TESSELLATION PLANNING

AND
HONEYCOMB HOUSING

Abstract
In Honeycomb housing, small courtyard
neighbourhoods of 5 – 6 homes are linked
together to form cul-de-sac communities of up
to 42 houses, which in turn form part of a
larger neighbourhood of up to 300 houses.
This physical arrangement promotes
communal interaction and safety from traffic
and crime.

The novel house types have wide frontages

and every attached house is a corner unit. The
compact footprints encourage contour housing.
Every house faces a public garden in the
centre of the courtyard, accessible for the old,
disabled and young, where big canopy trees
can be planted.

Using mathematics, we can prove that

substantially less road area is required which
improves both the green and saleable land
area. Densities can be higher.

The mathematical basis of Tessellation

planning allowed us to develop prototype
software tools that produces pre-drawing
feasibility studies, and following this, rapidly
creates the layout plan and land-use
breakdown.
 TESSELLATION PLANNING
AND
HONEYCOMB HOUSING
• Mazlin Ghazali, MP Davis and
• M Durack Arkitek M Ghazali
• admin@tessellar.com
Copyright September 2004
Fly over the country and you will
see rows and rows of houses. Is
there another way to lay out
buildings?
We present here a new method of
subdividing land for housing that,
we believe, produces better social,
environmental and aesthetic
outcomes, but in a way that uses
land more efficiently.
It was conceived as a practical
and economic substitute to the
terrace house, but it can also be
seen to be an alternative to row
housing and the linear approach
to planning.
Conventional row housing and
the linear approach to planning
Dwellings can be arranged on
individual plots of land as
detached units or linked to each
other. Detached or linked they line
up along streets to form row
housing. In a row house, owners
of individual plots of landed
property maintain sole occupancy
rights.
Orthogonal grids have been used
as the fundamental tool for
subdividing land. Linear roads
provide roads to individually
owned plots of land. Roads and
gridlines may be distorted by
design or necessity but retain their
linear nature.
Terrace housing
Terrace housing has been long
been considered the densest form
of landed property development
possible. Not only in Malaysia but
all over the world.
Here in Malaysia it is the terrace
house that predominates. The
typical lot varies from 16’ x 50’ to
24’ x 100’, but the most common
lots now are between 20’ x 65’
and 22’ x 70’. The ubiquitous
terrace house plan has been
designed and re-designed many
times but always within the same
restrictive framework without
much scope for innovation.
The layout also has become
stereotyped. In the typical housing
estate,
the terrace houses are lined
up along grid-lines with 40’ Strata-title development Organic Layouts
service roads in front with
much smaller back lanes and Groups of houses share Following the trend from more
side lanes. Communal areas ownership of the communal developed countries, local
for schools, civic and religions facilities allowing greater freedom planners have devised ”organic”
building as well as open areas in designing the access routes layouts where winding roads
for children playgrounds and and common facilities allowing and occasional cul-de-sacs
parks are also provided. high densities. break the boredom of the iron
Despite the infrastructure grid, but density is sacrificed. A
The Desa Park Homes Guthrie development at Bukit
provided, the design of many
development is an example of this Jelutong is an example of this
housing estates does really
type of approach. It is able to trend. But the houses there cost
meet the practical needs of
achieve as good densities as a RM500,000 or more.
the average resident. Apart
conventional terrace house layout.
from the aesthetic boredom of
However, strata- titles are not
rows and rows of houses,
considered as valuable as land
among the drawbacks of the
titles.
terrace house layout is the
lack of public security and a
genuine sense of community 1

Current alternatives to
terrace housing
Trying to improve the
monotony of housing in rows,
planners have devised various
strategies:

Desa Park Homes BukitJelutong,

Clustered Layouts

Similarly the cluster approach can

produce interesting outcomes but,
in most cases, loses out on
efficiency.

The circular clustering of houses

at Brondby near Copenhagen in
Denmark shows a wide expanse
of green area between the
clusters.

