Archinect - News

Multifamily projects took 19.9 months on average to complete in 2023

2024-09-30T18:50:00-04:00

A new report from the National Association of Home Builders has shown the average length of time it takes to complete construction of a multifamily dwelling was 19.9 months in 2023.

The NAHB findings draw from the 2023 Survey of Construction (SOC) from the U.S. Census Bureau, which also notes that buildings of more than 20 units took a longer (22 months) time on average to complete. (Projects of the same size took an average of 19 months to complete before the pandemic.)

Some potential factors could be lagging supply chain issues and lack of construction labor nationwide. According to data from the latest Census Bureau report on the housing market, "Privately-owned housing completions in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,788,000."

The reporting can be compared to the latest Dodge Construction Network construction starts data here.

L.A moves new rezoning plan forward, critics say it will codify exclusion

2024-09-28T10:07:00-04:00

Will L.A. continue to preserve communities dominated by single-family homes? Or will the city make a historic shift to allow for more affordable housing in areas that have long excluded it?

City Planning officials voted on Thursday to approve the plan, which the LA Times pointed out is limited to just 28% of the city and areas that are heavily zoned for commercial and/or multifamily construction.

The publication had to use a F.O.I.L. Act petition to obtain a copy of the city-funded Architectural Resources Group/USC-UCLA report on outdated single-family zoning policies, which reads: "Detached single-family residences cover a disproportionate amount of the land zoned residential. This has resulted in an unaffordable housing market due, in part, to a pervasive lack of supply and the fact that single-family homes are more expensive than multi-family residences."

City Council has until February to approve a final rezoning plan in line with the state's original 2022 mandate.

Terner Center's report on construction defect liability turns a new page for California housing reformers

2024-07-26T11:48:00-04:00

The latest report from UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation on the stasis of multifamily developments in California has identified existing construction defect liability laws as a barrier to enabling housing justice statewide.

This issue involves the risk taken on by developers of condominium projects and particularly affects BIPOC communities who are less likely to be homeowners than their peers. California’s policies are therein compared to others in the United States and Canada. The findings will help lead to legal reforms to increase homeownership and should be considered especially by architects working in the state's surging multifamily market.

New apartment construction in NYC at historic low again

2024-07-14T08:00:00-04:00

The crisis of housing in New York City isn't going anywhere soon: The latest data from a key city agency has revealed a pronounced stalemate in the number of new apartment buildings currently planned for construction in all five boroughs. A lack of tax incentives, including the expiration of rule 421a, and high construction costs (as we covered in our two-part feature on the current economy for the architecture industry) are both likely motivating factors.

Bloomberg reports: "Last month, developers filed 36 permits for multifamily buildings, which, excluding the period of Covid lockdowns in 2020, was the lowest monthly count for May in a decade, data from the New York City Department of Buildings showed. And last year, permits for about 15,500 apartment units were filed, the lowest since 2016, according to the Department of City Planning."

This revelation, one year after the borough of Manhattan approved exactly zero new apartment starts, mirrors a national trend. The Regional Plan ...

On the elevator's role in our skyrocketing housing calculus

2024-07-10T11:22:00-04:00

Through my research on elevators, I got a glimpse into why so little new housing is built in America and why what is built is often of such low quality and at high cost. The problem with elevators is a microcosm of the challenges of the broader construction industry — from labor to building codes to a sheer lack of political will. [...] It’s become hard to shake the feeling that America has simply lost the capacity to build things in the real world, outside of an app.

Stephen Smith, through the New York nonprofit Center for Building in North America, has been exposing variables that undermine the housing market's intricate calculus in the form of building codes, cost of labor, zoning regulations, and the construction industry.

He says: "Elevators in North America have become over-engineered, bespoke, handcrafted and expensive pieces of equipment that are unaffordable in all the places where they are most needed. Special interests here have run wild with an outdated, inefficient, overregulated system. Accessibility rules miss the forest for the trees," adding, "The United States and Canada have also marooned themselves on a regulatory island for elevator parts and designs."

Last year, New York City became the most expensive construction market in the world, with an average cost of $506 per square foot, according to an analysis from Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

The 2024 Olympic Village as an answer to America's point access block problem

2024-07-01T11:21:00-04:00

Host cities through the decades, including Helsinki, Athens, London, Torin, Seoul, Barcelona, and most recently, Paris, have all used point access block housing that would be illegal to build in the U.S. When studying mixed-use Olympic Villages as a model for successful pedestrian-oriented development in the U.S., it becomes abundantly clear that major discrepancies exist between housing options in the U.S. and the rest of the world.

