Formalizing the informal urbanization of suburban homes by migrant Asian casino workers

Following research on how immigrant workers have transformed suburban subdivisions adjacent to a Connecticut casino, the project proposes a mixed use, co-living development to apply hybrid solutions to the challenges of changing demographics while fostering community, reducing carbon footprints, and revitalizing American downtowns.

The proposal consists of five components: the first, includes single resident occupancy units within high-rise, low-density towers. Situated among rooftop gardens, these towers sit on the second component, a low-rise, high-density social mat for flexible communal living. This communal level is placed on top of a suburban big box store as well as an urban transit and community center. This hybridized urban/suburban model of programs, types, and systems attempts to achieve economic, ecological, and social sustainabilities through hybrid processes, combining suburban with urban, informal with formal, foreign with native, and resiliency with flexibility.

The project formed the basis of an interdisciplinary publication, public programming, and an award-winning, internationally traveling exhibition entitled SubUrbanisms: Casino Urbanization, Chinatowns and the Contested American Landscape.

Special thanks to Bea Camacho, Brendan Kellogg, Patrick Hamon.  

Formalizing the Informal: A New Model for Communal Housing
Applying principles derived from Chinese workers' conversions of single family homes into multifamily communities 

Existing suburban tract homes 

Existing suburban tract homes transformed by Chinese migrant casino workers 

Single family form; Multifamily use 

Concept: Hybridizing single/multi family housing using suburban/urban models
Rotating and multiplying the raised ranch plan in section to combine benefits of single/multi family housing  

Hybridizing suburban/urban models to revitalize a 19th C downtown fabric 

Section of the main programs: parking, big box store, communal living, and single room occupancy towers 

Lower Level Plan: suburban big box store, waterfront liner of communal spaces  

Upper Level Plan: bus depot, restaurant, day care, loading, and future passenger rail station 

Communal Living Plan: kitchens, dining, courtyards, storage, and living 

Single Resident Occupancy Unit Plans: towers embedded within rooftop productive gardens