The Flow House: Adaptive Modularity 

Prototype Duplex Design for Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation

 Modular Design by William McDonough + Partners

William McDonough + Partners, a core team member of the Make It Right revitalization project, has designed a duplex home created for families impacted by Hurricane Katrina who are now rebuilding in New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward.  The design is one of a series of new green affordable homes for the Make It Right Foundation, founded by Brad Pitt to help rebuild the Lower 9th Ward.

The modular home has been a subject of great interest since the beginning of the last century and has historically been an area of both innovation and failure. As mass production of homes grew out of the boom years following the Second World War, architects and builders sought efficiencies and new methods for designing, constructing, and delivering homes to meet growing market demands and shifts in population away from urban centers. The call for the industrialization and prefabrication of architecture became conflated with modular strategies that increased the design flexibility and systemization of assemblies while allowing for individual customization.

“This house is conceived as a series of outdoor rooms that extend and expand interior living, connecting families inside to views, nature, and community while celebrating the movement of light, shade, air, and water,” says William McDonough. Seeking to positively contribute to the well-being of the families who will inhabit the house and the local environment, the design proposes modular strategies that promote deep connections with its site, moving away from the notion of the prefabricated home as a generic and placeless “box.” Flow House’s modular volumes are organized and shaped to respond to the sun, wind, water, and light while expanding local “porch culture” and allowing families easy, direct access to the landscape around them for recreation, productive gardening, and gatherings.

The design re-imagines and combines local architectural typologies such as the shotgun, camelback, and dogtrot. Three volumes are organized around exterior gathering spaces with the lower level volume at the street housing the public spaces of the primary unit and the rear volume housing a secondary unit (which can be an income unit or used for extended family) with an independent entrance, creating a generous open landscape and rain garden while minimizing the overall building footprint on a very tight lot. Varying in length between 28’-0” and 48’-0,” these 16’-0” wide volumes can be built either through conventional stick-built methods or preferably as factory-built modules as intended. Deep overhangs and a southward massing shift on the upper floor bedroom module dually provide access to daylight for adjacent neighbors and shade for the lower living floor. An open exterior dogtrot separates each unit while also providing effective natural ventilation and accommodating flexible expansion space to meet the requirements of diverse situations, family structures, and living arrangements over time. According to Senior Designer Jose Atienza, “here, strategically located and diverse outdoor spaces inspire and frame the rituals and special events of daily life.”

In addition to establishing a respect for the natural world as design for human health, Flow House aspires to be Cradle to Cradle with component parts and materials that can be safely disassembled and returned to the Earth within biological cycles or to industry within technical cycles. Intended to advance ideas of anticipatory design and disassembly, components, assemblies and sub-assemblies are conceived with a preference for advanced mechanical fastening systems as opposed to binders and glues which make it difficult to separate materials.  According to Katherine Grove, AIA, who is a project advisor and Director with William McDonough + Partners, “Proposed materials reflect our goal to inspire positive change in the construction and building products industries, giving the public ready access to affordable products optimized in Cradle to Cradle cycles.”  

“Though material advancements have been made in recent years, the residential building industry is still challenged to replace key substrate components like plywood, a ‘non-nutrient’ whose binders prevent it from being properly disassembled,” says WM+P Director Alastair Reilly, who continues, “to address this, we minimized the number of materials to a few key components that are safe and healthy for ecological and human health and are either Cradle to Cradle inspired by or are Cradle to Cradle^CM Certified by MBDC.“ Wall and roof assemblies are conceived as metal structurally insulated (SIPS) panels (technical nutrients) while foundations, exterior cladding, and millwork are specified as wood (biological nutrients). Wood will either be FSC certified, formaldehyde-free and responsibly harvested for millwork or (non-toxic) acetalyzed for exterior cladding, structural columns, and foundation piles. Interior walls will be finished with gypsum-free, mold-resistant, and low VOC drywall (biological nutrient). 

In keeping with Make It Right’s intention to experiment with various building methods and improve on successive generations of the prototype as materials and technologies improve, Flow House is designed to evolve to various construction strategies. “Through rigorous dimensional controls established with a 4’-0” module that allows for material use optimization of standard components, its flexibility lends itself to various combinations of assemblies of pre-fabricated modules, flat-panel systems, panelized SIPS (either wood or metal), or in-line advanced framing,” says Atienza. 

William McDonough + Partners is a 40-person architecture and community design firm with studios in Charlottesville, VA; San Francisco; and Amsterdam. Cradle to Cradle is a Service Mark of MBDC; Cradle to Cradle Certified is a Certification Mark of MBDC.

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