Clusters

The ad hoc organic city often generates clustered living arrangements where dwelling are superimposed in labyrinth-like three dimensional forms. This is architecture without master architects where design is devolved to family, clan, and wider social structures.

Clusters are however sophisticated systems of inter-dependency where for example dwellings are interlocked as fragments in a urban mosaic. Spatial sequencing in clusters is rarely uniform – providing intrigue and discovery.

MYAA have attempted to understand cluster arrangements in our work on Ecological Housing in Qatar, Ecological Hotels in the Sahara and Affordable Housing in London.

In London our approach considered Back-To-Back housing clusters- often mocked as inadequate working class slums but in practice less alienating and less wrenched than the poorly executed Utopian tower block of the 1950’s.