The Cluster Townhouse

THE SINGLE STOREY TERRACE HOUSE

Single storey terrace houses were the most common house-type for rural areas and small towns. In urban areas where land has become expensive, single storey houses are not common any more for new developments. Typically, they occupied 20’X70’ plots of land and a few years ago would be priced at RM110,000 and below. However, they are expensive to build with a big area for footings and roof, a large party wall, and low density. Worse, they are perceived as less prestigious than two storey houses.

 The Single storey terrace House: “IRIS GARDEN” priced about RM149,000 per unit at Bandar Saujana Putra in Selangor; from LBS Bina website

Now with building costs much higher than a few years ago, even developers in rural areas are shunning the single storey houses. The ones that get launched are also getting more expensive, leaving a gap in the supply of new houses in the RM80,000 to RM130,000 price range that used to be served by the single storey terrace houses.

THE TOWNHOUSE AS A CHEAPER ALTERNATIVE TO THE SINGLE-STOREY TERRACE HOUSE

For the solution, we looked to an existing type of residential unit in Malaysia which is called a “townhouse”. Introduced in the 1980’s, it is actually a large terrace house with different owners on the ground and the first floors. This relatively new building type, is for people who can’t quite afford a terrace house, but do not want to live in flats.

The Terrace Townhouse: Townhouse at Bayu Permai in Rawang; from from GM Build website

The terrace townhouses usually have only 22’ or 24’ frontages and this is too tight. The street fronting the townhouses has gate after gate along it: there is no space at all along the street for a second car, or indeed for any visitors. There is also too little external walls for proper ventilation and lighting for the rooms within them: the room layout gets very contorted as the various rooms compete for space for windows.

THE SEXTUPLEX TOWNHOUSE

We came up with a cluster version of the townhouse. You saw a preview of it in north Johor in the last chapter "A Big and a Big Site". What used to be a sextuplex house was divided into upstairs and downstairs units. These townhouses can fill an important niche in the market: while the usual kinds landed property – terrace, semi-detached and detached houses – are becoming more unaffordable for many people, they are not yet ready to accept living in apartments. At about 1000sf built-up area, these would have the same built-up area as fsingle–storey terrace houses. They are cheaper to build than single storey houses because they have more shared walls, floors and roof, and each unit takes up a smaller piece of land. I believe that they should be priced 10% cheaper than single storey houses.

The Upper Floor Unit

The Lower Floor Unit

The new Honeycomb Townhouse designs are an improvement on the terrace townhouses now already found in city areas.

Perspectives of the Sextuplex Townhouse

The Honeycomb Townhouse has the advantage of being a corner unit with a garden to the side. There is more space for windows, and this makes the layout easier – there are enough external walls to provide windows for all the rooms. The Honeycomb Townhouse also has at least 30’ frontage. This means that after providing for the gates to the car-porches of the lower and upper floor units, there is still another 10’ to the side. In addition, the Honeycomb courtyard would mix quadruplex and sextuplex units, but only the sextuplex units are suitable for conversion to Townhouses (the quadruplex units have frontages which are too narrow). So the mixture of quadruplex and Townhouses becomes less crowded than a street of terrace townhouses.

There is another important advantage – the terrace townhouse has a rear garden for the ground floor unit but none at all for the first floor unit. But the Honeycomb Townhouse has a front garden for the upper floor unit and a rear garden for the lower ground unit!

THE QUADRUPLEX TOWNHOUSE

There is also a rectilinear version of the Townhouse. The layout is much simpler. It is also possible to have a higher percentage of townhouses in this version because all the cluster blocks except the corner access ones can be converted from quadruplexes to Townhouses.

The developer, the Seri Pengkalan Group, which had experimented with the small Honeycomb project in Merlimau Melaka had a bigger problem to solve.

In Melaka, the level of affordability is low; the most popular product was the single storey terrace houses. However, as land prices and construction costs inched upwards, developers could only extract marginal profits from the terrace houses.

This was a problem for Sei Pengkalan too.

For their development just outside a small town, Alor Gajah, about 45 minutes from Melaka city. For some time they experimented with one and half storey terrace houses – products that they could sell at a higher price but which are supposed to be only slightly more expensive than the purely single storey house. However, providing a staircase that can take up 100sf that serves just a few hundred square feet in the attic space is inefficient.

