The X, Comin’ Home. Virginia Tech I Arch & Urbanism Lab II, academic + individual work ‘21 I ‘22 spring
US Embassy Housing, Prefab. | Lagos, Nigeria | Prof. Joseph Wheeler
The US State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Building Operations (OBO) and New York based ODA Architects established a research collaboration with Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture to seek solutions for embassy housing in remote, third world countries. And this studio provided solutions for this design question.
Due to the challenges of contracting with local builders, the scarcity of building materials in remote locations, and the security constraints of State Department housing, prefabricated solutions are an optimal delivery method where the architecture can be fully pre-constructed in the US, shipped to the remote location in an innovative modular delivery method, and installed on site with a small experienced crew in a short time span.
The X takes its conceptual background from the city context, engages the American culture with the culture of Lagos, and considers natural systems when approaching the design problem. It focuses on the balance between public and private living. Although the main program is embassy housing, The X provides various amenities scattered around the landscape in order to activate the ground. As a part of this decision, the housing towers are shifted upwards from the ground level, to take the activated and social landscape idea inside of the structure. Also, the residential units have “social platforms” at different levels of the structure as a reflection of the active outdoor design decision.
The X experiments on the unorthodox ways of approaching prefabricated construction techniques. The structural system has two different components; the steel cores and truss beams. The prefabricated units themselves are working as truss beams and they are attached to the core to create the cantilever system.
