ABSTRACT
The author's studios have explored housing integration into existing buildings. One of the interesting outcomes of the studio’s work is that from the sectional complexity resulting from inserting into and carving out of existing building masses, a more dispersed relationship of individual rooms emerges. Rather than a defined living ‘unit’ which is the natural result of prefabricated construction, the integration in existing building grids resulted in the distribution of the dwelling unit into a series of private and shared rooms that are no longer defined by the traditional four walls and a roof of typical townhouse or multifamily building. In the work by Veronica Rosado, an abandoned grain terminal in Red Hook, Brooklyn, was used as a case study for the integration of a new housing prototype. Modular micro-unit construction in housing certainly has its place and economies when working with empty sites but building new also has its drawbacks.