I was able to convince them to build two storey cluster houses instead that had box-like plans that were easy to build. A simpler, cheaper version of the cluster houses at Bernam Jaya was adopted and they were priced attractively RM240,000. These, together with semi-detached houses (also similar to the Bernam Jaya ones) proved easy to sell. There were enough people in Alor Gajah who were able to afford the houses.

The harder problem was that there was still a large market for the market segment that single storey houses used to occupy – houses that cost below RM200,000 down to RM120,000. The State of Melaka by that time had instituted new rules that require a portion of houses to be sold at RM150,000 or less. To overcome this problem we proposed the cluster townhouse.

KASA HEIGHTS TOWNHOUSES

In Alor Gajah, we had designed 288 units of cluster townhouses. Due to the constraint on the selling price, the client insisted the buildings be laid out along straight lines to minimize cost. Still, priced at RM150,000 there was a considerable amount of trepidation on the part of the developer. After all, the terrace townhouse had proven itself to be unpopular; not too long ago, at RM150,000, purchasers could buy single-storey terrace houses.

Nevertheless, the cluster townhouses proved themselves to be an acceptable alternative, and all the units were sold out in three months.

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Nong Chik Hillside Honeycomb

This pioneer Honeycomb project is near completion.These photos are a couple of months old; in a couple of months I hope the roads, drains and landscaping will all be completed, and the residents will be able to move in..

Confessions of a Low Cost Architect

I think it was Mark Twain who said something like: "...confession may be good for the soul, but it does hell to your reputation."

So it is with some trepidation that I'm preparing for a talk that I'm to give in another 8 days. This is the flyer for it:



If you're in Kuala Lumpur Saturday 12th and you're free, please come...

Download the Registration Form

SQUARES AT HULU SELANGOR #4

These are not quadruplex or cluster houses that look like semi-D's. These are the real ones!



They are located at the edges of the site accessed from cul-de-sacs within the site, and with the dining rooms at the rear looking onto the main road or a neighbouring land.



Like the other houses, each Type C Semi D house has a spacious 42' x 20' front garden with a porch for at least 2 cars.



But the Semi D lots are slightly bigger - 42' x 45' (ratehr than 42' x 42') such that the house is 32' wide and 25' deep.

Squares Housing at Hulu Selangor #3

Cluster House Type A
In addition to the type C house, there is this smaller and cheaper alternative.



Like the Type C clustre house, each residential block is composed of four houses. These houses are clustered around pocket parks, creating a collection of "Village Squares" throughout the development.



The houses proposed have large front yards. Each lot is 42’x 42’ such that the house can be 32’ wide and 22’ deep.



Each house has a spacious 42’ x 20’ front garden with a porch for at least 2 cars. The front elevation portrays the look of a 40’ x 80’ high end semi-detached house.



Unlike terrace houses, the 'Squares' house is not confined by their neighbours on each side. Every unit is a corner unit with more visible external walls for windows to provide light and ventilation.

Squares Housing, Hulu Selangor #2

TYPE C QUADRUPLEX 

In this development are quadruplex and duplex units. Below is one of the quadruplex housetypes.



The proposed quadruplexes have large front yards. Each lot is 42’x 42’ such that the house can be 32’ wide.and 22’ deep



Unlike terrace houses, the 'Squares' house is not confined by their neighbours on each side. Every unit is a corner unit with more visible external walls for windows to provide light and ventilation.





The 'Square' layout is based on a patent pending concept of a cluster layout design which creates a neighbourhood that is:

• safe
• friendly, and
• green

This is the layout for the following Phase 4B



This is the area breakdown for this housetype:

Small neighbourhoods and appropriate infrastructure solutions

The Mumbai Conference's Theme was "Appropriate Transportation and Infrastructural Development for Evolving Sustainable Humane Habitats". My paper was not so much about transport, but touched on infrastructure. It argues that the small neighbourhoods that I envisage open the way for small scale solution to "soft" and "hard" infrastructural needs.

Mazlin - Small Urban Neighbour Hoods

The Honeycomb Townhouse as a cheaper alternative to the Single-Storey Terrace House

Single storey terrace houses were the most common house-type for rural areas and small towns. In urban areas where land has become expensive, single storey houses are not common any more for new developments. Typically they occupied 20’X70’ plots of land and a few years ago would be priced at RM110,000 and below. However, they are expensive to build with a big area for footings and roof, a large party wall, and low density. Worse, they are perceived as less prestigious than two storey houses.



