Bringing Modularity to Balconies.

A rapidly densifying urban sprawl and the need to house an ever-increasing population has led to an explosion of mass housing schemata. Owing to a severe shortage of land resources to accommodate said housing, the housing tower sought vertical growth. The one plan principle in housing, the replication of housing units has often resulted in the element of individuality being taken away from the resident of the house. The process of owning a house has thus transformed into a series of compromises rather than aspirations being met. Primary among those is the compromise of space.

Precast construction technology has now slowly become more commonplace, helping to achieve the economy of construction, time, and cost. As a response to the growing problems of modern-day housing specified here, several building elements can now thus be “retro”-fit over existing homes. Apart from enabling the resident to acquire such provisions economically, this also enables the user to exercise a degree of additional control over his home, apart from the basic unit sold to him. The balcony is now one such element. 

As space, a balcony is used for leisure, for services, as an elaborate vegetal container, a thermal break between the interior and exterior, and as a potent element impacting the elevation design of the building. Yet still, the notions with respect to what a balcony represents in a home, how it is constructed, and how it is installed have remained more or less the same since the industrial age. The question deemed to be asked here is: Can a Balcony in a house be more, mean more, and be less work for the homeowner himself? Can architecture and industrial design overlap to create something that modularises yet maxes out the efficiency of balconies?

The challenge was to design and detail a retrofit balcony module that can be readily attached to both new and old structures. Participants must also choose an existing built residential site where they wish to apply this retro-fit intervention. 

 

The jury for the competition consisted of esteemed designers, professionals, and academicians from around the world. The Lead Jurors for the competitions were as follows: 

Rodrigo de la Peña Larralde, Chief Executive Manager (CEO), rdlp arquitectos, Mexico

Lukas Rungger, Architect & Founder, noa* network of architecture, Italy

Matthew Kreilich, Principal, Snow Kreilich Architects, United States

Ana da Franca, Architect & Founder, Franca Arquitectura, Portugal

Pedro de Almeida Grilo, Founder and Architecture Director, CoDA arquitetos, Brazil

Some of the Best of competition projects are:

 

Winning Project: [To] SHARE

By: Dong Cao, Yaning Zhang, Ming Xu & Zaw Latt

     

Description: [To] SHARE (Uber for balcony) celebrates the power and potential of a sharing economy as a vision for a sustainable Singapore.

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People’s Choice: SLUM AUTONOMY - A PARADOX

By: Nikhil Jain

Description: The idea is to design a balcony for slum dwellers, (rehabilitated into new housing apartments)by understanding their lifestyle & activities in slums and how efficiently space was used. The project aims at providing a multifunctional use of balcony which gives them a sense of independence in terms of their usability and variations according to their needs.

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Institutional Excellence: ECOTent

By: Daniel Young, Zhiyu Feng & Ge Tian

Description: Project Submission for the Retro-Fit Competition. Redefining the function of the urban balcony with post-pandemic considerations.

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Editor’s Choice: Urban Retrofit The Collective and the Individual

By: Jgfrontado 

Description: The understanding of the interaction between the collective responsibility and the individual initiatives based on the support- infill theory of John Habraken is the underlying theme of the proposal. It’s architectural translation produced through the creation of a structural and service provider frame attached to the building as part of the collective responsibilities.

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Editor’s Choice: Symbiotic Pack

By: Ceyda Tekin, Enginalp Leblebici & Hande Karataş

Description: The symbiotic pack allows the dweller to atone for the lack of balcony, as an unpleasant result of an increase in population and vertical growth, presenting a practical foldable structure, and also a flexible space of creativity, observation, and leisure.

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Editor’s Choice: Balco

By: Hanna Adamczyk & Adam Bieniek

Description: The project is the answer to the questions based on the future balcony. Because of the modularity, “Balco” can have different dimensions. Inspired by origami art the product has flexible shapes that can transform according to the needs.

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Editor’s Choice: TOP HAT!

By: Jacob Bodinger & Langdon Drewett

Description: As an intervention onto existing buildings, “Top Hat!” seeks to revitalize the urban fabric of modern cities by bringing open space, customization, and dynamism onto intervention sites. kit-of-parts, parametricism, and modular nesting design methods result in a system that is deployable in a wide variety of scenarios.

 

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Discover the design brief here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/retro-fit/info/about

Discover the full results here: https://uni.xyz/competitions/retro-fit/entries

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