The studio's work was situated in a concern for "missing middle" and attainable housing along with ongoing efforts to redensify and bolster the Detroit neighborhood of Islandview's walkable and accessible resources. Ambitions of our project included developing housing that fosters community connections in both familiar and novel ways. It seeks to address a dialogue and establish a local sensibility with the site’s shifting conditions and future aspirations, all while using common, low cost stock materials to form a series of unexpected exterior conditions. Seeking to create unique and intimate domestic conditions for all residents, the interiors of the units reveal elements of timber construction providing a natural aesthetic to counter the vibrant exteriors and to frame community courtyard activity

Two ideologically unique building typologies populate the site. The larger straight buildings along Kercheval Avenue on the South of the site address the edges of the lot to create a more formal urban condition and work together with an exterior catwalk circulation system to capture outdoor space. The Kercheval Ave buildings further back
from the street look to funnel the conditions of neighboring Butzel Park into the site and deliberately blur the boundary between the two. The second opposing building type lines Townsend Street where buildings follow a less dense and lower rise courtyard typology and are smaller in scale to react to the single family residential nature of the street.

A three piece CLT kit-of-parts structural system was used across all buildings. The first piece, the program module, is implemented as a floor condition as well as the residential technical and programming elements, the interior walls, ducts and plumbing. Second, the wall condition, which includes vertical structural systems, entry points, and window apertures of the units. The third piece, the hats, are a series of ceiling and roof pieces that top each module. Aggregated together, they could create almost unlimited permutations of unit layouts.