Inhabiting Indeterminancy

Exchange District, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

The idea of storage is not foreign to the Exchange District (after all, in its heyday it was a warehouse district).  In an effort to establish an urban housing project in Winnipeg’s downtown, storing people need now be considered.  However, due to the restraints of the site (three lots, each flanked by two buildings), new building typologies needed to be considered.

The project was inspired by the ‘pack-rat’ (one of the urban psyches explored in the preliminary stages of the studio).  Pack-rats have a tendency to stack things on top of each other in an effort to take advantage of limited floor or shelf area.  The resulting housing project attempts to organize inhabitants in a similar fashion.