GrowLofts share food, energy, and conviviality at its edges without sacrificing household autonomy. It combines solutions to three structural challenges that will reach tipping points in the future: affordable housing, access to healthy food, and renewable energy. This social housing structure sandwiches eight 700 sf. urban lofts for short-and-long-term stays between a shared porch on the street edge—a hyperporch—and a shared greenhouse on its garden side.
GrowLofts combine solar collection, thermal mass, and insulation to capture and circulate energy using the temperature differentials between soil and air. The greenhouse is a four-season operation supporting a food forest and powered by a natural “climate battery”. Paralleling the greenhouse, the hyperporch facilitates greater hospitality and communality than what standard housing provides without sacrificing unit privacy. While GrowLofts is compatible with various contexts and climates, it provides for urbanites an ark—a regenerative socio-biological “living transect” connected to a larger context.
Awards
2023 London International Creative Competition Official Selection—Architecture
FUTURE HOUSE 2023 Global Residential Design Award