The endemic use of brick and natural stone in European apartment buildings versus their more combustible American counterparts is another factor underlying discrepancies architect Sean Jursnick herein describes as preventing the creation of better adaptable low-carbon multifamily designs in the country. It adds to another recent analysis of the point access block dilemma from the Center for Building in North America in May.

He says: “Reforming the building code and allowing for taller point access blocks, similar to Paris’ Olympic Village, is a great first step in unlocking high-performance housing.” The A/C-less dorms will house up to 14,250 athletes and support staff during the games before transitioning into permanent housing for 6,000 in the ailing Saint-Denis suburb.

NYT: Rising insurance costs impinging on affordable development efforts nationwide

2024-06-12T17:50:00-04:00

Less attention, though, has been paid to rental housing, particularly for low and moderate income people. Unlike market-rate apartment developers, those building multifamily projects financed by subsidies and tax credits do not have the ability to simply pass on those higher insurance costs to tenants, since they are limited by government guidelines as to how much rent they can collect.

The Times points out, many “low-income areas tend to be more prone to flooding and other catastrophic damage” – meaning that resilient design strategies often have to be added to the list of considerations for architects and their clients (as the ASLA’s most recent industry survey proves). The article quotes another conducted last year by the National Leased Housing Association as finding “nearly one-third” of all affordable housing developers nationally reporting insurance increases of 25% or more between 2022 and 2023.

On the comparative difficulty of family-sized apartment dwellings in North America

2024-05-24T12:04:00-04:00

One major consequence of this difference in design is that the North American double-loaded corridor buildings are much worse at providing family-sized units. To illustrate the point, we’ll go through the different sized apartments one by one, and compare the floor area and design. You’ll notice that the American plans have significantly more floor area for the same number of bedrooms, and have much more lightless interior space up against the common corridor to fill.

Stephen Smith is a former journalist and the Executive Director of the Brooklyn-based Center for Building in North America. His analysis of spatial challenges created by multifamily apartments and zoning conditions was featured recently in Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast. This is an adroit relaying of an issue affecting both developers and architects in pertaining markets and compliments an earlier 2021 report on post-pandemic trends in multifamily residential design from the website Propmodo.

Smith writes: "The merits of North American building and zoning codes can be debated, but the effect is clearly that apartments, in order to provide the same number of bedrooms and give everyone a window, must necessarily consume far more floor area than point access block designs possible in other countries. So if you’re looking for a family-sized apartment in the U.S. or Canada and finding that new buildings don’t have what you’re looking for, it’s not you, it’s not the architect, and it’s not ...

KoningEizenberg shares photos of 249-unit The Park housing project in Santa Monica

2024-02-14T15:32:00-05:00

KoningEizenberg has shared images of a new multifamily project at 500 Broadway in Santa Monica called The Park following its completion in April of 2022.

The development was realized at 299,000 square feet and includes a total of 249 market-rate units.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

KoningEizenberg says its design broke with several norms endemic to the local typology by creating a series of open public spaces at the street level that work to activate a connection to public transit using cross-grained massing.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

A one-acre rooftop garden completes the program with additional space for tenants while reducing urban heat island effects on the development. Retail spaces are included at the street level as well.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

Sarah Sze, an artist whose work is heavily influenced by architecture, provided a fitting final touch to the project with the addition of her sculpture Split Stone from 2019.

Photo: Eric Staudenmaier

The Park complim...

Glazed brick accentuates Shakespeare, Gordon, Vlado: Architects’ new Brooklyn apartment complex

2023-11-24T09:00:00-05:00

Shakespeare, Gordon, Vlado: Architects (SGVA) has offered an insight into their completed multi-family housing scheme in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Named The Garnet, the project is defined by a gray and black masonry facade punctuated by jewel-toned glazed-brick accents.

Image credit: Alexander Severin

Built on a 15,000-square-foot lot adjacent to the Fulton Street subway line, the scheme holds 103 apartment units above a 12,000-square-foot ground-floor retail space. A second-floor roof terrace seeks to strengthen the residents’ connection to the outdoors, adding to an overall mission of creating “housing that feels expansive and liberating, rather than constrained by its affordability.”