The Single storey terrace House: “IRIS GARDEN” priced about RM149,000 per unit at Bandar Saujana Putra in Selangor; from LBS Bina website

Now with building costs much higher than a few years ago, even developers in rural areas are shunning the single storey houses. The ones that get launched are also getting more expensive, leaving a gap in the supply of new houses in the RM80,000 to RM130,000 price range that used to be served by the single storey terrace houses.

There is a type of residential unit in Malaysia which is called a “townhouse”. Introduced in the 1980’s, it is actually a large terrace house with different owners on the ground and the first floors. This relatively new building type, is for people who can’t quite afford a terrace house, but do not want to live in flats.



The Terrace Townhouse: Townhouse at Bayu Permai in Rawang; from from GM Build website


We decided to come up with a Honeycomb version of the townhouse. What used to be a sextuplex house was divided into upstairs and downstairs units. These townhouses can fill an important niche in the market: while the usual kinds landed property – terrace, semi-detached and detached houses – are becoming more unaffordable for many people, they are not yet ready to accept living in apartments. At about 900sf built-up area, these can be an acceptable substitute for single–storey terrace houses. They are cheaper to build than single storey houses because they have more shared walls, floors and roof, and each unit takes up a smaller piece of land. I believe that they should be priced 10% cheaper than single storey houses.

The new Honeycomb Townhouse designs are an improvement on the terrace townhouses now already found in city areas. The terrace townhouses usually have only 22’ or 24’ frontages and this is too tight. The street fronting the townhouses has gate after gate along it: there is no space at all along the street for a second car, or indeed for any visitors. There is also too little external walls for proper ventilation and lighting for the rooms within them: the room layout gets very contorted as the various rooms compete for space for windows.



The Honeycomb Townhouse

The Honeycomb Townhouse has the advantage of being a corner unit with a garden to the side. There is more space for windows, and this makes the layout easier – there are enough external walls to provide windows for all the rooms. The Honeycomb Townhouse also has at least 30’ frontage. This means that after providing for the gates to the car-porches of the lower and upper floor units, there is still another 10’ to the side. In addition, the Honeycomb courtyard would mix quadruplex and sextuplex units, but only the sextuplex units are suitable for conversion to Townhouses (the quadruplex units have frontages which are too narrow). So the mixture of quadruplex and Townhouses becomes less crowded than a street of terrace townhouses.

There is another important advantage – the terrace townhouse has a rear garden for the ground floor unit but none at all for the first floor unit. But the Honeycomb Townhouse has a front garden for the upper floor unit and a rear garden for the lower ground unit!

Note for readers on Internet Explorer:
Sorry, my images did not appear in most of my posts: the images are now ok. To the person who complained - thanks very much!

Circular and Hexagonal Farms

I found this spectacular view of irrigated farms in Libya from deputydog



"Center pivot irrigation is basically a method of agricultural irrigation which results in a circular field of crops. a huge column of sprinklers, fixed to the ground at one end, slowly travels around in a circle whilst spraying the crops below. you can see the sprinkler arms, some of which can reach a kilometre in length".

The hexagonal forms look like they are made up of clusters of houses in the middle and farmland radiating out.




View Larger Map

Re-inventing the Cul-de-sac

I've been really busy this last few months: it's hard work trying to get the honeycomb projects moving. And so blogging has been getting more difficult.

But i've only noticed that the Honeycomb concept was featured in Tree Hugger in a feature titled "re-inventing the cul-de-sac" posted by Lloyd Alter.

So thanks Lloyd!

The post attracted 15 comments, and I'm reproducing them here. I'm grateful for the positive comments, but even the critical ones are useful.


Chris H. said:

I like the idea of higher density, but it seems to me that there are still the issues of car dependence and that it doesn't lend itself to redevelopment and change. I still don't know what's wrong with the grid system, especially when the terrain lends itself to it. There aren't any commercial amenities nearby to anyone such as groceries, restaurants, or entertainment venues so the automobile is still going to be the main blight... er... source of transportation

I guess what it boils down to for me is that high density sprawl is still sprawl, and therefore still the problem. I appreciate what he is trying to do, but as gas prices continue to rise for most of the world, the cul-de-sac just seems like the wrong thing to encourage.