Honeycomb housing

Using the tessellation method of

planning, all the houses are built
around small parks with large
shade trees in hexagonal cul-de-
sacs, which efficiently interlock to
form townships similar to a bees’
honeycomb.
Tessellation
Segments of the tile
In mathematics, to tessellate
A small triangular tile, the
means to cover a plane with a
mother-tile, is the basic building
pattern without gaps or overlap.
block that creates the
For centuries artists and
honeycomb layout. It contains
craftsmen have used
three requisite elements of a
tessellations as a tool to create
township layout:
visual effects on surfaces.
Tiling is the most common • Road
form of tessellation. Regular • House & garden
tessellations occur when the • Public area
tiles are regular polygons and
they are the simplest form We call these colored segments,
The Muslim craftsmen in Spain daughter-tiles.
in the 15th century created
beautifully complex visual
effects by tessellating a small
simple basic tile pattern.
Intricate and complex designs
can be built-up from basic tile
patterns in a simple way by this
process.
We apply this creative
mathematical technique to
town–planning. In Honeycomb
housing, the creative power of
tessellation is applied to town
planning, where the colours are
not merely decorative but
represent functional space.
The mother-tiles and close
variations of it tessellate according
to simple rules to form what seems
a complex and intricate pattern.
When tessellating, daughter-tiles
meet and link up with similar ones
in adjoining tiles. The same colored
daughter tiles form conjoined-tiles.
It is the complex shapes of these
interlocking daughter tiles that we
see: not the simplicity of the
triangular grid.

Conjoined house/garden tiles form

the basis of new house types.
Linked Honeycomb houses ideally
join back to back and are accessed
from different cul-de-sacs. This is
the case of the duplex and triplex.
But they can also link side to side
at the same time, as in the case of
the quadruplex and sextuplex.
Designing the courtyard tile
Designing bigger neighbourhoods

