Housing Ladder

‘HOUSING-LADDER’ re-imagines affordable housing within the city. A new concept providing compact, prefabricated living married with the flexibility of a structure that can be placed anywhere in Hong-Kong. The lack of available sites in the city poses the most complex part of the problem, but with the ‘Ladder’, we bring a new way to fit into any part of the city’s fabric - where the Ladder moulds to its surrounding infrastructure. No site is excluded, from narrow crevices to spans between buildings, the ladder is able to provide accommodation anywhere.

Team: Sung Yeop Lim, Sonya Falkovskaia

2017

Image by Sung Yeop Lim

Bamboo is our principal material as it is used abundantly as a scaffolding in Hong-Kong. However, rather than using bamboo and then discarding it, the ‘Ladder’ utilises this local material as the primary structure. The bamboo structure provides the frame to slot in each modular unit. Depending on the angle of the site, the distance between the horizontal members changes, whilst the width between the vertical members remains constant.

The unit – a 12.5m2 (5m x 2.5m x 2.5m) compact living arrangement provides everything the modern person needs to live. We propose a bed, storage space, shower, toilet and counters for cooking, eating, working. The construction is simple with modular elements slotting together, whilst bamboo provides the rigidity for the envelope.