I didn't get the job. But anyway, the point is that given a set of constraints, there's always a solution. I mean, if you put a tent on the site, it's a solution. So, you know, if there was a different set of constraints. I guess my question comes also from the fact that because we work with this object that is so constrained, and constraining, that you can strain yourself. Yeah, we're constraining ourselves completely. So, but I guess we find that incredibly productive. So, I was curious to walk away, you know, to what extent that happened also for you guys working on a site that suddenly created like a pinch, right? I think just to follow up, the only, let's say, to define the constraints based on the code, based on the code, you know, we found that it had to be a two-family house unless you put in an elevator and use non-investable construction. Okay, so, we could have found that route, but going the no elevator using wood, it says two-family. And so that's not a challenge, it's a two-family house. Yeah, it's less of a challenge, I guess, still. And that's just the way it is. It's interesting, because one thing that we did after, after we submitted the competition, we talked to this young graduate from the Real Estate Development here at Columbia, and they were saying that if you run a financial model for this project, the only way would work if you do... Ten of them. You are, well, either you're multiple or you have to do, it needs to be dance. I mean, you need to bring ideas of dancing inside. So, in a way, the two-family house is the least possible for financials. So, it's an interesting thing. But that's the biggest crisis in the city, is families being able to live in the city in affordable homes, right? That's why we were set in thinking that these have to do everything. I mean, in a way, for us, the goal was how can this be a place where you can have young people sharing the kitchen space and you can have a family with kids. So, we wanted it to be all of it somehow, because we felt exactly that, that there is an idea also of diversity that needs to be sustainable, not just... I mean, if you have a $3,000 two-bedroom apartment for rent, which may be a family with, like, a working family with moderate income could afford it, what they're competing against is three tech workers who each pay a thousand bucks, change, and turn the dining room into a third bedroom, and pricing out, like a school teacher, maybe a single breadman or whatever. So, that's what we were catering to, like, housing for families. I think it's interesting that you're saying, the problem of the density, because density in cities that has been introduced by modernism created a lot of problem in itself as a model, but then it's the only way that we can sustain architecture. But then, if we go back to the study of this typology, townhouses were never submitted into multiple apartments. I mean, it was in the evolution of the typology, I think close by where I live, there is a specific building that was developed by the Krupp family, as a sort of a multiple dwelling and what's talking from the idea of the townhouse. And I don't know, it's interesting, there are things that we need to bring back into the discourse of architecture and trying to understand how we morph the problem of sustaining architecture, because I think that the density is a problem in the city. I think the density is a great thing. It is a great thing, but to a certain level that can be sort of housed in a specific space. So I don't know, like density, especially for humans. I grew up in a city where we all live in apartment buildings. There were no townhouses, like the area of a house, it's unknown, so for me, it's like we live on top of each other, next to each other, interact with each other, that's all I know. That's my only experience of living. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely something up for discussion. I mean, like our proposal is a dense proposal, like it's actually the very dense proposal. But I mean, the idea of sustaining architecture to density, it's more of what I was talking about. But think about where we are right now, where there is so much construction and so little density, because the buildings are almost empty. I mean, it's an interesting thing. It's interesting that it's uncomfortable, that's gross. I think that coming back to the question of constraints, I think actually we found that the 16 foot 8 width was not as much of a constraint as the kind of required density, like in order to really maximize the FAR of the site and to kind of fit all these units in there, that was actually the kind of challenge that we kept running against and trying to work through. So it's other projects, the 13 foot wide one actually has one is a single family house and that's like totally different project in a way than what we would have done here. And I think, you know, I don't, I guess we, it seems like, you know, kind of the micro unit is probably here to stay. I mean, I don't, I think it's a kind of phenomenon that is, has of course both pros and cons. And I think I really appreciate actually Gordon's ambition towards the kind of family actually and considering that, but I think at the same time we have to really think about how do these kind of small and on top spaces work for, you know, as we think about the kind of resources that we use as a society and how do we live, you know, in kind of increasingly in cities and how do we, what are the kind of specific things as architects that we have to do to kind of make those spaces more, more convenient? Are we gonna get a critique