A courtyard tile containing the When the courtyard tile is tessellated,

planning elements necessary to the roads are linked to create a bigger
form a small community is neighbourhood without loss of
created by tessellating the efficiency. Opportunities to link
mother-tiles to form a hexagon. dwelling units into multi-unit blocks
exist along the tile boundaries.
Communal space is created in
the middle, surrounded by the Social aspect of Honeycomb
houses. The road accesses the housing
individual units internally and
creates an extremely efficient Using the tessellation method of
circulation system. planning, houses are built around a
small park with large shady trees in a
cul-de-sac: this communal garden,
Through design, we have easily accessible to all, acts as a
created a spatial boundary, a social focus for a small, friendly
central area that can become neighbourhood and is a defensible
the communal focus, and a space designed to naturally reduce
sense of entry into this place. crime.
The design is such that there is
a clear, common perception of The short winding roads reduce traffic
the cluster as a ‘homezone’, a speed so that urban areas become
UK term denoting the smallest safe and pleasant for children and
neighbourhood. pedestrians, encouraging outdoor
social interaction and the
. Connection to 50 feet road development of a community.
Cars versus pedestrians
Planners have long realized the
negative effect of fast moving
traffic to neighbourhoods.
Radburn in New Jersey, built
over 70 years ago in the US, is
the prototype for the separation
of pedestrians from traffic. Delft
in the Netherlands, built in the
1960’s, is one of the first
examples where the roads are
designed with traffic-calming
features to slow down vehicles.2
In Honeycomb Housing the
network of roads comprises
looping cul-de-sacs and short
connecting roads leading to
distributor roads.
This road pattern slows down
traffic naturally rendering it safe
for pedestrians.
The short connecting road with
no access to houses provides
space for visitors’ parking.e-sacs
and short connecting roads
leading to distributor roads
Creating Communities
The outdoor space between
buildings is an important arena for
social interaction. Social contact
and spontaneous interaction are
important building blocks towards
creating a sense of community.
The creation of a safe, pleasant
and shady area of suitable size,
just outside the home, is a basic
feature of Honeycomb housing.
The central courtyard becomes
the social focus of the
neighbourhood. In this location it
is accessible to all to enjoy, the
very young, the old and the
disabled.
Sociologists find that individuals
relate better to small groups rather
than large.
In Honeycomb housing the
neighbourhood contains only 5 to
40 units defined clearly by the
single access road and the
communal courtyards. It is easier
to recognize each other, to get
acquainted, to form informal social
groups and to initiate collective
action.
Defensible Space
Environmental design can assist
The issue of public security in
in providing natural surveillance
residential areas is a hot current
of the external spaces. The
topic. The concept of Defensible
Honeycomb layout can be seen
Space3 with hierarchy of private
as a technique to design
space, semi-private space and
townships where every house
public space, after 30 years, is
lies in a cul-de-sac which
already widely accepted.
naturally produces defensible
spaces.
Residents must be allowed to
exercise influence over the
Furthermore it completely
environment just outside their
eliminates back-lanes from
homes: visitors should know when
where 70% of break-ins in
they are entering a semi-private
Malaysia originate.4
domain.
Play areas for small children
Play is an important arena for
learning. In the growing up process,
the child becomes more and more
independent of the parent,
exploring first the spaces around
the mother and progressing to
other rooms in the house, the front
yard and so on. The opportunity for
exploring new environment is best
presented in small discreet steps
so that children can explore them
at their own pace. 5
The growing up process of the
kampong childhood that Lat,s
cartoons vividly describe is now
just a memory for city dwellers.
The problem with the typical
Malaysian situation is that the
process of exploring new territory
independent of the parent stops at
the front gate. Beyond that is not
considered safe.
When he is finally old enough to go
out unaccompanied by an adult it
is too big a transition.
The space outside the home, In this respect their shape is
easily overseen by parents very much like big detached
should be made conducive to houses, and it is evident from
play and the growing up process. existing that the typical
Play areas with football fields developer flattens large
some minutes away from the expanses of land for his
home do not serve this function. terrace houses, but lets the
bungalows go up and down to
better suit the original
The Environmental aspect of contours.
Honeycomb housing
Tessellation planning makes
undulating land suitable for high-
density landed property
development with less cut and fill.
Big trees in the cul-de-sacs
provide cooling shade; they also
serve as source of food and
habitat for small birds and
animals.
Sloping sites
To build long rows
of terrace houses cheaply require
hills to be cut and streams to be
filled. Honeycomb link units have
compact footprints that allow
more level changes to be placed
between the block.
Bringing nature into townships
The road shoulder with its cables and
pipes are not suitable for trees: but
big shady species can thrive in the
small communal gardens of
fhoneycomb Housing. The clearing of
trees to create concrete jungles are
the main contribution to the heat-
island effect. Maximizing the tree
canopy area is the strategy used in
Honeycomb housing to minimise the
heat island effect.
With the profusion of big trees, small
trees and shrubs, we can start
thinking of landscaping not only in
terms of beautifying the environment
but as a source of food and habitat
for small animals. Linking the small
islands of green via the footpath
landscaping and the private gardens
will encourage biological diversity.
Wildlife technology to be developed
further by UPM will introduce suitable
species of butterflies, birds and small
mammals to make the Honeycomb
Township its home.6
Aesthetic Aspect
Tessellation planning allows new
townships to break free from the
mental grid-lock that produces
rigid rows of housing without any
cost penalty. To most architects,
designing yet another terrace
house is a boring chore.
Honeycomb housing with its
novel house types represents a
new refreshing challenge for
architects.
They lead to new house types
with wider, more articulated
frontages; where linked units like
the duplex and triplex give the
impression of being detached
units viewed from the entrance of
each house.
The quadruplex and sextuplex
give the impression of being
semi-detached units. These new
forms give architects more room
for creativity.
 DETACHED DUPLEX

TRIPLEX QUADRUPLEX SEXTUPLEX

Hierarchy of roads

It is very easy to get totally lost when
looking for a house in the typical
Malaysian township. Make one
wrong turn and it is easy to
compound this error with other
mistakes which takes you further
and further away from where we
actually want to go.
Using the tessellation method, we
can adopt a strategy to make it easy
for people to navigate the streets
and not to have to worry about
getting lost.
Along Lingkaran 3 branch out Miss a turning on the circular road,
Desa 1/3, Desa 2/3, Desa 3/3 and and we just have to keep going
so on. From Lekok 2 we can get until we get back to the junction
to Lekok1/2. again. Errors are not compounded.
The system is self correcting.
The fact that the smaller roads do
not connect to other small roads
means that if we make a wrong
turn into one of them, we go out
the way we came.

