Suburban Block of the Future
Suburban Block of the Future from Z.N. Singer
Suburban Block of the Future

I can't stand urban living, but people keep suggesting the city is the future of green infrastructure. I know this future city would be very different from the dirty crowded things of today, but still, I don’t want the suburb to disappear. For the suburb to survive, I theorized, it would need to evolve some aspects of the city.

This was quite an ambitious challenge to take up for my BFA, because it put a lot of focus on what was really urban planning. I designed the houses of course, but much depended on the larger picture. I needed to think, at the very least, on the scale of a block.

Now I’m enough of a perfectionist to argue with myself constantly on whether I overreached. Maybe I did. But I enjoyed it, and I got
to utilize what I had taught myself the summer before about green building, and learned even more, and even found out some fascinating things about pocket communities and the psychology of ‘the neighborhood’. And you know what they say: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The feature I felt this future block would need to incorporate above all else was a smaller footprint. Suburbs simply could not require as much square footage if they were to be considered sustainable in the long term. To that end, front yards were drastically shortened, and backyards merged to create a large communal expanse inside that would serve all using, at worst, the same space as would have been apportioned to each house before. Also individual garages and driveways were eliminated in favor of carports in the corners, allowing houses to be grouped closer together. To offset all of this reduction of a suburbs best guilty pleasure, a green roof balcony has been put on the second floor over the ground floor porch, creating private green space for all. The use of a new green roof growing composite by Omni-System, allows these roofs to place minimal strain on the building while allowing for genuine gardening if the residents wish.
A render of the back of the four person house. Note the profusion of windows, all shaded. This is also the south side of the building. The basic principle of passive solar is simple: the sun is directly overhead in summer and leaning southward in winter. Therefore, a house with few windows north, many south, and shading overhead, will lose a minimum of heat out the shaded north side, gain a maximum of heat out the southern side, and avoid direct sunlight in summer. Exactly calculations of window and shade size are always a custom solution to the location.
A closer look at the green roof feature, providing some private green space. Obviously putting this on the roof itself would have made for a much larger space, but then where would the solar panels have gone?
A better look at the carports. These exit directly onto the street, of course.
This part was more experimental. I wanted lots of natural light as well, and worked with clerestories for two reasons: they lent themselves to dispersed even light, and did not interfere with the passive solar arrangement. That alone is nothing new, but note the illustration of lighting for the second floor. I theorized that the light coming in the windows under the roof overhang could enter a reflective space (a clever environmental engineer could probably do all kinds of clever things with this as well), and then enter the rooms below via indoor skylights. A jump, but one I couldn't resist suggesting in this project. I do love to innovate, though I know in real life, one has to be careful with these things. One is rarely hired to revolutionize.
I designed two houses for the project: one sized for a couple and one for a family with two children. This is the first floor of the house for two.
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I designed two houses for the project: one sized for a couple and one for a family with two children. This is the second floor of the house for two.
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I designed two houses for the project: one sized for a couple and one for a family with two children. This is the first floor of the house for four.
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I designed two houses for the project: one sized for a couple and one for a family with two children. This is the second floor of the house for four.
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Suburban Block of the Future

I can't stand urban living, but people keep suggesting the city is the future of green infrastructure. I know this future city would be very different from the dirty crowded things of today, but still, I don’t want the suburb to disappear. For the suburb to survive, I theorized, it would need to evolve some aspects of the city.

This was quite an ambitious challenge to take up for my BFA, because it put a lot of focus on what was really urban planning. I designed the houses of course, but much depended on the larger picture. I needed to think, at the very least, on the scale of a block.

Now I’m enough of a perfectionist to argue with myself constantly on whether I overreached. Maybe I did. But I enjoyed it, and I got
to utilize what I had taught myself the summer before about green building, and learned even more, and even found out some fascinating things about pocket communities and the psychology of ‘the neighborhood’. And you know what they say: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Z.N. Singer
Interior Architect Cleveland, OH