A new approach to public housing : redesigning the Mission Hill housing projects

Abstract

In the coming years there will be a need to revisit the question of public housing in general and dealing with existing housing projects in particular. This thesis attempts to provide a new approach to the redesign of existing projects. This new approach will be applied to the Mission Hill Main housing project and surrounding area. The main ideas behind the thesis are, that any attempts at redesigning existing projects should be done, with the goal of integrating the public housing with its surroundings at both the urban and site scales. Also an effort should be made to provide clearly defined zones of public, semipublic, and private spaces throughout the project. Socio-economic issues and the future demographics of the public housing as well as the surroundings, should also be addressed as part of the redesign of the units and the programming of the buildings in and around the site. A new urban plan for the area around the Mission Hill Main housing project will be discussed in chapter 2. Chapter 3 will deal with the housing project at the site scale. Chapter 4 will look at a block on the site in more detail, as well as some proposed unit types. Due to the wide scope of this thesis and the limited time available there will only be a perfunctory discussion on the history and theory of public housing provided in the introductory chapter.