Designing Through Community

Author:

Evans, Emma

Area of Honors:

Architecture

Degree:

Bachelor of Architecture

Document Type:

Thesis

Thesis Supervisors:

Darla V Lindberg, Thesis Supervisor
Pep Aviles, Thesis Honors Advisor

Keywords:

Co-Housing
housing
design
architecture
residential
affordability

Abstract:

Housing is the key to the profession of architecture and is one of the most important aspects related to the daily life of all people. Analyzing the ever growing discrepancy between housing cost and income reveals many causes, including lack of land, rising costs disproportional to income, and the organization of domesticity. The architecture profession must respond by analyzing the current approach to residential design and how it must change to reflect the state of needs today. However, many issues surrounding the housing crisis go beyond the scope of the architect and have been established and developed through generations of politics and urban design of the city; how much can the architect do to help residents within the city and what is beyond the realm of rectifying? Using the site of Denver, Colorado, this thesis analyzes the specific problems surrounding housing in the city and how a new housing typology can be applied in order to increase density while increasing quality of life for mixed-income residents. In order to explore this idea, a proposal for design of an empty lot explores the possibility of co-housing design to take on the changing issues surrounding attainable domesticity.