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Settle99
Typology: Affordable multi-family housing
Location: Austin, Texas
Status: Competition
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Settle99 is our design for the Initiative 99 competition hosted by ICON in late 2023. The brief called for designers "to address the global housing crisis by designing homes that could be built for $99,000 or less with ICON's 3D-printed construction technology."
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Our scheme set out to not only push the technologies limits but to question the status quo of affordable multi-family housing in the USA. How can we catalyze a new community?
The courtyard and shared garden, the nucleus of the new community.
To encourage the formation of a new community we subdivided the typical plot radially establishing a courtyard in the center—the nucleus of the new community. This is a space for chance encounters, BBQs, and general play. It also has access to the small shared communal space with amenities and a garden. Each unit's entry is placed in a small nook forming a threshold between the public and the private.
Units face to the exterior of the site for privacy and light.
How can we make a home for $99,000?
Our affordability strategy relies on density at the urban scale, down to prefab components at human scale.
Affordable housing will only be achieved with increased density which on a typical Austin plot, means eight homes. With the current constraints of the VULCAN print bed, it would be impossible to achieve this design or anything of a non linear housing array. To achieve this community we need to partition the 3dcp walls into discrete modules which can be printed in a factory, delivered to any site, and assembled. An off site indoor print facility increases print bed efficiency, reduces impact of weather, and risk of print failure.
The VULCAN print bed now can fit eight homes rather than one.
3DCP modules are just one element of the kit of parts that makes a home. Through economies of scale from construction details to the urban scale, we will be able to build a community for 792K, a dual unit for 198K, and a single home for 99K.
The articulated 3DCP walls create spaces to live in.
3DCP not only acts as structure but as thermal mass insulating against the heat of the Texan sun during the day and then radiating the stored heat during the night. The roofs overhead provide shade during the summer, collect rainwater for storage, and hold PV panels to insure an off grid energy supply. Vents above the 3DCP parts create a stack ventilation effect where cooler air flows through and pushes the hot air out vents located at the roof peak.
Vents in the clerestory windows allow passive airflow and a stack ventilation effect.
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