April 7, 2008 1:22 PM


Kearns said:

I'd live there.

Wonder if my boss would let me work remote from Malaysia?

April 7, 2008 2:52 PM

nobody's perfect said:

I still disagree with the usage of cul-de-sac being propagated here. A cul-de-sac is simply the end of street circle. You can have higher density townhomes on cul-de-sacs, or even an apartment building.

April 7, 2008 4:45 PM

Damon said:

@ nobody's perfect: you can, but how often do you? And like Chris mentioned, low density is not the only problem of this layout.

April 7, 2008 8:35 PM

Roland said:

There's a type of dutch street called a woonerf, that has all the benefits of a cul-de-sac (slowed traffic and...well that's it isn't it?) plus more. The idea is to put obstacles in the path of the cars to slow them down to below 20 mph. This allows pedestrians and bicyclists to share the street with the cars. The street then becomes a social space rather than a highway. They haven't caught on in the US, because drivers don't like the idea of slowing down that much. But, ironically, that is exactly what the beloved cul-de sacs do. They slow drivers down, which increases safety.
April 7, 2008 8:45 PM

Dan said:

See, now these are the types of grids I always wanted to make in SimCity. I imagined hexagonal residential spaces like these with commercially zoned triangles between them. Damn those square grid limitations.

April 8, 2008 12:15 AM

Nathan Blair said:

I love the idea, but I don't see why it would eliminate the need for cars, or reduce sprawl. It looks cool though, and I'd have no problem moving to a subdivision like that.
April 8, 2008 2:00 AM

I don't understand why you think cul-de-sac has to mean car dependency and sprawl. But then not being American I don't see the square grid as being "normal".

Surely in a grid, having roads on all sides and greater road access, promotes car use. I think you are connecting the layout with other aspects of the situation in which it is normally used (in your experience). So, I don't see it is the street pattern that influences it - it is the nearness to facilities, the size of plots, etc.

The layout is surely not the key to what happens - whather grid, dead-end or the normal for Europe (wiggly roads and odd angles, some dead-end, some through).

April 8, 2008 11:35 AM

anonymous said

The point of buying a house on a cul-de-sac is that you get a larger yard and less traffic. If you increase the housing density then appeal is gone. Nobody wants to live at the end of the road because it's the end of the road. Just think of trying to find a house in that maze!

My parents live on a cul-de-sac. A lot of their traffic is kids on skates and bikes.

April 8, 2008 12:15 PM

Josh said:

The reason why cul-de-sacs translate into car dependency and sprawl is a lack of connectivity. Compare the ratio of legs (raod segments) to nodes (intesections). Connected landscapes will have more nodes per leg while disconnected landscapes will have fewer nodes per leg. Disconnected landscapes mean that people will often have to travel further (by the way the ant walks) to reach their destinations. This translates into using a car more often. On the other hand, connected landscapes make the trips shorter and promote walking. (Remember how roads are used by both cars and pedestrians, as well as bicycles, etc.)
The first cul-de-sacs had meaningful destinations within them (such as small grocery stores and other services); modern cul-de-sacs do not. In order to reinvent the cul-de-sac and make it meaningful as a small enclave of a community, we must remember that a community invilves more than just residences.

April 8, 2008 1:20 PM

Anonymous sustainable coward said:

mmm... I find this 'planned' geometric format as distasteful as the grid system that has propogated over the US. The proposition that 'environmentalists dislike cul-de-sac's' an absurd generalisation. I live in a cul-de-sac, in a village in Europe where the streets evolved in line with the local geography, not due to some artificial town planners lego-set.

I cycle everywhere, and get the train to the local town if I need to. I don't have a car. My life is not more energy intensive or car dependent. The vegetables and fruit I grow in my garden are distinctly low-carbon (or is that 'energy secure'?)

Please think a little about context before committing to large sweeping generalisations based on US car loving lifestyles. I do like the 'green spaces' idea though. I find that we interact with our neighbours and share much more because we all look out for one another - stick that in your high rise city boxes and smoke it.

The 'city bias' in Treehugger can be quite unimaginative at times.

c'mon guys... your're better than this.