Image credit: Alexander Severin

From the outside, the eleven-story structure is clad in textured masonry with bright accents to form a “pleasant and visually engaging street wall.” A red motif first established on the facad...

Arizona's state water supply loophole is causing a gold rush for multifamily construction

2023-11-14T12:31:00-05:00

Local leaders near Phoenix are placing limits on where new homes can be built, with the goal of protecting long-term access to water. But there's a significant loophole. [...] Policymakers may try again, and the governor has set up a task force on the issue. Ferris says the strength of Arizona's water law is that it links building decisions with water decisions. No other Western state requires cities to look a hundred years into the future.

Permitting of new subdivision construction has been curtailed in the Phoenix area over water scarcity, though a loophole over multifamily construction has led to a recent boom there as developers are still free to open state taps when needed in search of a requisite 100-year groundwater supply.

Small cities like Casa Grande and Buckeye are making the news as prolific cases, with around 3,000 and 6,500 new units permitted in each in the last two years alone. The official statewide need stands at 200,000 overall. Lawmakers are now trying to put a halt to the build-to-rent exemption in the face of a population influx and despite developer’s lobbying.

Morris Adjmi completes stepped Overline development in Atlanta with rustic brick facade

2023-10-03T14:05:00-04:00

Morris Adjmi Architects has completed a large residential scheme as part of the Overline development in Atlanta, Georgia. Situated in the city’s Old Fourth Ward, the new multifamily residence sits beside a soon-to-be-completed hotel and social club linked via a skybridge.

Image credit: Douglas Friedman

Seeking to offer a “fresh take on traditional multifamily,” the red brick complex holds 359 units within a stepped form, including multilevel apartments and maisonettes with private street-level entrances. At the base of the tower, a mixture of public and private spaces link the development with the adjacent diagrid hotel, currently under construction.

Image credit: Douglas Friedman

The design team’s vision for the residential tower was for a building that “pays homage to the nearby Ponce City Market and other original converted warehouses and factories found throughout the neighborhood.” The external material palette is define...

New Terner Center for Housing Innovation paper unpacks five years of SB 35's impact on the California housing crisis

2023-08-21T18:05:00-04:00

The Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley has released a statewide assessment of the development of housing five years after the implementation of California's Senate Bill (SB) 35 began in 2018.

The bill eased the barriers to housing production for builders, in some cases removing the required review process under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and other policies that had been targeted as key impediments to the effort to meet a crisis that has become the defining issue of the time for embattled local governments, residents, and planning officials.

Statistics revealed that 18,000 new units were able to be developed thanks to the streamlining of nearly a thousand multifamily infill housing projects as a direct result of SB 35. The rate of successful developments peaked in 2020, with a noticeable dip recorded in the past year. The study also found encouragingly that most projects covered by SB 35 were considered 100 percent affordable.

Related on Archine...

The NYT asks: In a housing crisis, is building ‘bland’ better than the alternative?

2023-01-23T18:34:00-05:00

The new developments look startlingly alike, often in the form of boxy, mid-rise buildings with a ground-floor retail space, sans-serif fonts and vivid slabs of bright paneling. The bulky design is conspicuous, jutting out of downtown streets and overpowering its surroundings. Over time, it attracts a certain ecosystem — the craft breweries, the boutique coffee shops, the out-of-town young professionals. It’s anytown architecture, and it’s hard to know where you are from one city to the next.

The disappearance of America’s vernacular architecture and subsequent rise of what some call developer modernism is the product of necessity, reluctance towards artistry, and the monopolization of residential development across the country, according to the Times’ real estate reporter Anna Kodé.

The question of the kinds of structures (especially outside of large cities) they are replacing, if at all, is a potential counterargument in favor of their ubiquity. The larger question of whether drabness is a permanent condition of contemporary architecture, however, remains unanswered.

In a postscript with the Times’ Insider section, Kodé added: “I think one of the surprising things that came out of this story for me was finding out the number of people who defend these building types. I thought I would have to scrounge for those kinds of people. But a lot of people dee...

On the benefit and challenges of designing all-electric affordable housing

2023-01-19T13:28:00-05:00

In a few short years, policymakers and building designers have gone from pushing energy-efficient design and products—which saved folks money—to targeting carbon emission reductions, even if it costs more in the long run. This paradigm shift is rapidly changing expectations for the development and operation of affordable housing.

New York, Boston, and Los Angeles are three of America’s largest cities to have recently adopted some version of law or code changes mandating the design of new buildings (with the occasional exception for certain, typically smaller multifamily developments) be made all-electric.

