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[MOD]RIAN
[MOD]RIAN is a microhome system designed to reclaim underutilized parking spaces throughout the City of Toronto, responding to issues of unaffordability and housing scarcity faced by the city's young professionals. By reframing the use of public transit as a sustainable strategy and remediation of mass congestion as well as commute times, the project aims to reduce the use of automobiles within the city and develop new networks of community within parking infrastructure.
The microhome is prefabricated off-site and assembled in situ, allowing for rapid deployment with minimal disruption. Its modular design is conceived to be expandable or reconfigured as future needs and challenges arise. Unlike large-scale condominium development, which is capital intensive, slow to deliver, and environmentally costly due to demolition, excavation, and material waste, this modular housing unit adapts to what already exists rather than erasing it, allowing housing to emerge through reuse of space rather than replacement. Using the standard parking spot, 2.5 m × 5.6 m, as a guideline, the 5 m × 5 m modular housing is designed as a response to the typology of a typical parking lot. As a result, architectural elements such as doors and entryways respond to these underlying geometries to allow each unit to easily expand.
The base module provides a complete off-grid dwelling, with the capacity to integrate additional units such as the bedroom (including additional solar panels) and ensuites (featuring both solar panels and grey- and black-water tanks). Beyond a single dwelling, the system proposes a new infrastructural layer for the city: a network of micro-communities embedded within the former logic of parking. As these units multiply, they reshape the role of urban land, fostering new forms of sustainability, collective identity, and access to critical housing across densifying global cities like Toronto.
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