The New Plex
© Philippe Fournier 2023. All rights reserved. Reproduction prohibited unless advanced written permission is granted by the author. Final self-directed research project completed in fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Architecture degree at McGill University. Summary: A multiplex is a low-rise multifamily residential building with two or more separately accessed dwelling units, built at a similar scale to a traditional house. To address severe housing shortages, many jurisdictions across North America and around the globe are reforming long-standing zoning laws to permit multiplex construction across vast areas of land which formerly only permitted building single-family houses. This opens up a new frontier of design possibilities for builders: how should these buildings be designed? Though well established across the province of Quebec and once historically common in many other places, multiplexes are rare in the rest of postwar North America, with the majority of private households now dwelling in single-family detached houses. The scale of the housing crisis demands a radical expansion of denser building stock, but the carbon intensity of large-scale new construction poses environmental problems. As an example of ‘missing middle’ housing, multiplexes have many advantages which make them opportune for addressing both the housing and climate crises simultaneously. While increasing density and housing options, plexes have the advantage of being small enough to construct in light wood frame, embodying low carbon and employing local materials and trades. Their human scale and adaptability can allow them to blend unobtrusively within the built character of many established suburban neighborhoods. Their low capital requirements would permit a competitive market to emerge among small builders, while their rapid constructability lends itself well to prefabrication and other efficient construction techniques. This project revisits historical North American multiplex designs, makes the argument for streamlining multiplex construction in contemporary infill suburban contexts, investigates their regulatory and practical constraints, and explores ways of designing the typology in order to improve its environmental performance, cost effectiveness, and above all the quality of life for residents.
© Philippe Fournier 2023. All rights reserved.
Reproduction prohibited unless advanced written permission is granted by the author.
Final self-directed research project completed in fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Architecture degree at McGill University.
Summary:
A multiplex is a low-rise multifamily residential building with two or more separately accessed dwelling units, built at a similar scale to a traditional house. To address severe housing shortages, many jurisdictions across North America and around the globe are reforming long-standing zoning laws to permit multiplex construction across vast areas of land which formerly only permitted building single-family houses. This opens up a new frontier of design possibilities for builders: how should these buildings be designed? Though well established across the province of Quebec and once historically common in many other places, multiplexes are rare in the rest of postwar North America, with the majority of private households now dwelling in single-family detached houses. The scale of the housing crisis demands a radical expansion of denser building stock, but the carbon intensity of large-scale new construction poses environmental problems.
As an example of ‘missing middle’ housing, multiplexes have many advantages which make them opportune for addressing both the housing and climate crises simultaneously. While increasing density and housing options, plexes have the advantage of being small enough to construct in light wood frame, embodying low carbon and employing local materials and trades. Their human scale and adaptability can allow them to blend unobtrusively within the built character of many established suburban neighborhoods. Their low capital requirements would permit a competitive market to emerge among small builders, while their rapid constructability lends itself well to prefabrication and other efficient construction techniques. This project revisits historical North American multiplex designs, makes the argument for streamlining multiplex construction in contemporary infill suburban contexts, investigates their regulatory and practical constraints, and explores ways of designing the typology in order to improve its environmental performance, cost effectiveness, and above all the quality of life for residents.
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1.1
The Housing Crisis
Red Tape & Yellow Belts
“Most cities are bound by decades-old exclusionary-zoning rules originally
designed to keep poor people out of favoured districts. It’s still illegal to build
multifamily housing in most urban neighbourhoods in Canada. In Toronto,
two-thirds of residential land is reserved for detached homes. In Vancouver,
apartments...are outlawed on more than 80 per cent of residential land.
The result? Old homes in so-called ‘single-family’ districts near urban amenities
get replaced by multimillion-dollar executive homes, while more affordable
apartments get pushed onto noisy, polluted arterial roads. Two-thirds of
Vancouver’s households now squeeze into just a fifth of the city’s residential land.”
-- Charles Montgomery, “There’s plenty of room for housing in Canadian cities.
We just need to legalize it.” The Globe and Mail, 2022
Canada is currently experiencing a severe housing
affordability crisis, reflected both in skyrocketing
home prices relative to incomes since the mid-
2000s, as well as steadily increasing rents in
almost all major cities, well above the affordability
benchmark used by the Canada Mortgage and
Housing Corporation (CMHC) at 30% of household
income going towards housing costs.
There is consensus among experts that this crisis is
due mostly to a chronic shortage of housing supply.
Per a 2021 report by Scotiabank, Canada has had
both the highest population growth and lowest
per-capita housing stock in the G7 for years. The
CMHC estimates Canada would need an estimated
22 million housing units by 2030 in order to restore
housing affordability to all Canadians, but notes
we are only on track to have less than 19 million
at current rates -- a shortfall of almost 3.5 million.
To add fuel to this fire, average household sizes
in Canada have steadily declined while the total
number of households has grown.
In turn, this shortage can be attributed to widespread
adoption of land-use policies like single-family
zoning, which make it illegal to build anything
other than single family homes ‘as-of-right’ on
the majority of land in most major Canadian cities.
This practice is particularly accute in Toronto and
Vancouver, also our two most exepensive housing
markets, where single family housing makes up
approximately 70% and 81% of residentially-zoned
land respectively as of Spring 2023. In Vancouver,
roughly 52% of the total land supplies only 15%
of its housing stock.
In Toronto this area of land is known as the
‘yellowbelt’ due to its yellow coloration in
the city’s zoning maps. The Greater Toronto-
Hamilton and Greater Vancouver metro areas
14
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