Urban sprawl repair kit

Reburbia; A suburban design competition

Galina Tahchieva has designed an urban sprawl repair kit with the intention of repairing the urban fabric. The design discourages demolitions of existing buildings and encourages re-purposing, often taking advantage of Suburbia's typically excessive setbacks and parking lots. This set of simple infill techniques represents a sprawl repair toolkit to retrofit the 5 building prototypes that define Suburbia.

Galina Tahchieva said, "A drive-through restaurant pad becomes part of a main street, but largely concealed from it, with perimeter liner buildings added along the edges of its parking lot. A strip center is converted into a recycling center with a green roof and 2 side-wings with solar panels framing a courtyard that reaches to the sidewalk. A gas station remains in place while growing a two-story corner store-office extension at a busy intersection to help screen it. A suburban ranch house is permitted to utilize its deep front yard to add a wing with additional bedrooms, a home office, or a rental outbuilding that creates a courtyard with the existing home and defines a livelier street frontage at the sidewalk. Even the ubiquitous McMansion can be converted into senior housing when a five-bedroom/ three-car garage home yields a 10 room-9 bathroom facility for seniors and a caretaker."


Reburbia