In the example shown, there is one

main entrance road which leads to a
circular road which dominates the 50
acre site. Jalan 1 leads to Lekok 2
and Lingkaran 3.

These are the distribution roads.

The houses are in the cul-de-sacs
which are accessed from these main
roads.
Apartments
Tessellation planning can also be
applied to the layout of apartments,
where the units cluster around the
central lobby of each block and
the blocks, in turn, are arrayed
around a central courtyard which
contains the driveway, car parks
and a central garden.
The Economic Aspect of
Honeycomb housing
The terrace house can be
seen as a row of houses
surrounded by roads. In
contrast, Honeycomb houses
surround the road. It is easy to
understand intuitively that
roads accessing internally are
more efficient than roads
accessing units from the
external boundary. This
accounts for the efficiency of
cul-de-sacs. Given a fixed
area and number of houses to
access, the shorter the cul-de-
sac, the less the area taken
up by the road. A square cul-
de-sac neighbourhood has
less road area than a long
rectangular one.
The circular one by itself would be
the most efficient. However, as we
have seen from the example from
Brondby, Denmark, the circle
does not tessellate.
The hexagonal neighbourhoods
interlock each other without gap or
overlap.
The second consideration is the
length of the distribution roads
that encircle a precinct. The
perimeter of an hexagonal
precinct is 7% shorter than the
perimeter of a square one.
The third factor is the shape of the
individual lot and its effect on the
Buildable footprint after taking into
setback requirements. In the example
shown, the truncated triangle shape
of 6000 square feet yields a higher
plinth area compared to a typical 60
feet x 100 feet site.
Notice how the improvement in plinth
area accompanies a considerable
aesthetic improvement.
REDUCING ROADS AND IMPROVING LAND-USE
EFFICIENCY

The basic neighbourhood comprising 5 and 16 units

of quadriplexes and duplexes is compared with a
terrace house arrangement of an equivalent 5 and16
units of terrace houses. It is demonstrated in the
table below that the honeycomb layout is more land-
use efficient.

A similar comparison between 2 and 8 units of

detached units of terrace and Honeycomb layouts
respectively comes to the same conclusion.
Comparisons of private and public green areas, and
of potential tree canopy areas also yielded
interesting results.
 TERRACE HOUSING
Showing 288 houses
Low-medium cost d/s
1200sf, 18’ frontage
3 bedrooms

HONEYCOMB HOUSING
Showing 258 houses
Low-medium cost d/s
1200sf
3 Bedrooms
Proof of concept
Presenting our ideas to various people in
the housing industry, we find that most
warm to our ideas. However, doubts are
often expressed as to whether others in
the industry or consumers can accept
this radically new concept. Furthermore,
many also are skeptical about our claims
on the improvement in land-use
efficiency, and expect such ‘complicated’
layouts to be more expensive. Certainly,
we agree that our claims on the cost
savings are counter intuitive.
Consumer and industry surveys
Reaction to Honeycomb housing has
been tested through surveys.
We undertook a targeted consumer
survey at an exhibition of houses for sale.
We gave out questionnaires after a 15
minute explanation at our booth,.
From 116 respondents 79% agreed that
they ‘liked to live in a tessellation housing
scheme’. Then we went to industry. From
69 members of the Housing Developers
who responded to a questionnaire given
out after a 60 minute presentation, 78%
agreed to the statement that ‘tessellation
layouts are desirable’.
Another survey on attendees of a
seminar on ‘Lightweight Steel for
Residential Construction’ yielded
similar results.
Mathematical model
Distances and areas of a
Tessellation Layout and an
equivalent Terrace Layout were
expressed in terms of variables x, y,
etc.
Using formulae from the Pythagoras
Theorem and the Solution to
Quadratic Equations, a
mathematical model of the two
alternatives was built up. We then
tracked how land-use efficiency and
density vary as a range of buildable
footprint areas of the two
alternatives are input.
We were able to prove that
Tessellation layouts reduce the total
area of roads, thereby resulting in
more saleable land, and lowering
infrastructural cost. We also showed
that densities can be improved.
 Land-use efficiency and density