from them? Yeah, I think it would be great. I was trying to pass the line to see the, who wants to. How did we do? Destroy us. I think your work is already made it for sure. And it has only a benefit to society, especially here. I can't know if you are permitted to utilize the rules. And if you are, what will you do with them? You need to utilize what? The rules. Oh, the rules, we are using them. Yeah, that's right. Do you guys think about it? We can answer that. Yeah. Who's using the rules in this? We get a green rule, just to make it, I mean everybody's using it. Everybody has a green rule, so. There's certain like fire clearances that you have to designate on rules so that in case of a fire, you can go to the rooms and move on to the next group, their neighbors' groups. So there is like clearances and both things, at least for mine, in the case of the elevator. But pretty much it's a green rule if you're trying to be as accessible as possible with the little space that we have. We have both a shared space up on the roof, covered, and a shared space open, you know. So, I think we're in a space that tight. You really have to use everything. I think that's one commonality between all the projects that are involved. Like, amazing to see the different approaches actually between like, Alessandro and Jaffer. But the roof, I think, if everybody could do something. Adam, maybe you could answer this question, which I can relate to this problem, which is, it's interesting, I mean, again, I'm not just just a man called, but I wonder from the perspective now of working through it, or whether you're allowed to talk about it, the extent to which the city is willing to entertain variances or changes, you know, working outside of the code descriptions, beyond the code of the various agencies that have some kind of jurisdiction over the problem, and to what extent this has to follow exactly the codes that are in place now. And in that sense, like, to what extent it can be a kind of testbed for whether it's new programmatic opportunities in space that are typically under-programmed, or whether it's, like, new construction methodologies or new densities or configurations of units, et cetera. Like, is that something that's on the table from the inside? Yeah, actually, so the, probably the people can answer. So I think our scheme is, like, pretty much complies with the building code. The zoning resolution we make, of course, you can't develop on R7A, you can't develop less on an 18-put wide. You can only develop one or two family with through the loophole that it was existed prior to joining lots on December 15th, 1961, and the date of filing. So that's the one that would be kind of great. And I was actually really surprised when we met them, because I think some of the other, the other schemes now in the second phase, they broke more of the, you know, I think that there's one that kind of breaks quality housing in there. Or I was looking at Michael Sorkin's, that's pretty good. Michael Sorkin's, yeah, is like pretty much doesn't relate to the quality housing, which is the street wall and the rear yard and this kind of thing. And I guess they're, they will entertain, we're, if I had known that, we're gonna break and broken more rules. Yeah, relative to zoning. And I think we will as we develop it, because it turns out that we actually have to go through ULUQ, which is the Uniform Land Reviews Policy. So it takes three years to just basically get a waiver to kind of do the project. And in that process we can actually ask for more exception. I think like Eric's project, Carmel Street, that they're gonna use this as a pilot to then change the zoning resolution after to allow more development like this. But hopefully we can break more rules. Oh, okay. I have a question, kind of on a similar note to maybe what Evan just asked, but a lot of you are responding to HPV problems. And in just the ways that you presented it tonight, like you all took a very different approach of what kind of way that you responded to the bid itself. And I wonder how much of what your understanding is of what HPV's goals are and kind of really, I guess how do I turn this question? It's really, a lot of you didn't answer kind of some of the things that they are looking for. Like you can really, if you were to really think through like what HPV is like looking for. And I mean, part of this is interesting because this competition is like kind of unprecedented for them to like really take on kind of hearing different kinds of proposals. And I guess my question is like, how much of that kind of played into the way that you wanted to present your project to that very specific kind of city agency client? I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah. Well, I think, I mean, one thing that's interesting about your question is like how to present these things and I think that was clearly on my mind. Like what is the measure of this competition? What is the value system for the rules that though we do have the code is also like suggested is just like outside of that to be able to develop something technically we can. And which is kind of the spirit of the thing but to what degree and to what measure it was a big question. So I think the variety comes precisely from that focus of what might matter within a set of givings. And I think that's why you have that variety which I think is what's exciting about senior proposals. You get different possibilities and if you were to consider some of those parameters, what can you do? I kind of like that aspect. But it's also really hard to know what the