Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Developing more Cluster Townhouse Designs

PR1MA PENGKALAN, ALOR GAJAH

The clients were so happy with the response to the Townhouses that they then changed their plans for the next phase of 50 acres to a proposal for all Townhouses. 




My firm had earlier prepared a mix income layout for this site, where Townhouses are mixed with other house-types in each cul-de-sac. It was, I thought, an ambitious proposal which challenged the conventional practice of having segregating bungalows, semi-detached houses, large terrace houses and smaller terrace houses each in their own neighbourhood. The local authority had also requested that each open green spaces or “kawasan lapang” should be at least 10,000sf. So, in this layout we complied. 

However, at that time the Government, through PR1MA, was promoting affordable housing to be sold at 20% below market price. Our client decided to respond to this call, and to take the best advantage of a modular formwork system, wanted instead a Honeycomb layout with only one type of Townhouse design. The developer was also able to sell the idea to PR1MA. A layout was prepared by a Town-planner based in Melaka who designed a simpler, very efficient, kind of a Honeycomb layout. Here the Townhouse blocks are all arranged in rows along streets which have a 10” green strip in front of every home.




This fast-track project for 1160 Townhouses was planned to be completed in just 18 months and is in now under construction.

JASIN, MELAKA

The next project in Melaka at Jasin provided a better opportunity to improve on the Townhouse design. Here, the Townhouses, priced from RM150,000 to RM180.000, are in semi-detached blocks rather than quadruplex ones. This allows the rear wall to be an external rather than a party wall allowing a better arrangement of rooms.



Still, up to this stage, there was no opportunity yet for a cul-de-sac Honeycomb layout.

A TOWNHOUSE HONEYCOMB LAYOUT

Is it possible to design a Honeycomb cul-de-sac layout with Townhouses that can compete with the linear layout produced at Alor Gajah? Below is a possible alternative where a combination of semi-detached and cluster Townhouses is able to produce a similar density to that achieved in Alor Gajah. 




Units
ac
%ac
Total Residential
600
15.76
59.1%
Surau & kindergarten

0.43
1.6%
Pocket Parks

1.84
6.9%
Central Green

0.82
3.1%
Road

7.8
29.3%
Total Amenities



Density
21.6


Total land

27.84


No comments: