Tracing back to the contradictory history of suburb development, people from rural areas seemingly profit less from the process of infrastructure advancement accompanied by the technological renewal, causing a gap between the suburbia and cities. It leads to the phenomenon that people used to considering suburbia as dystopian, isolated place. With the improvement of new technologies (such as prefabrication, automation and Hyperloop transportation) and the residents’ change of attitudes towards suburb life, the positive impact
on cities in infrastructure and technologies will be quite possible happen at suburb areas. That means, it is imperative for architects, urban designers and infrastructure engineers to rethink how to make futuristic community environment at suburbia run parallel with these changes in 50 years.

Hyperloop Suburbia presents a vision of futuristic residential living of transit-oriented community by world simulation and architectural interface. I explore how future infrastructure system will impact on the suburb environment including patterns of streets, infrastructure improvements and housing strategy. Made as a pilot project to imagine rural housing development around Hyperloop, this new system is located at central area of
Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles.

As we know of the definition of pre-fab architecture under prefabrication technology: the construction should be fast, cost effective and changeable over time. And we can imagine it could be strongly possible to offer a democratic alternative for community displacement in the suburbia future. That prompted me to imagine a world where all the elements are prefabricated including residence units, infrastructure system, amenities, greening parts and even ground, which is called Tray Landscape. In this futuristic suburb world, all the different elements will be placed and inserted on the corresponding “sockets” of prefabricated tray-like ground. Specifically, this project presents a prototype of neighborhood which is a high-tech oriented and relative low-cost prefabricated community system for suburbia of Sherman Oak around Hyperloop route. The new suburb world beyond Tray Landscape will provide opportunity that homeowners can build any structure they like on top of it.

In the next era of Hyperloop transportation, Pods play the role as the passengers’ environment of round trip between downtown and suburbia and this kind of transportation-oriented space will also represent a kind of new lifestyle in architectural and urban aspect. Within the new community, the basic shape of pre-fab housing units are designed as highly customized shared pods. The volume, materials and space of these units could be customized and changeable. Underneath these pods, there will be new prefabricated infrastructure installed at
ground level. The new ground of suburbia will be constituted by essential structure foundation and infrastructure, which means the prefabricated housing components could be arranged on the Tray Landscape automatically and rapidly. That would visibly change suburb pattern of streets and infrastructure system of residence.

The new suburbia system simulation will be an incremental regional model that can be flexibly integrated into the environmental fabric of existing and new regional contexts. It’s possible to provide new prototype to develop  aesthetically delightful, transit driven, pluralist communities across different rural areas.