jury was really looking at. Yeah, I guess I asked this because it's like looking back now and reflecting and seeing where the finalists, to be critical about your own work and what you maybe would have done differently in terms of how you, like a lot of the ideas that you're presenting, a lot of you there's a lot of crossover and overlap and maybe it's the way that you presented that focus that hurt you in the end. And I'm wondering if there's a way that you think looking at your proposal now that you would have done it differently. I think that the, nor disrespect, the winning schemes are going to be doing it like we proposed. No I'm joking. But they're going to be watered down. There's not going to be massive variances and exclusions to the existing building or zoning code. It's just not going to happen. So a lot of the winners, not yours, but some of the others were, I was just like amazed because I've done work with HPV before and it's a city agency playing by the rules. So all of a sudden, something else that the jury wasn't purely HPV, they represented a fairly broad spectrum. So I would suspect, I don't know if your next round, five become one or if all five get to proceed with different mobs. But I wouldn't be surprised if the, some of the more unconstrained schemes were brought into, or discipline I'd say, within the existing rule structure. For me, I don't think I would do it differently. I went in thinking that there's a housing crisis and I wanted to provide as many units as possible. And there are a lot, isn't for me, my understanding of where you explore maybe a number of different housing technologies coming together or a number of different family structures coming together. And there's a really, and I was interested in, stackable, cost efficient, sustainable design. And the way that I saw that happening was by 24 fiber units. And this is a place where micro units kind of seem to fit in that space quite literally. And in the micro units, I propose that two people live. And so if you have eight units or 16 potential people, it also allows, because the elevator, two more units, you have 20 people, almost. So for me, I don't think I would do my model differently. If I wanted to say work within code a bit more, maybe alter some of the sustainable, like wood, mast timber, fly ash components of it. But I think it's important to push back on some of those constraints as much as you can in the nearing practice. Because if you're just gonna regurgitate the stuff that exists, then that's part of the problem. The competition is always a little bit also important. You need to flex your muscles. So, and for us in practice, it also happens at a certain time, you're thinking certain things, right? So I'm sure that's true for all of us, right? I don't know if you were thinking about timber. I haven't been thinking for timber, about timber for a while. So there is, it falls in a moment where the studio, at least that's how it was for us, is already working towards something. So yes, I don't know, I, we are definitely very much idealists. So I think we look at the jury to just establish a little bit of tone of the competition. But then at the end, you also have to put it aside. You have to think about what is it that you can contribute, what is your vision? And that's the one you can put out. And that's the only one you can put out. And if they're interested, great. If they're not interested, you move on. And hopefully, you know, test some of those ideas on a different ground. If you can't mind, yes. I don't think you can. Yeah, no, I agree, I agree with Daisy and Adam. I mean, you know, at that particular moment, we spent a lot of time to develop, for example, the micro unit, because that's what we thought the, you know, what we needed to develop that, like sort of weird stackable dance pack inside that weird, like sort of an arc. And I mean, you just identify fields of research within the project you're making, and then you just stick with that. I mean, realistically, it seems like the economy by the dirty ball, kind of most engineers are really real, you know, but you can't really write a house anyways, you know what I'm trying to tell you. So, like, the micro unit versus two really big apartments thing is kind of a policy of our current system. And I was a little bit more interested in the fact that if the city does own all these lots, they kind of have to be prepared and kind of flex some muscle in this system that only exists. So rather than playing the micro units versus three reasonably science units or an actual family, I mean, what kind of rules would you guys try to alter? Because, I mean, there's ones writing the rules in the first place for some reason, because you keep on patching it over time and you end up with the visa we have now. And, you know, like opening up the ground floor to access the entire bag or getting done to the middle of going up, I don't know, but what kind of things would you guys propose to actually change, you know, the things that actually kind of puts you in the same box where everything kind of why is it looking like a finger of an elephant? Because you're right, they're going to paddle it and sort of fix the things that they know. But it seems like this is one of the few opportunities that the city has to actually be able to flex so opportunity to change things for the better of people actually being able to live in the city properly and make it mildly economically viable because they can actually be multiplying a framing system or something a bunch of times and get the bones there. So you can create architecture