Alleyways and Add-ons: Housing Incremental Change Through Multi-Generations in Bali, Taiwan

Abstract

Housing is a critical issue in Asian countries that are industrializing and growing their populations. Trends in developer driven construction point to a Western model that favors a coarse urban fabric of high-rise towers and large blocks in order to efficiently house as many people as possible. New towns are built rapidly in the span of three to five years that dramatically alter the urban fabric. Many of these new towns are significantly out of scale with the surrounding existing urban fabric. In contrast to the developer driven high-rise nature of the Taiwan housing market, this housing strategy takes cues from existing conditions of urban alleyways and architectural add-ons to foster the close-knit interactions of traditional dense urban communities. As a result, this low-rise, high-density proposal allows for a diversity of streetscapes. The flexible framework that this thesis proposes hinges on the inevitable change of multigenerational family needs. The basic needs of the core house are determined by looking at the spatial needs of a nuclear family. The expansion and add-on to the core house is determined by projecting the needs of an extended family. The regularity and uniformity of the narrow lots allow for combinations of properties that can accommodate combinations of families. Through this lens of multigenerational housing, the project proposes a spatially diverse and socially dynamic community as an alternative to the government plan of towers and super blocks.