2020 was a global experiment that profoundly altered human activity patterns. When public facilities were shuttered, our homes were ill-suited for their new role as the center of work, learning, shopping, healthcare, and exercise. Now, after a year of working virtually, companies are rapidly transitioning to a hybrid form of work that may make the traditional office - and rush hour commuting - obsolete. Many city leaders are realizing that both climate change and societal inequities may be best addressed community by community. Clearly, a new model for design and technology is needed in order to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future.

Participants are challenged to seek answers to the following questions:

• How can we enable more resilient, equitable, high-performance communities that gracefully adapt over time to evolving economic, technological, and social conditions? (adaptation over time)
• How can our places dynamically transform in order to accommodate the complex and rapidly changing needs of people? (real-time transformation)

Located in downtown New Taipei City, the Xinmin Street community is a compact urban neighbourhood where local residents have access to live, work and play within a 10 minute walk (800 meters/half mile). Various amenities enable a lively and convenient lifestyle: two subway stations, one major transit hub, multiple department stores, grocery stores and pharmacies, day care centers, schools, restaurants, cafes, entertainment, recreation and parks. Despite the lively and rich urban context, the streets are used as parking spaces for cars and scooters. Some areas are even occupied by temporary structures. As the mobility demand increases, these streets become dangerous for pedestrians, elderly residents, kids and strollers. How can we reimagine these streets, sidewalks, alleyways and existing small urban spaces? How can we strike the balance between mobility and pedestrians?

Mobility within a 10 minute walk

Amenities within a 10 minute walk

Back Alley

Typical street in the neighborhood

7 meters wide, one-way streets

Buildings on Xinmin Street serve as dormitories for police officers and civil servants. These units are the archetype of the legendary postwar walk-up apartments in Taiwan. Designed for nuclear families, the configuration presents one larger bedroom for parents and two smaller rooms for children. The living room and the dining room share the same space, and the kitchen has a backdoor that leads to the back alley. Some of these back alleys are used for community space and some are occupied by the local residents with an extension of the building.

Some of the interior layouts of these postwar walk-up apartments changed over time to accommodate the needs of the residents and the design reflects the city’s past and present expressing both societal and economical characteristics.

Images of the postwar walk-up apartment today

The Xinmin Street neighborhood and the legendary postwar walk-up buildings will act as the competition playground. We invite you to rethink the future of community and home and join us in the conversations that will help craft the Home of Tomorrow in a post-pandemic Asian Community. Xin-Min means “New Citizen” in Mandarin; the challenge is to echo this sentiment by exploring elegant, efficient, and dynamic concepts that strike a balance between live, work, and play for future residents while also exploring spaces that incorporate sustainable technologies that leverage robotics, modular design, prefabrication, and eco-friendly materials.

Perspective view of the Xinmin Street Neighborhood. Walk-up buildings are colored in yellow.

Submissions can focus on one or both of the following scales:

2.Home of Tomorrow

• How can people with diverse needs “live large” in compact, hyper-efficient, transformable homes that perfectly accommodate their complex activities?
• What are the technologies that enable activity recognition and transformation?

CityHomes must be developed for three prototypical profiles:

• Young Professional Couple. This living/sleeping/entertaining space by evening and weekend dynamically converts to, for instance, a startup office by day for four employees.
• Young Family. This family of four has a comfortable living space by day that converts to separate, private sleeping areas for the parents, and for each child by night. The space must include a home office and study spaces for each person.
• Elderly or Disabled Couple. The husband, who uses a walker to maintain balance, requires small bathing and kitchen spaces with grab-bars and surfaces to prevent falls. The wife is in a wheelchair with the required access and turning radius. The space must transform in real-time to accommodate their needs.

An example of MIT Media Lab 2Bay transformable CityHome fitted into the building chassis.

The competition challenges participants to rethink housing design methods and move away from single function-driven approaches while disentangling the structure and interior space. The participants may ignore all interior partitions, use the walk-up apartment dimensions as an open floor plan and explore multipurpose modular infills that can:

• Efficiently accommodate different people’s needs.
• Generate new activities.
• Adapt to other building typologies.

The design should integrate state-of-art technologies such as prefabricated construction, modular design, 3D printing, advanced mechanical actuation, robotics, and sensing technologies and explore the possibilities and push boundaries of the Home of Tomorrow.