that actually is architecture. I would probably this site maybe suggest to this part of the change in the building. This backyard setback, I felt like that really kind of allows all of the buildings to be very front loaded. And I think that there might have been an opportunity to hold maybe four of the same, I think four of the units to the back have opened up the center a little bit more. I actually talked with my expediter about the scheme and he's like, there's no reason why you can do this. If it's going to be a competition, you should put forward an idea about the lot that you actually believe in. And if these units can get both front and rear lights, then why wouldn't you do that? Both unit, both separate units would put two towers on the side. I was like, yeah, there's like a setback. He's like, you determine that. And this is coming from an expediter who goes over code for me when I sit at something from the building. And so already I think coming from somebody who knows the code very well and also is pushing further against what's possible and being potentially more inventive than I was in a moment, I was like, oh, okay, there are things here that I'm just taking for granted is like fact and not pushing back on, starting with that setback. So I think that there's a lot of potential between spreading, using the whole one hundred feet. Code, code against code. This is maybe a slight tangent, but it relates to the question or some of the contrary question. I mean, I feel like there's in general maybe a kind of moralizing dimension to the conversation of my current units versus family units or collectivity versus individuality. And I would just say in the context of particularly the housing studio, but work on housing in general, I find that problematic that we always value the collective and increasingly the family of an individual. I think people are alone for much more of their lives. That's not necessarily imposition, but it's a choice. And there's a great, I think desire among many people to have the freedom to live alone, which is something that's incredibly difficult in New York actually. So I think there's the kind of potential to rethink that somewhat conventional. Okay, I've got to tell my attitude for that, all right? America founded on like I'm not paying, I'm giving the queen half my week, it's my land, I got my gun and I'm not paying cats, right? The individual. So we're here, I'm a partner. Yeah, I know. That's what I'm gonna say. I'm not, I'm a Canadian and I'm with the program here, but there's a crisis, right? And I think that things are shifting to more interdependence as opposed to independence, to community versus this is my damn piece of land because we have a sustainability problem, right? It's like we wanna share resources, we want one sewage pipe for five families, not one sewage pipe for one person. We got a problem with like tech workers, finance workers coming into the city, making their 150K a year that architects will not, straight out of school and taking the housing stock. Now, why do you think all the cops come from Staten Island or from Long Island? It's because you can't afford to live in a damn city, right? With a normal, like, as a normal working person. And that kind of goes with teaching at Columbia, too. And running competition, like joining a competition like this is like, you know, this thing cost me 30 grand to enter, right? I have to pay people, they don't volunteer for the love of it, for testing ideas, right? So I mean, anyway, I'm going off on a tangent, but. It was a kind of similar, like I think the map is not one person, one piece of land or 15 people, one piece of land. It's like 15 people living individually on a piece of land or 15 people living in some kind of collective integration on a piece of land. I think for some reason we are these days always defaulting to the idea that the collective structures are the better ones and there's a kind of wall to mention to that. I would just question whether there might be a kind of value in, or freedom to choose to live individually in high densities, as I think many of the projects suggest, that it's as valuable as, it's not to say, of course we don't provide housing for families, but not that everything always comes back to the family as the kind of primary motivation. Yeah, and I think, I mean, just to add to that, I think, I mean, that's a little bit of the reality, you know, who actually really needs to be like, you're a huge percentage of people who are living alone by choice, designer, because they have to, doesn't really matter what that's a reality. So I think taking morality or kind of being an out of it is actually important in housing, because there's things that are played, whether we like it or not, and we believe that that's the way people should live, that it's, we have to deal with it, and I think housing for all these kinds of types, whether it's large families, single people, or whatever. That's a problem, we don't have that. No, but basically saying that people living on their own is a huge percentage of the actual population of the city. So when you try to play at the city a lot less when it does become. Well, it's not like in what I like, but it's a reality if you don't house people well, they'll figure out when you do it poorly. The quality of life will stop. So I think there should be any kind of moralistic view. I'm not moralistic, I'm realistic. You know, it's not moral. I mean, I was interested in the idea of these possible combinations within the units, but also I was very interested in the area of the shared space. You