Closer look: “The Table Top Apartments” by Kwong Von Glinow Design Office, 1st-place winner of NY Affordable Housing Challenge

Chicago-based practice Kwong Von Glinow Design Office recently won first place in Bee Breeders' New York Affordable Housing Challenge, which sought innovative housing ideas in response to New York City's persisting affordability crisis. Recently, the firm also won the 2016 Chicago Prize: On the Edge.

Kwong Von Glinow Design Office's winning proposal is a flexible “table top” modular system that can accommodate various lot sizes in the city as well as provide various housing-unit combinations. The firm's co-founders Lap Chi Kwong and Alison Von Glinow presented their entry at the New York Build Expo 2017, where it was realized in Virtual Reality. Expo visitors then got to walk around the apartment's vertical courtyards while wearing VR glasses.

The architects shared more details about their winning project with Bustler. Scroll down for a look.

Project Description:

“The Table Top Apartments  uses a system of modules based on the form of stacking table tops to generate affordable housing as 4-story walk-ups, piers, towers with setbacks and cascading balconies, and even superblocks.  This table top system is not only flexible to accommodate the various lot sizes of New York City, but is also adaptable to various unit combinations, providing diversity within the housing.”

“The Table Top Apartments emerges from the use of a few simple modular elements which aggregate to create a new mode of living between the inhabitants, their neighbors and the public.  The concept of the module is taken from a table top with four legs where the table top or slab is shaped as either a circle, square or rectangle, and the table legs or columns serve as the building’s structure and space for vertical services.”

“The post-and-slab table top units stack and aggregate, creating different combinations of unit-types to emphasize the project’s assertion that diversity paired with density makes for a healthy and sustainable living environment. A simple storefront glazing system mediates between the interior of the units and the exterior, while private spaces and bathrooms are enclosed in wood cabinets.”

“The use of three different table top shapes, which are deliberately misaligned when stacked, create apertures in the slab between units. The resulting vertical courtyard space forms a realm that serves as space for public circulation, bringing in light and air.  The spatial juxtapositions of The Table Top Apartments generate a new way of living in affordable housing that is dense, diverse, open, and light.”

Don't forget about the project diagrams in the gallery below!

Project images and text courtesy of Kwong Von Glinow Design Office.