some massive urban machine

July 12, 2006 9:01 PM

Flipping through the sales booklet, which has pages of unit plans, is like reading the assembly blueprints for some massive urban machine with interlocking component parts... The end result is a staggering 76 floor plans in 221 units—with none repeated more than a dozen times and well over a dozen of them unique. via BLDBLOG
posted by signal (7 comments total)

For example, floor plan v14 has a serrated linear sawlike form; v15a is L-shaped; v37, which is found right at the bend of the V, looks something like the head of a wrench clamping down around the stairwell. And that’s just the V House. The M House gets into even weirder forms—boomerangs and geometric shapes you never got around to learning in high school.

And they are all the size of my bathroom.

Joking aside, this is cool from an engineering/architectural standpoint.
posted by exlotuseater at 9:24 PM on July 12, 2006

Yeah, but aside from being artsy, how livable are these places? I'd have to guess that if your apartment shares 37 walls with your neighbors, they're all going to be compaining about your subwoofer about 10 minutes into your first round of Call To Victory. No thanks.
posted by doctor_negative at 9:47 PM on July 12, 2006

Interesting concept, although it looks abnormally expensive to build. And imagine placing rectangular furniture, rugs, etc, inside all those angled interior walls.

What we really need are work cubicles on wheels, but self-powered so management can automatically rearrange them with every corporate re-organization.
posted by cenoxo at 11:05 PM on July 12, 2006

This is really cool but I wonder if there is anyone interested in implementing it into a major American urban environment. Washington DC would be better for it.
posted by parmanparman at 10:59 AM on July 13, 2006

This is really, really cool! How fun would it be to pick which unit you lived in?

Tough crowd here. They don't sound that small to me. 250,000 square foot building / 221 units -- assuming 10% of the building is used for hallways and elevators, that's still >1000 square feet per apartment. A standard Habitat for Humanity home of three or four bedrooms is between 1100 and 1200 square feet. So, 1000 sf would make a really nice 2 BR apartment. And soundproofing walls is not actually that hard.
posted by salvia at 12:04 PM on July 13, 2006

Kind of reminds me of the Habitat project in Montreal, which was built for the 1967 World's Fair, and is not only still in use, but is supposed to be among the pricier and sought-after addresses in the city.
posted by crunchland at 12:58 PM on July 13, 2006

Links such as this are why I love Metafilter. I would never have found this on my own. Good post, Signal.
posted by spacewaitress at 5:00 PM on July 13, 2006