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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Multifamily Living
The Old New Normal
“Where the discipline of architectural history has had difficulty, is in dealing with the
rest of the built environment, typically 90% or more of the built record. While middle
class housing, particularly single family detached, has had some success in benefiting
from trickle down of theoretical concepts, particularly stylistic, the urban vernacular
has gone largely unnoticed or considered to be not worth of treatment...
How does such a systematic blind spot arise? Perhaps the obsession with singlefamily
housing in twentieth century North America has conditioned researchers to
ignore other forms of housing, excepting...apartment buildings because of their
sheer bulk and the fact that they tend to be architect-designed...Clearly what has
been missed are the deep cultural and historical roots of such housing and
their powerful signficiance in terms of generating eminently habitable lowcost
housing in dense yet human scale neighborhoods.”
--David B Hanna & François Dufaux,
Montreal: A Rich Tradition in Medium Density Housing
Multiplexes are an example of ‘missing middle’
housing, a term coined by Daniel Parolek to describe
the lack of housing options in many North American
cities between the extremes of spacious single family
detached houses and dense units in apartment towers.
Partly due to zoning and other government policies,
single-family homes have been the predominant
dwelling type for a majority of households in the US
and Canada for several generations, with profound
effect on their national cultures and identities. Many
people now take this style of housing for granted
and identify its ownership as a baseline standard of
living and a symbol of personal success. As of 2021,
single-family detached houses account for 52.6% of
all occupied private dwellings in Canada. The next
largest category, ‘apartment buildings below 5 storeys’
-- which would include most multiplexes -- accounts
only for 18.3%. Counting an additional 5.5% found
within duplexes, multiplexes currently account for
a total of 23.8% of Canada’s building stock, though
are overwhelmingly concentrated in Quebec. Yet
historically and globally, single-family detached
houses are an anomaly housing typology rather
than the norm. Even in North America, where
their cultural footprint is particularly profound,
they did not become commonplace until the
push towards mass suburbanization after World
War 2. At the turn of the 20th century, waves of
rapid industrialization and immigration brought
unprecedented housing demand to major cities
like New York, Boston, Chicago and Montreal.
The task of accomodating these rapidly expanding
working-class populations fell largely to small
private builders, and multiplex-style homes
became a popular living arrangement, often
with the builders themselves living in one of the
units while renting out the others. Each region
developed a unique vernacular spin shaped
by local regulations, material availability and
craftsmanship. In this chapter I analyze & contrast
four historic North American multiplex typologies.
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