The challenge for practitioners, according to authors Kimberly Vermeer and Walker Wells, is doing so equitably with a mind to costs, as the price per unit of electricity is typically much higher for consumers than traditional fossil fuels. The implementation of pricier but more energy-efficient heat pumps is also discussed as a huge technical and design obstacle for architects, along with the necessity of learning new vocabularies and more complex building performance metrics in the hopes of girding against the effects of climate change and preparing for the inevitability of electrification at a broad scale.

Spending on NYC construction reaches new record heights despite housing lags

2022-10-25T12:28:00-04:00

Construction spending in New York City will reach an all-time high of $86 billion this year, up $38 billion from 2021, according to a new report from the New York Building Congress. The report finds that despite numerous obstacles from the pandemic and economic uncertainty, construction spending and infrastructure investment in New York City remain positive.

The influx of capital, unfortunately, has not impacted the city’s most critical area of need as it was recently reported to have fallen short of its planned goals to construct 25,000 units of affordable housing by 36%. The New York Building Congress says the shortfall will only get worse as a result of the absence of the 421a tax incentive program. Without it, the 560,000 units needed before 2030 seem unlikely. Current projections only have 90,000 units coming into the market in the next three years.

Image source: 2022-2024 New York City Construction Outlook

“The city’s population has increased by more than 625,000 in the previous decade, while we have added only 206,000 units,” the group's CEO Carlo Scissura explains in the report. “That is not only unsustainable, it’s alarming — and justifies a swift and decisive response.”

Atlanta ranks first for most constructed downtown apartments nationwide over the last decade

2022-09-16T09:00:00-04:00

According to a new study by storage space marketplace StorageCafe, four of the top five most active downtown areas for new apartment construction are in the South, with Atlanta, Georgia ranking first for built downtown apartments over the past ten years. The city yielded over 21,500 apartments over this period.

For this study, StorageCafe assessed the downtown areas of the country’s 100 largest cities and ranked them based on the quantity of multifamily units produced over the last decade. Approximately 391,000 downtown apartments were built across these 100 cities during this time, which is 37% of the total number of multifamily units in these areas. Self-storage development has also risen as a result of this growth in downtown apartments, with Atlanta leading in self-storage space construction over the last ten years as well.

Over the past decade, Atlanta’s downtown apartment inventory increased by 50%. The city is expecting another 7,000 apartments, which are currently under con...

America's largest cities have seen a spike in commercial and multifamily construction starts during first half of 2022

2022-07-27T15:44:00-04:00

A new report from the Dodge Construction Network indicates the continued rebound of the building industry in 12 of America’s 20 largest metropolitan areas during the first two quarters of 2022, propelled by new starts in the commercial and multifamily residential sectors.

A survey at the year’s midway point revealed a 24% year-to-year increase in the value of all new starts within those two sectors, which were driven by demand for housing that is increasingly focused on more affordable apartment and condominium designs. The increases offer a strong indicator of continued performance of the industry through the rest of the year, according to Dodge Construction Network chief economist Richard Branch.

Previously on Archinect: Commercial and multifamily construction starts reflect nationwide recovery in 2021

Only three of the top 10 areas surveyed — Seattle, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia — were in decline as the starts in the rest of the country rose a total of 18% when compared to the ...

A new $51 million Tulsa Arts District proposal will turn a parking lot into a boutique destination

2022-05-27T15:28:00-04:00

Tulsa, Oklahoma’s ongoing transformation into the premier cultural capital of the southern Midwest region may about to get a useful new addition as local news outlets are reporting that Palm Spring-based architect Chris Pardo will design a $51 million mixed-use development located on a blacktop space in the city’s burgeoning Arts District.

“We really do specialize in urban-core redevelopment projects,” a spokesperson for developer Pivot Project recently told the Tulsa World newspaper. “We saw this opportunity for this site right in the middle of the Arts District. … We like to try to effect positive change on the buildings that we renovate, the blocks that we develop on, the neighborhoods we develop in. This site just fit right in our core values as a company.”

enders courtesy of Chris Pardo Design via Tulsaworld

Renders courtesy of Chris Pardo Design via Tulsaworld

Tulsa is in the process of redefining its historic downtown area with a host of major arts and cultural projects that in...

TIC townhouses are taking over Los Angeles — but who can actually afford them?

