The Stacked House is a concept for a house adaptable to different urban/natural contexts and to different requirements of the user. The main characteristic of the Stacked House is in fact its flexibility, given by the use of prefabricated elements and by its morphology, that enables an almost infinite number of variations while maintaining a global unity.
The Stacked House is composed of three simple elements: the base, the core and the boxes-rooms.
1) The base - one storey high - corresponds to the "public" part of the house. It is composed of two prefabricated concrete slabs forming the ceiling and the floor. It can vary from a minimum size of 6 x 9 m (urban plots) up to very large sizes where the local context allows it.
2) The core is the vertical connection of the house. It is composed of four prefabricated steel trusses, with a variable height, placed parallel to each other, forming three vertical spaces. The central space between the two inner walls hosts a pneumatic platform that connects directly all the rooms in the building. The two spaces enclosed in the two outer walls host the stairs. The height of the trusses and thus of the core is variable, depending on the urban planning situation and the needs of the user.
3) The boxes-rooms are the private part of the Stacked House. They are prefabricated elements of variable sizes with a self-supporting truss structure. They are manufactured off site and then hung with a crane on the trusses. The number of boxes-rooms can vary. Here too we find the recurring element of the project: the adaptability to the private (user) and public (law/urban setting) requirements.
The program of the Stacked House is thus adaptable: it could e.g. be a house of an artist located in the urban fabric, with a minimum base that houses the atelier and with only two rooms; or the house of a young couple, placed in a slightly larger lot in the suburbs. A professional practitioner who has a bigger terrain in a small town could place his practice where he attends his clients in a part of the basement and its own private study in one of the boxes-rooms; while a large family that wants to live amongst nature could consider an even bigger Stacked House suitable for large natural areas.