← Close Project

A Home Away from Home
Housing + Community Design

McGill University
ARCH 406
Group project
2024

Housing that changes as housholds change.

Designed for immigrant households whose needs may change across generations, A Home Away From Home proposes a housing system with adaptable boundaries that can redistribute space over time. The proposal connects new housing directly to an existing YMCA community centre, building on a public institution already embedded in the neighbourhood.

Arrival, independence, partnership, children, visiting parents, and aging can all change how much space a household needs and how that space is used. Instead of treating these changes as exceptions, the project makes change itself a starting condition for design.

Household needs evolve over time, moving between shared living, independence, growing families, multigenerational care, and smaller households later in life.

Site analysis mapping transportation and green space, surrounding building types, and the percentage of immigrant residents.

Typical plan

Adaptation A

Adaptation B

Adaptation C

Typical plan and three possible adaptations of the same residential floor.

Rather than fixing every unit permanently, adjacent rooms can be redistributed so the balance of bedrooms and living space changes over time. This allows the building to accommodate different household structures without requiring residents to leave their community.

Ground-floor plan showing the connection between the new housing, the existing YMCA community centre, communal programs, and the internal courtyard.

Typical residential floor showing the distribution of unit types.

Section C through the residential wing, showing the relationship between adaptable unit types, shared circulation, and patterns of everyday domestic life.

The project extends adaptability from the individual home to the scale of the building.

A varied mix of unit types is distributed across the residential wings, allowing different household sizes to live alongside one another within the same structural and circulation system.

At ground level, the new residential wings connect directly to the existing YMCA community centre while framing a shared outdoor space. Communal programs, circulation, and landscape extend domestic life beyond the individual unit, creating places for gathering, play, shared use, and informal support between residents.

Street view of the residential and communal volumes.

View from a shared exterior walkway toward the internal courtyard .

Shared exterior walkways and bridges are treated as more than circulation.

Overlooking the courtyard, they become thresholds between private and collective life—places where residents can pause, meet their neighbours, and remain connected to activity below.

The courtyard brings circulation, landscape, play, and communal programs together at the centre of the project. Rather than isolating each household behind an enclosed corridor, the building creates visual and social connections between residents.

Test sheet for wood dye.

Physical model within the site model.

The physical model brought together the project’s massing, facade rhythm, courtyard, and illuminated shared spaces. Seen at night, the illuminated ground floor becomes a threshold between the neighborhood and the homes above—a visible expression of the collective life contained within the project.

Illuminated physical model.

Physical model detail.

← Close Project

A Home Away From Home
McGill University
ARCH 406
Montreal, Quebec
2024

Instructor: Evelyne Bouchard
Team members: Katya Tyutyunyk, Fidan Hajizada, Sarah Kayed