2015
Design:David Zhewei Feng

“DUO” is a design proposal for a residential tower located right next to High Line, NYC.

“Lo-Lux”: This project explores the possibility of combining low-income housing with luxury housing in one tower by giving these two types of housing a different interpretation in public space – in both domestic and the shared space of the tower.

In modern context, “luxury” equals to “privatize”. Luxury apartments tend to privatize everything to guarantee the least amount of disturbance from others, therefore we have luxury apartments with private swimming pool at the balcony, private gym and home theatre within the housing unit. In this case, luxury apartments are located at the half of the tower which adjacent to High Line in this project. These units have the view of High line, larger unit space and standard layout.

Low-income housing is usually featured with shared space because that’s the more efficient way to distribute space as a resource. Communal kitchen or restrooms are designed for social housing at the beginning. The idea of the Pilotis from Le Corbusier was also aiming at freeing the ground floor space for public use. However, with the development of virtual communication tools, people tend to stay at home to communicate with others virtually, rather than going out physically. Now, the public/shared space for housing needs to be subdivided and scattered.