Corner Lobby Terrace

Housing in modules or modules in Housing?

As the RCC frame structure rapidly took over the urban skyline of Indian cities the construction technology brought very intangible issue to the surface. The Indian city dwellers as a group whether we believe it or not, is going through the identity crisis. The very similar looking highrise and midrise towers hardly have anything which acts as an element for claiming the spaces by the people. Our cities are losing their identities and morphing into one distopian world with tight fabric of RCC frame structure. One might think how does Cross Laminated Timber as a construction material might fit into this question of losing the self identities of cities? But if shift into the new technology brought the issue, Can the newer shift in technology and material answer this immaterial question of cultural identity? Spaces which can be claimed by the inhabitants It is taken up as a challange to answer this incorporeal question of cultural identity with technical and structural logic. Since late 80’s to early 90’s after the initial boom of mid-rise apartment construction in Ahmedabad, the standardisation of RCC apartments became even more rigorous than ever, the increased FSI encouraged the real-estate developers to exploit the RCC structure in a negative manners. Today all the development which is seen on the sub-urban Ahmedabad are of the RCC towers with four apartments sharing single service shaft as a vertical movement and the so called efficient micro & macro planning of clusters led to the city skyline filled with copy and pasted towers with no sense of belongingness. While mindless repetation of modular design might be the reason for the standardisation and monotony of dwelling units, if innovatively applied, modules which are made of smaller modules give us endless permutations and combination which can give enormous freedom not just to designers and builders but to inhabitants as well to modify their homes according to their needs and desires.