The "no frills" housing project

I have been thinking about what makes a house affordable and what does affordability mean? The first impression of the word affordable perhaps brings the negative thought of cheap and low quality in one’s mind. How can I design a home that is not cheap but it’s affordable, how can I design a house that can be built quickly but it has high quality, a house that is simple to build, that is sustainable for the environment, that is aesthetically pleasing, that can be built with the conditions of the current market and industry and that can actually solve the housing shortage crisis. I had my eureka moment when I mixed my past experiences and thoughts of: building my first tiny home in Musquodoboit Harbour when I formulated my explorations of my prefabricated home designs when I designed and built my first mass timber home on Acadia street in Halifax when I mixed my tilt-up design built experiences when I brought 20 years of my experiences in construction and design And most importantly brainstorming and talking to my professors, other architects and my peers at Dalhousie school of Architecture I propose a prefabricated and modular house design in 2 levels for a maximum of 1000 sq ft that can be built indoors and extremely lean and simple that can be shipped and erected on site in 2 days. This house is a semi-detached style in a cluster of homes that are back to back and side by side attached creating 4 homes within one foundation. These homes are then placed on a slab on grade foundation within a total 2-3 months period from the point of order and can be sold for $399,900 on the most surplus lands of Halifax. My design calls for a CLT (cross laminated timber) floor system that is exposed on both sides, forming a sealed wooden floor and an exposed wood ceiling without any further finishes where the electrical is mostly designed to be placed in a MEP (mechanical electrical plumbing) chase within this CLT floor system. Also the interior walls are made of CLT exposed on both sides with the same design fashion for all MEP. Home features the most basic / no frills concept of minimalism design showcasing the famous quote of Mies van der Rohe; “Less is More”. The reason for the idea of selling these homes vs. using a subsidised rental concept is to create a long term and lasting community that will bring families into these homes and that ownership will give them a sense of pride which then will immediately excite people to create a real cohesive community. A community of homeowners that didn’t pay $700,000 for a 80 year house but bought their homes for a price that will allow them to work a balanced number of hours per week which will allow for the neighbours to be neighbours again, so the children of these young families can play outdoors together again, and that the materialism and the fast speed of world progress might slow down in these communities a bit to create some space for what we used to call our world home. This no frills design statement, suggests a minimal and prefabricated mass timber home that can be built indoors, can be assembled on site quickly and can be sold within a 2 to 3 months period from the point of order. I am a mature full time student of Architecture at Dalhousie university and can be reached for any discussion by phone 9024527770 or email samuelrad@dal.ca Thank you for creating this competition. Sam Rad