2022-03-23T12:45:00-04:00

An L.A. developer has a new approach to the so-called tenancy-in-common, or TIC, model, in which residents share ownership of the property. Instead of converting old, rent-controlled buildings into TIC properties, the developer is replacing single-family homes with new townhomes. Some real estate experts said the model could help the region’s gaping affordable-housing problem, particularly after a new state law opened more areas to similar development.

S.B. 9 allows for up to four units to be built on plots formerly reserved for single-family developments exclusively. Since the bill was enacted, many investors have begun to demolish single-family units in order to construct the newer TIC model of townhouses, which was supposedly pioneered by a developer called B&A Group.

The actual product of the new buildings, and whether or not their typically under-market rate but restrictive $700,0000–$800,000 price tags are in the end going to displace working-class residents living in cheaper rental units in LA neighborhoods like West Adams is a major concern for people like neighborhood council president Steven Meeks.

“Cheaper for who?” he told the LA Times of costs, which would fall under the category of a mansion in many other places. “What person in this neighborhood is going to afford that?”

...

Massachusetts is using incentives to build a small passive house empire

2022-03-09T18:59:00-05:00

A pair of statewide incentive programs in Massachusetts is driving a surge of apartment buildings designed to the highly energy-efficient passive house standard. In the past year, families have moved into 257 affordable housing units in complexes built to the standard, and about 6,000 additional units are now in various stages of development.

The Commonwealth has been ramping up investment into the technology since 2018, when it instituted The Passive House Design Challenge that awarded a total of $1.73 million (or $4,000 per unit) to eight separate multifamily developments from Gloucester to Boston. Another initiative called Mass Save was launched the following year, offering an additional $5,000 per unit and helping architects to pursue some innovative projects including the new 1599 Columbus building in Boston from Utile.

Related on Archinect: How Passive House Design Can Propel the Clean Energy Transition in Architecture. Photo by Aaron Leitz.

Passive house techniques are supposed to be well-suited for such developments because of their ability to fit so many units inside the tighter building envelopes. They also offer the added benefit of energy savings, which are vital to low-income families in colder states like Massachusetts. One developer also sees it as a great way to deliver high-quality design to people who mi...

Designer and developer Abigail Coover reinterprets 'the formula for the typical Brooklyn condo' with House Offset

2021-12-07T13:02:00-05:00

Located in South Slope, Brooklyn, House Offset is a residential remodel that underwent a recent renovation with a focus on enhancing both interior and exterior architectural details as well as "preserving much of the exterior as a nod to adjacent residences and the traditional New York City townhouse typology." Beyond this, what makes the project stand out, however, is the designer responsible for the renovation is also its developer.

Abigail Coover, founder and principal of Overlay Office, started her practice in 2019. With over 18 years of experience as an architectural designer and project manager, she has helped lead projects in major cities such as New York and San Francisco. We connected with Coover to learn more about the project and her experience as both designer and developer.

House Offset model. Image courtesy of Overlay Office

Being both developer and designer allowed us to reinterpret the formula for the typical Brooklyn condo conversion project through the creative u...

The pandemic is causing a host of changes in multifamily unit design

2021-08-13T09:00:00-04:00

The conversation around the shift from workplace to workspace often gets stuck on how the office is transitioning to meet the evolving needs of employees. But it isn’t just offices that are adjusting. Like their office-owning counterparts, multifamily landlords and operators are studying shifts in workplace strategy, planning new ways to design layouts and apply technology to support the growing work from home population.

The pandemic has caused a sharp pullback in multifamily construction as developers have struggled to adapt to the shift in lifestyles. Increased needs for high-quality internet and added remote workspaces have beset the residential market historically driven by amenity trends and aesthetic considerations.

Some firms have been investing in comprehensive surveys and other types of consultations. It has been estimated that up to 70% of the workforce could be remote by mid-decade. Propmodo has more on pandemic-induced design trends in multifamily design here.

AIA offers strategies for retrofitting multifamily housing for pandemic use

2020-08-14T15:38:00-04:00

The latest building adaptation report from the American Institute of Architect (AIA) highlights steps that building owners and designers can take to retrofit existing multi-family homes for pandemic occupation.

Following recently published guides for schools, offices, and hospitals, AIA has issued its latest set of recommendations, titled Strategies for Safer Multifamily Housing, offering "guidance on how to combine new daily habits, the needs of workers, and stringent hygiene regimens with social, infrastructural, and spatial requirements that aim to keep everyone safe."