know, what does it mean for a building this small to offer spaces that are event, right? Where you really might want to go there. And, you know, thinking about this too, for instance, like the culture of coming together and trying to push that culture, right? You see, there is a way to create an incentive for that culture. For me it was in connection both to the just social exchange but also to natural elements, which is a thing, one of the things, so before I talked about, I love density, but I feel that instead the compression of never being in relationship to the elements, you know, to green, to wind, to rain, to soil, to being able to dig something, I think is a real cut. So I was more interested in trying to explore that, you know, if there was a way in which quality and something else could be triggered by the presence of this other. What's an energy emerging typology with co-living, like with relive and the collective, I think, there's a bunch of them popping up everywhere where you essentially, there's some in Scandinavia that are family-oriented shares, like communal living, but here what's interesting is more of the individual who have your bedroom and maybe a bedroom and a bathroom but all the shared spaces are, sorry, all the kitchen and living rooms are shared. I mean, I grew up in a building that was super varied, both socially, structurally, I mean, in so many ways. So for me, that kind of model of layering remains very relevant and when I think about the city and life in the city and the things that we love, one of them being better city in every way. So how do you promote that, right? I mean, that is a little bit how we came up with this idea of dwelling without corridors because typologically, in district architecture, when the corridor loses the dimension of the corridor, becomes a gallery and the gallery is a space that historically is designed to watch into another space and that's how we came up with this idea of the communal and then we started to think, well, we don't really live any more like 50 years ago. So the notion of the living room, we were trying to really push against this notion that the living room is the living room with a coffee table and so on but we were trying to build a model that was more a shareable model where different type of people and different type of structural social system could have interjected into the same space and that's a little bit why the corridor came into place. Other criticisms, guys, come on. This is your chance. Hi everyone, thank you so much for sharing all of this. Asking this question as an architect because I work as an architecture in Korea. So I'm more concerned about visual qualities of the piece of architecture in this sense and the kind of relationship that this device can create with common people passing by in the block. So there is a lot of architectural qualities when you guys have mentioned all the interiors and how you guys are degraded. It needs the vision of the space, the development of the experience that you can have inside which are all qualities that of course the clients can enjoy so not everyone can have access inside. So my question is, do you have, what's your position about creating an architectural device that can be, you know, kind of aesthetic that can work with people and can be a piece of public object that people can, you know, just enjoy visual because actually this is how people can have access in both in terms of everyone. So what's your position on creating a device that can challenge the architecture today and can change the city and leave a sign and expanding the boundaries of architecture as an industry? I don't think it was clear. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a good question and a tough one. I will be about how the machine works. It's a question also about how the machine works. You know, how the machine works. Thank you. I mean, being the one that designed the yellow building with the round facade made out of steel, I don't know if I, you know, wait, I don't want to answer because I think that my answer is there already. I actually appreciate the question because I think that's actually one of the difficult things in a competition like that is that precisely because we are all, or some of us, are really trying to get to a project, we're not just doing it because we like to design, we have to think hard about what the parameters are and we have to think hard about how we can get through. But at the same time, we don't want to let go of the ambition to do something that does precisely what you're saying. That is a statement that is architecture as we think individually. So, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, I can only tell you that for us, this project fit perfectly with a moment of development of a bigger idea of how we modify containers, which is translated in, especially, the cut system of the windows and that's what we try to replicate also in the other ones and it seems to be a really strong fit also in the idea that this is not a single lot. There are many, many, many, many. So much so that I am almost bound that the idea that HPD that is following this model where at the end, in stage two, you have to become your own developer is only assigning five. They should assign a hundred of these ones, right? I mean, why are they assigning five? It seems so shy from an agency, right? I mean, they want you to develop it. They want basically the architect to take charge also of the understanding of the financial package and everything else to push it forward. It seems so sad that there is like this tiny