"As If!": Reimagining Suburban Forms through the Accessory Dwelling Unit

Abstract

Featured in the New York Times article “The Next Affordable City is Already Too Expensive,” Spokane, WA finds itself in the throes of the national housing crisis. In response, this thesis proposes to design a series of ADUs (accessory dwelling units) along the back alleys of West Central, one of Spokane’s most affected single-family residential areas. In recent years, ADU construction has emerged as a viable method of increasing both the quantity and diversity of the existing housing stock. However, beyond these nominal benefits, the popular conversation around ADUs has not offered much critique of the suburban codes (both explicit and implicit) that privilege isolation and normative conceptions of property. Thus, there remains a latent opportunity to consider the insertion of ADUs as a method of interrogating the suburban forms that contributed to the housing crisis in the first place. In response, this thesis mines the Spokane municipal code for ambiguities in formal regulation in order to push the ADU out of its typical conception as architecture that merely miniaturizes the single family home into unexpected new territory. The question is posed: what if ADUs acted as if they were not ADUs at all? What if instead they acted as if they were the instrumental components that comprise and uphold the existing suburban fabric - like fences, balconies, or parking spots - in order to interrogate the assumptions embedded within them? Possible answers to this question may give rise to hallucinatory new neighborhoods - and along with them, new forms of living together.