Songpa Micro-Housing, named for the district of Seoul in which it’s located, is a mixed-use building designed by SsD Architecture, which hosts 14 units that can be combined and rearranged to fit lifestyle changes.
The problem of urban density and housing costs is global. As unit types get smaller however, land costs coupled with developer driven profit margins can merely create a provisional housing type with little social value.
By mining the discrepancy between maximum floor area ratios and maximum zoning envelopes, Songpa Micro-Housing provides a new typology that extends the limits of the housing unit to also include semi-public circulation, balconies, and the thickness of walls. Like the ambiguous gel around a tapioca pearl, this ‘Tapioca Space’ becomes a soft intersection between public/private and interior/exterior, creating social fabrics between neighbors.
Fourteen ‘unit blocks’ allow residents to either claim a single space, or in the case where a couple or friends desire to do so, recombine the blocks for larger configurations. This flexibility allows users to occupy the building longer and more sustainable as they will not have to move out with changing life and work situations, but could rather expand or contract their dwelling footprints incrementally.
Finally, as this is housing for the underserved creative community artists, exhibition spaces on the ground floor and basement are spatially linked to the units as a shared living room. Although the zoning regulations require the building to be lifted for parking, this open ground plan is also used to pull pedestrians in from the street and down a set of auditorium-like steps, connecting city and building residents to the exhibition and cafe spaces below.
all images courtesy of SsD Architecture | H/t fastcodesign