The Block on the Row is a playful take on housing types, taking on questions of what makes a house and a neighbourhood. By collaging and stitching and stacking the familiar row house typology into a courtyard block, it pokes fun at our conventional understanding of the residential high-rise as a series of individual units. Instead, it prioritizes the connections between people’s homes while valuing difference and diversity by presenting a visibly heterogeneous whole. Home to millionaires and the working class alike, the row house is arguably the most adaptable housing type. It can be modified to accommodate a range of housing needs on the site: supportive housing, affordable housing, deeply affordable housing, family housing, market housing and live-work housing. The row house itself is not always a house, but something that can be shared between a family and an individual, a student and an elderly couple, or a small business and newcomers. The typology is iterated and varied to accommodate the missing amenities in the area: a convenience store, a pharmacy, a clinic, studio space, childcare and live-work conditions. The site is re-interpreted as a neighbourhood with its own inner streets, emphasizing civic life and its contribution to the public space of the city. In so doing, it is making a statement about Halifax’s vacant public properties: that to develop them with housing for diverse demographics would not be a waste of valuable land and resources but would serve to strengthen the surrounding urban fabric and the character of Halifax. The project’s proposed continuation of the Blowers Street line would repair the disconnect between Barrington and the waterfront, emphasizing the city's unique vertical connections. In pulling the row houses perpendicular to Hollis Street and through to Lower Water Street, the project makes a statement about the quality of affordable housing: that it should not be relegated to the least valuable land of the city but has a place at the urban heart.