Yu . Juricevich . Wu . Tang

Upto35 International Student Housing Competition . Athens

source: courtesy of  Andy Yu . Team Credit: Andy You . James Juricevich . Michael Wu . Wilson Tang

The international competition calls for the design of a student housing of 18 units in the centre of Athens, with the possibility that an architecture model may become viral and spread to adjacent plots.
In our scheme the Social activities become the “virus” that spreads through the neighbourhood - by designing public spaces in each alleyway and wrapping it with continuous active edges of a building volume, we created a series of exciting and permeable courtyards.
Critiquing the “dommus commune” as a typology, we ask the question of “how do you maximise individual privacy and a collective lifestyle, all within an apartment block?” We achieved this by tilting the floor plates of each floor and created a central spiral staircase that permeates through the entire building, making the act of circulating a social activity . This stair becomes the connection of every element in the urban context and the building itself - it opens completely to the courtyards and becomes viewing platforms of multi-media installations of neighboring walls.