By varying the inputs we can see the

result on the outputs and capture this on
a graph. We can show that within
practical limits, the sextuplex in a
honeycomb layout is always more land-
use efficient and dense than the terrace
house

Infrastructure

By going through the same process with

the length of service mains we found big
reductions in the quantity of roads and
drains.

We found some increase in the cost of

sewerage but overall, there is a
substantial reduction in Infrastructure
costs.

IT aspect and prototype software

The industry-standard method of

designing housing layout is largely an
intuitive process. The design and
drawing of a housing layout is required
before a feasibility study can be done
and the first solution is very unlikely to
be satisfactory.
The search for an optimal solution
involves a lot of hard work with
multiple iterations between layout
drawings and feasibility studies and
is often not fully done.
By contrast, the tessellation method
of planning involves geometrical
manipulation that can be captured
by mathematical formulae and a set
of algorithms that can be
programmed.
Proposed systematic computer-
aided process
Thus, a key feature of the
tessellation method of planning is
the fact that it makes possible an
application software that can rapidly
produce a feasibility model that can
handle what-if questions to reach an
optimal layout proposal.
A further capability is the almost
automatic production of a drawing
of that layout.
Projects
There is no similar software in the
market that provides these capabilities
From case studies and using the
based on the conventional method of
feasibility planner, we are able to
design. The application software
show developers that they are able
described may become a compelling
to improve their sales revenue from
alternative to the current slow and
the increase in sellable land and
laborious intuitive method.
units, and reduce their costs by
cutting down the amount of roads
Using the mathematical model and
and drains to be constructed. We
employing a set of algorithms, and
are already working as consultants
partly funded by Malaysian Venture
on real sites to realize the first
Capital Bhd, we have produced:
tessellation developments.
.
• A prototype of software that can
rapidly produce a feasibility model that
Universiti Industri Selangor
is able to handle what-if questions to
reach an optimal layout proposal
This is a prototype tessellation
without drawing a layout plan first.
layout applied to student housing in
Density and percentage sellable land
Berjuntai Bestari, Selangor. Five
are calculated based on the
storey walk-up apartments for 5000
mathematical model.
students are laid out on a hexagonal
and pentagonal grid creating the
• AUTOCAD add-on tools that simplify
cul-de-sac courtyards. The
and speed-up the drawing of
construction work is already 80%
tessellation layout.
complete and CF is expected by
February 2005 before the students
Our near term objective is to be able to
move in.
produce a preliminary feasibility study
during an hour-long consultation,
followed by a detailed tessellation
housing layout 6 hours later.
 PROJECTS

Puncak Alam

We are working on the

layout of a 400 acre mixed
development site north of
Shah Alam. The proposal
includes low and low
medium cost apartments,
medium to high medium cost
attached housing, industrial
and commercial properties
and the full range of
amenities that make up a
township.

400 ACRE PLOT 9 PUNCAK ALAM

The next step

Tessellation Planning can be seen to

be an invention and we have taken
steps to apply for patents in Malaysia
and Australia. The breakthrough
came over a year ago after eight
years of working on the concept of
generic designs for housing. Since
then, we have not only worked hard
on rapidly commercializing the
invention, but have also spent
considerable resources in exploring
the more long term possibilities in
research and software development.

REFERENCES.
1 Encyclopedia of Malaysia Vol 5
Architecture, Chen Voon Fee ed.
2 Jan Gehl “Life Between Buildings”
(1971)
3 Oscar Newman “Defensible Space”
(1972).
4 M Y Abas & I N Sugianto “Break
Ins Malaysian Houses” Silpakorn
Architectural Discourse 2004
5 John & Elizabeth Newson “Four
Years Old in an Urban Community
(1968)