Passively Sustainable Low Income Housing

The program breaks away from its context revealing a facade as a shell, split by light opening spaces for a Community within. The ground between now exposed the contextual private and public now fl ow through this chasm. Draped over this concrete scaffold a skin of ivy binds the space together, its life and death cycle a tempo for the existence of the occupants and a mediator of the environment. Facing the hollowed void the program of housing nests itself introverted into its own place. The building should not only be responsive to environment in form, but in materi ality both in essence and in behavior. Passive systems and living organisms form skins mediating the sun to maximize living conditions without mechanical appa ratus.  Water is fi ltered through gardens encased upon the roof which thrive on the heat of the bodies and the spaces they occupy below. Occupants dwell between the skins, encased and implied, in terraces and greenhouses private to each unit.  Through the creation of interdependent systems and environments the program of low income housing can maintain architectural clarity through its effi ciency over time. It is in the death and rebirth of the skins that the architecture of a Beautiful Decay can be found.