Contemporary modes of production in the building industry often sacrifice the spatial qualities of dwellings in favour of efficiency. Particularly in the case of multiple dwelling developments, the economics of space, material and time remain the driving forces behind the design process. These mechanisms substitute the qualities of inhabitable space, which are seen as merely desirable parameters with perhaps too many degrees of acceptable standards.

On the other hand, older, pre-modernist typologies are not models that can be instantly replicated today. The successful edifices of the past, thriving century-old buildings, houses with the status of monuments, owe their accomplishment to a gradual and unplanned maturing process. Rich and intricate urban and morphological relationships are formed over the course of years in a constant development of adaptation and mixing of form and programme. The fast-paced requirements of today’s housing market prevent housing design from relying on this slow process of metabolism while demanding that a development should achieve maximum performance from the very beginning.

The proposed scheme addresses these issues and attempts to retrieve and reconcile the qualities of past and present design approaches to housing. It is enriched by an array of elements and conditions from the study of older and established architecture while being optimised by contemporary methods and techniques of building and design.