little test pilot, you know, like that yet is gonna run for three years or minimum to go to New York. So, yeah, but I think it's just to kind of come back to the question too, like I wanted to point out is I think, and this is what, you know, all 400, whatever people have entered have to draw each of these elevations, like the inefficient, yeah, but there's something really interesting that I figured out through that is that actually, how maybe it's best on the Alessandro's elevation, the house on the left of Alessandro's building, the house on the right of Alessandro's building, the house to the right of that, it's a copy of the same building. And this is also housing, and so there's an element of the kind of generic in the everyday, and in housing we talk less, I think, about authorship or the architect and this kind of thing, and I don't, I felt very conflicted about that, and I really also, what MN was kind of saying about the authorless, I mean, kind of authorless project, maybe. I also empathize with, and I maybe kind of alluded to it, that I felt a kind of personal conflict about those two elevations that I showed, that maybe one, which is based on a kind of generic three bay structure that you see everywhere else on every, you know, that that was a more appropriate solution, but on the other hand, in the context of competition where you're being judged superficially in a very quick way by a jury with limited time, one needs to kind of have more expression, but whether that expression, you know, I guess we'll find out how that, or if that expression, what that means to kind of people who live there, too. I think there's many ways to answer your question, and many of them contradict each other, and in my opinion I could believe in a number of things. For instance, delight, right? Aesthetic delight of this building, not just to the inhabitants, but to people passing by. We could say if we are investing as practitioners in this competition with a desire to build for a greater good, you know, and we look at the values that we feel we're gonna be evaluated on, like aesthetic delight is not one of them, right? So another answer which completely contradicts is if you pursue like the objectives, housing family, sustainable construction, natural light, green, you know, all these things just in a very pragmatic way delight comes, right? It's not like a forced gesture of formalism for form sake. Okay, another one. So those two kind of contradict each other in a sense. Another one, like my favorite picture of Bill Vow, right? It's like this view down this old street, and then this bent metal, smooth, beautiful, shining thing at the end, complete juxtaposition. And it's gorgeous, right? And gorgeous interest position. I don't think Frank Gehry himself would want a city of Bill Vow's, right? It works because there's the dialogue taking place. When he's working and there is no complex, he creates blocks as part of his building in order to do this, right? So, and again, not completely answering your question, but like there's, I guess, a commentary on delight in architecture and against, let's say, a context, so. I'm speaking to like the architectural moves that our projects used. It was increasing the height at the entrance, and it was canting the floor plan for publics, for people from the sidewalk to come in, all the way through to the back. So there are these things that I think, like architecture communicates, and there are gestures that you can make so that your project does seem to appear inviting, and because they're micro units, and because there's likely not like a lot of families and activity around potentially, that component of outdoor space and collective space in a place where you can grill and you can picnic, and it was a very important part of our proposal. So it really felt like it spoke to like offsetting some of the ideas about being insular and isolated in a peer-to-speak, that there was this kind of moment where like the grain could be overgrown and chaos could kind of ensue if needed. I think for me it did think a lot about it in the competition, and I thought it was an opportunity where modest means to do something with character, and I think the issue of being characterless or authorless and having character or not, are we going to frame it? I think it is important to consider like we want something supposed to be affordable or should be kind of replicated, or like there's some other measure or another thing at play that's not visible perhaps. I think it's also important to see what we're producing, because if everything is generic, everything is banal, and this is the promising everywhere, and it's not about one city, it's about every city, every place has that problem in aggregate. I could be anywhere, and it always feels that way. So there's also an opportunity to introduce something slightly different, maybe it develops into a character, maybe it doesn't, maybe it accrues in numbers, but maybe it's distinct to that place, and maybe there's opportunity to do something else somewhere else. And I think it's important to think about that too, and it's not about necessarily pure kind of surface or pure, just enjoyment for enjoyment, safe, I think places, even modest places should have a lot of kind of identity that you can take with you. Yeah, thank you so much. I didn't mean to say that. I would just say I think there's a difference between generic and banal, though. I think what's banal in cities globally, and in New York City, where we are now, is the attempts at character that are either sort of clumsy or watered down by the