Parasitic Porosity
A pre-fab experience focused on light and views
Apartment Building
Creteil, Paris, France
Parasitic Porosity connects people through a scalable, mass-customizable pre-fabricated incubator that aims at visually and formally bridging the gap of social engagement and inactive relationships between users. The proposal utilizes both an environmentally conscious material selection that allows for non-destructive disassembly at the end of its life cycle (CLT), and the use of mechanical connections that let units and balconies aggregate with ease. The attention restoration theory also plays a role in the way the building stimulates and offers a connection between the sensorial temporal qualities of architecture and its impact on wellbeing, by lending green space and visual/physical relationships to the outdoors whenever possible.
Altogether, our proposal provides a unique residential typology that offers a vast collection of socially active features and gestures that utilize and push the boundaries of off-site construction in a global context. Our proposal overcomes the stigma that architecture has an allegiance to the one-off, the custom-made,
and temporality.
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Throughout the design process, we adhered to the attention restoration theory and took a critical regionalism approach, which helped dictate the way the building stimulates and offers a connection between the material sensitivity of Europe as well as their affinity towards exterior space, by lending green space and visual/physical relationships to the outdoors whenever possible. Our proposal provides a unique residential typology that offers a vast collection of socially active features and gestures that utilize and push the boundaries of pre-fabrication in a global context, attempting to overcome the idea that pre-fab has restrictions and cannot be blended seamlessly into the architectural landscape.
![Paris Site Relationships]()
Map showing the contextual and cultural relationships across Paris.
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The proposal’s massing reacts appropriately to the idiosyncratic qualities, urban context, and language of the city around the site. For example, we noticed that the immediate buildings around the site have a wide range of heights, but they all share gable roofs. So, portions of the building are pushed and pulled to match the heights of the adjacent residences, and the gable roofs are mimicked to create a flowing sight line, avoiding obstruction. Specific features to Parasitic Porosity include a passage to a courtyard that allows the public to flow through, split balconies that allow for multi-level interaction between units on separate floors, roof gardens with interior views and a playful use of shading, and spiral stairs that connect the units on each level together through flying walkways.
Creteil, Paris, France
Team: Marco Nieto, Mackenzie Bruce, and Jeffrey Richmond.
Special thanks to professors Jono Sturt and Clement Blanchet, as well as our collaboration with Vinci Construction.
Special thanks to professors Jono Sturt and Clement Blanchet, as well as our collaboration with Vinci Construction.
Parasitic Porosity connects people through a scalable, mass-customizable pre-fabricated incubator that aims at visually and formally bridging the gap of social engagement and inactive relationships between users. The proposal utilizes both an environmentally conscious material selection that allows for non-destructive disassembly at the end of its life cycle (CLT), and the use of mechanical connections that let units and balconies aggregate with ease. The attention restoration theory also plays a role in the way the building stimulates and offers a connection between the sensorial temporal qualities of architecture and its impact on wellbeing, by lending green space and visual/physical relationships to the outdoors whenever possible.
Altogether, our proposal provides a unique residential typology that offers a vast collection of socially active features and gestures that utilize and push the boundaries of off-site construction in a global context. Our proposal overcomes the stigma that architecture has an allegiance to the one-off, the custom-made,
and temporality.
Throughout the design process, we adhered to the attention restoration theory and took a critical regionalism approach, which helped dictate the way the building stimulates and offers a connection between the material sensitivity of Europe as well as their affinity towards exterior space, by lending green space and visual/physical relationships to the outdoors whenever possible. Our proposal provides a unique residential typology that offers a vast collection of socially active features and gestures that utilize and push the boundaries of pre-fabrication in a global context, attempting to overcome the idea that pre-fab has restrictions and cannot be blended seamlessly into the architectural landscape.
Map showing the contextual and cultural relationships across Paris.
The proposal’s massing reacts appropriately to the idiosyncratic qualities, urban context, and language of the city around the site. For example, we noticed that the immediate buildings around the site have a wide range of heights, but they all share gable roofs. So, portions of the building are pushed and pulled to match the heights of the adjacent residences, and the gable roofs are mimicked to create a flowing sight line, avoiding obstruction. Specific features to Parasitic Porosity include a passage to a courtyard that allows the public to flow through, split balconies that allow for multi-level interaction between units on separate floors, roof gardens with interior views and a playful use of shading, and spiral stairs that connect the units on each level together through flying walkways.
Alongside the standard units given to us by Vinci, our team developed duplex units on the highest floors that utilize vertical circulation. Spiral stairs are inserted inside the units which allows for the living room to move upstairs and become a loft directly adjacent to the provided outdoor extension. An extension of the spiral stairs, two larger ones are placed in the courtyard which acts as the main circulation for the users. Through a simple 90 ° rotation, the exterior stairs begin to create different scenarios for the corridors, or ‘flying walkways’, to spread out to the units, thus creating a layering effect that allows for a unique experience of shading and lighting to transcend onto the ground floor.
