The North Faculty Housing achieves three design priorities through an organic layout that relates to the curvilinear canal: building neighborhoods, opening the ground plane, and creating a user-friendly and sustainable roof deck.
The North Housing is designed as one open community with three distinct neighborhoods: two faculty housing blocks organized around courtyards, and eight row houses along the north canal designated for senior university staff. Each neighborhood prioritizes a family-oriented lifestyle central to the design while offering differences in density, amenity programs, and access.
With a high degree of porosity, the courtyard design helps channel wind and increase spatial and visual connectivity. Various communal spaces are organized around ground-level lobbies, utilizing tall floor-to-floor heights and covered outdoor spaces. The faculty residences on the ground floor are defined by a series of voids, as well as an abundance of covered outdoor spaces.
Each type of unit is stacked vertically for higher efficiency and optimal shaft layout. As they rise, the two faculty housing blocks vary and step in height, creating terraces with occupiable outdoor space at multiple levels. This design move also provides unique and identifiable buildings and helps enhance natural airflow throughout the precinct. Sedum is predominantly featured on the roofs, improving rainwater management, while a trellis structure supports PV panels for generating renewable energy on-site and providing sun shading to the rooftop spaces.