There are 7.25 billion people living on the planet, and more than half of the world’s population has been living in cities since 2008. According to the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the world’s urban population will grow to 6.4 billion by 2050. Each city is struggling to deal with this issue by developing new high-density residential areas such as satellite cities. However, urban sprawl is not the only solution.
Flipped house is a new add-on housing typology that is incorporated with an existing row house. Basically, a flipped house is a modular system that uses the existing row house’s structure, which is embedded in the walls. The vertical timber structure of the existing building is extended beyond the roof by using a laminated veneer lumber (LVL), which is strong and lighter than a steel or concrete structure. The modular housing module will be located between extended LVL structures. Each housing module has two residential units and a corridor. Adjacent housing modules can be combined for a bigger unit. The cluster of housing modules forms a typical double-corridor residential floor. At the given site, flipped houses share only one existing building as a vertical circulation core. Renovating just one of seven existing buildings not only minimizes the destruction of historical features, but it also saves construction costs. In addition, this can maximize building efficiency by using a centralized MEP system in the core building.