Stacking Menageries: Densifying Toronto's Yellowbelt

Abstract

What is indifference if not the desire to find oneself among the collective? What builds a community if not the need to connect across islands? The future of collective housing must first forget about collectivity, for interpersonal relationships are established upon the architectural agencies of difference and idiosyncrasy, not those of aggregation, repetition, or consolidation. Houses – individuals with collectivism, and housing – collectives with individualism, have always formed contradicting manifestations of these affects. My thesis, then, seeks an ideal middle ground where architectural individuality is no longer incompatible with stacking - a collection of stacking menageries.

This pursuit coincides with Toronto’s search for the same missing middle, in her case, the need for a typology that would densify vast residential areas previously zoned for exclusively detached houses. In a scene of extreme polarization between sprawls of metroburbs and corridors of residential high-rises, my project seeks to incorporate two groups of residents whose needs are excluded by both options: elderlies living with care and young families with children. In this city of contradicting beliefs, I envision a form of housing where repeated living units embrace the peculiarities of every household within, where connections among neighbours and across generations are created by the collection of menageries through the tangible individualities of those that live around, above and below.