economics of the kind of lack of craft or construction, or otherwise. I mean, I would say that, especially in context of housing, something that was truly generic would actually be the closest you could come to replicating the qualities of these blocks, which I presume we're all sympathetic to, within which there's then the possibility of invention, but you would have to arrive at something generic first instead of, I think like if you, I mean, I'm sure other people have this feeling and this is what I'm trying to teach increasingly, is it's clear that most buildings would be better at the state of 90% completion, and there should be the capacity and the discipline to accept that as the result, the kind of pure expression of internal structure and material, the actual material necessities of construction, and avoid the need to do something interesting at the end, which is 99% of the time. Yeah, I think that just, I totally agree. I mean, I think that the genericness of the surroundings or the, it's also like highly, it's kind of highly specific about that type, and it's like, whether it's 16 foot eight or 20 foot, more typical like 20 or 25 foot lot, it's like, it's all based on the type of construction and the masonry, varying walls, the width of the timber that comes from that, or cat skills, the color, the brownstone that you can see in the projects is based on the New Jersey, the clay that they're using. All these things are actually highly specific in a way, and give the kind of character to the sort of everyday architecture that one sees in neighborhoods like this. But one could argue that's a very conservative position that you're taking. To me, it is a very conservative position, and I have a problem with the idea that, that's what an architect does. I mean, I always wish that there is more intention, there is more effort, more, which doesn't mean that it's necessarily extravagant, but it means more ambition, maybe. And maybe not level with instruction, which then is, I mean, I think that's what, level with instruction too. I mean, I think also the level of construction, because why do we only have to build as we build for 2,000 years? I mean, I would argue that we can build in other ways. Kula says, if the roof doesn't leak, the architect didn't try it out enough. Yeah. Ambition, right? Yeah. If it tries something there, it's gone only out. I would say as a student here, that kind of position seems almost like tattoo, and there's something kind of refreshing. Which position? Just the sort of like author lists, like it seems to ignite a lot of attention, and there's something literally refreshing about caring someone to say like, have a position like that. I mean, that's exactly the point, when? Yeah, I mean, even in a more case that seems like we used vernacular elements and we made them bigger or we changed their proportion or materiality, that could seems to be like a sort of a, an attempt on a mimetic kind of ideas, because we were thinking like, okay, well, these blocks can be in different sides and maybe it's a landmark neighborhood and so on, but it was not actually an attempt on being mimetic with the neighborhood, but it was really an attempt of reconsidering the language of Versailles. I have one such question. I, my background is not in architecture, especially a project student in the world of Versailles. So my question is regarding the materials. Now I heard Timmer, the container, I think about it in noise, in the noise is the long term, like have you guys thought about that? Because I feel like the biggest challenge I have in the constructions is that you can hear everything your neighbors do it and you just, you don't become so friendly, you kind of hate your neighbor, you don't know about your physical place in the next person, so is that something that you guys thought about when you were using the materials? In our case with noise with cross-laminated timbers, it's not like hollow wood cabinet, it's like you take a one by four solid wood, we line up a whole row of them and then you take another row of them perpendicular and then you do perpendicular again, so you'd be three or five layers and because it's running in both directions, it can be as strong as concrete, for example, and it's quite dense, but typically in what we propose, and again, typical detail is to top it with two inches of concrete, to give it some mass, which for acoustic reasons, you don't allow sound to translate. What are the lead limitations of your recipe? Say it again. What are the lead limitations to your recipe of cross-laminated timbers? The lead, like, yeah, well, I don't know. I don't know, I'm guessing that they give points and that I'm not a lead fan, I'm not certified, I'm not a fan because I've seen it in, of course, of real projects become productive in order to get those points. I mean, every project built in Manhattan due to density, proximity to transportation, you're two quarters of the way there already, right? And then you start, the example I was giving is we have a lighting designer in a kind of museum, or an office within a museum context, who said, we don't need task lighting because the overhead lighting is sufficient, but we need the point, so go buy lamps, right? You know, it's like just stuff like that. So, is sustainability a useful guideline? Absolutely, but lead is like a point system, you know, and then you get certification. Connected to products, yeah. Connected to products, so it doesn't vary from place to place. All right. We're gonna wrap it up, we need to, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Thank you.