Constructing agency 2017-2019

space trading

Studio Shajay Bhooshan / Alicia Nahmad Vasquez

Team Aseem Ahmed (India), Zhongya Sun (China), Samantha Ys Chai (Malaysia)

Planning without planners, is what Space Trading aims at achieving for a novel way of community forming through sharing and trading of spaces. The project investigates London’s housing condition as a background to explore and develop a study model that adheres to individualised living and mass customisation of the housing unit.

Cloud systems and services like Airbnb are growing rapidly which has a digital community that empowers the service providers as well as the users and allows better customisation options, constant updating and a shared user community which makes it more feasible. These values can also be found in housing where people are gradually moving to a shared living module which comprises of co- and multigenerational-living. Space Trading is an architectural attempt to explore and physically manifest these values and technologically enabled trends within housing by marrying it with a unit assembly design that addresses the high costs and space restrictions in the Central London housing market by sharing and trading spaces through a digital twin – a game. The game engine helps: 1, to organise living spaces for people with shared interest and complementing needs; 2, create a matchmaking platform for user personality and lifestyle choice; and 3, to simulate scenarios that generates a design brief for each user.

The design tackles the rigid top-down planning and infrastructure module that limits mobility and customisation. Using integrated prefab spaces and services that enable people to form their own unit and morph it in accordance to their ever-changing needs by sharing and trading of these spaces with their neighbours. These local exchanges can thus affect the global outcome of the community and this growth becomes emergent, exhibiting a rich community value. Physical manifestation is achieved by hybridising 3D printing with a timber waffle system, optimising the time, cost and weight of the spaces that can be assembled on site.