April 8, 2008 1:27 PM

dan rossini, Diocese of LaCrosse said:

Each post gets a certain number of ad dollars for each viewing. The more viewers per page, the more $$ for Treehugger.com.

Therefore, since the previous post was so popular, they will continue to talk about this silly subject and roll in the cash. Because I think 95% of us readers can agree that this is pretty much a pie-in-the-sky pipe dream to get builders to modify current modern building techniques like cul-de-sacs with this website. But it will generate views, that's for sure.

I fell for it. Count me in for adding a few extra dollars to Treehugger.com's profits... that is Discovery Communications, the cable programming giant's pockets. Cha-ching!

April 8, 2008 1:49 PM

Mayyie said:

I like his use of the tesselar hexagon.
April 9, 2008 1:05 AM

dyspeptic said:

I still want to know what type of housing the writer lives in.

Minimizing paved surface is a good idea. It is at odds with this connectivity idea, though. That geometric grid has more paved area per living unity than any cul-de-sac arrangement I've ever seen. Why aren't we greening the car instead of shortening drives?

My observation of planned co-housing communities is that they are just cul-de-sacs with more fences, not less, and just as many cars. But one is cool and the other is not. It is all class signalling - 100%.

LA: the writer of this post (not the original writer at the Star) lives in a detached house, downtown, on a 30 foot wide lot, on a street that is part of the urban grid. My mother in law lives on a cul-de-sac and my wife tells me that it was an absolutely wonderful place to grow up. My mother-in-law is now old and has to maintain a car because there is not a single store within walking distance. Where we live, there are three large grocery stores and more variety stores than you can count within a ten minute walking radius, and half the people on the street don't have cars. the cul-de-sac is lovely, fun, great for kids but is simply not sustainable.

April 11, 2008 6:55 PM

The Interior Design of a Quadruplex House

This is an early proposal by my colleague Zaman. It is the quadruplex at the hillside Honeycomb project in Johor Baru.


SLIDESHOW

What do you think?

History of Nong Chik

The hillside Honeycomb project in Johor Bahru is in an old part of the city. Old government quarters will be demolished to make way for new housing. Not everyone looks forward to the change: there are memories here...

So I did a little research.


Syed Muhammad Alsagoff (1836- 1906) and Maharaja (later Sultan) Abu Bakar of Johor (reigned 1862-95)

Syed Muhammd Alsagoff, also known as Nong Chik, obtained concession land in Johor Bahru and gave his name to the kampong that he established. He was the grandson of Tuan Syed Abdul Rahman Alsagoff, an Arab businessman from Hadramaut in Yemen who came to the new British colony of Singapore with his son, Syed Ahmad, in 1824.

Syed Abdul Rahman established Alsagoff & Company in Singapore in 1848 which traded in spices, rubber, sago, coffee, coco, pineapples and others.

Apart from trading it also had a plantation, the largest sawmill in the region and the Straits Cycle & Motor Company.

When Syed Abdul Rahman died, all his business were inherited by Syed Ahmad. Syed Ahmad married Raja Siti, the daughter of Hajah Fatimah of Sulawesi who was herself a rich business woman who owned many cargo ships.

When Hajah Fatimah died, her business was run by her son-in-law Syed Ahmad, adding to his wealth.

Syed Ahmad had three girls and one boy. When he died in 1875, the family's wealth was passed down to Syed Muhamad Alsagoff.

Syed Muhammad Alsagoff was close to Sultan Abu Bakar of Johor; apart from the Nong Chik land, he also received a large concession in Kukup. He set Constantinople Estates which grew rubber, sago, cocoa and pepper. He even received permission from the Sultan to issue his own currency at the Costantinople Estate!


One Dollar. Notice the Arabic Chinese and English used on the note!

Source: kukupnet.tripod.com

Tessellation Planning in India?

I came to the idea of Tessellation Planning while trying to solve the problem of qiuality, affordable housing in Malaysia. I hope it might also be practical in other countries. Which is why I am very open with my ideas in my blog and website.

A 3rd year architectural student at Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India, sent me drawings her housing project as part of her resumee.

I was very happy that my website had helped her along! I think her work is pretty good. The different types of housing - 150sm detached house, 110sm two storey apartments and 75sm three storey apartments - are nicely blended together.





My thanks to Stuti Bhatnagar.