The guide offers a collection of strategies for bringing stronger safety precautions to multi-family spaces, including reconfiguring shared entry and package delivery spaces, reconsidering "building flow and user experience" from shared entries to elevators and hallways, as well as thoughts on how units themselves might be redesigned to accommodate the crush of overlapping uses that must now take place within the ...

Seattle-based Hybrid Architecture realizes vibrant multi-family housing development

2020-05-11T13:37:00-04:00

Big Mouth House was developed by Hybrid Architecture, led by Rob Humble in collaboration with Kailin Gregga of Best Practice Architecture and sole practitioner Steven Lazen. The team transformed a 5,760-square-foot single-family lot in Seattle's Central District into three dynamic townhomes.

Each three-story unit contains an Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) at the lowest level that can be used as an extension of the home or as a separate rental apartment. The ADU can be accessed from a separate exterior entrance or through an interior lockable door, providing the primary resident the flexibility to determine its proper function.

The second level houses two bedrooms and one bathroom, distinguishing the more private areas of the home. The third level holds the living and dining rooms accompanied by large windows that frame views of the surrounding urban landscape.

Open rafters articulate the ceiling structure and give the space an added degree of height and depth. Black vertical metal cl...

Folded facades define an origami-inspired residential development in Portland

2019-09-24T14:00:00-04:00

Many residential developments today try to balance the issues of density and materiality with neighborhood scale, and the Origami residences by Waechter Architecture are no exception.

The 12-unit townhome development occupies an entire city block in northeast Portland's Piedmont neighborhood and is designed by the architects to present a sculptural configuration that simultaneously gestures to the surrounding ranch houses while also pointing toward a more urban vision for the city.

Overall view of the backyards for the project. Image courtesy of Jeremy Bittermann.

To achieve this somewhat contradictory design objective, the architects deploy a continuous wall of folded facades that hearkens to old school row house and pitched roof typologies all at once. "We wanted to avoid a strategy of either fragmented individual buildings or a monolithic block," writes Ben Waechter, founder and principal of Waechter Architecture.

Concept model highlighting the project's massing. Image courtesy...

Peebles Corporation launches $500M fund for minority-led developments

2019-07-01T15:48:00-04:00

For minorities and female developers, “access to capital has been the biggest challenge,” said Peebles, who has been an outspoken advocate for diversity in the industry. “I looked at how to address that for a number of years. No one in the country is doing this on a national level.”

Real estate developer Peebles Corporation has unveiled a $500 million investment fund that will be used to fuel development projects led by women and racial minorities.

According to The Real Deal, the fund will focus on urban infill projects with budgets between $10 and $70 million in South Florida, New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and Charlotte, cities where Peebles Corporation maintains offices.

Speaking at a development conference hosted by The Real Deal last week, Don Peebles, founder of Peebles Corporation, said, “The idea is to create this business model that shows that investing in emerging developers and investing in diversity will result in higher returns with less risk."

According to Peebles, the fund will be targeted towards commercial and multifamily developments that offer affordable housing.

Peebles added, “It’s a very positive thing to have the developments that are taking place in communities of color, to have the projects be deve...

How can architects design housing for intergenerational families?

2019-06-27T15:30:00-04:00

Since the first known use the term 'nuclear family' in 1941 (defined by George Murdock as "a social group characterized by common residence, economic cooperation and reproduction[,] contain[ing] adults of both sexes, at least two of whom maintain a socially approved sexual relationship, and one or more children, own or adopted, of the sexually cohabiting adults), the common American perception of what constitutes a normal living situation has required serious revision.

Not only has the narrow definition of a 'family unit' failed to describe a significant number of households in the United States; it has also halted construction of housing units which may serve to foster families which do not fit the above description.

Very few American cities, for instance, allow for the construction of homes for 'grandfamilies,' defined as "families in which children reside with and are being raised by grandparents, other extended family members, and adults with whom they have a close family-like...

Seattle is upzoning to address its housing crisis

2019-05-21T12:52:00-04:00

Seattle’s upzoning plan is set to take place throughout the city, but only 6 percent of single-family neighborhoods will be affected. These neighborhoods will be rezoned to allow for smaller, denser housing, while encouraging developers to keep existing structures and turn them into multifamily housing — like duplexes — in order to preserve a neighborhood’s aesthetic.

Since 2010 Seattle's population has seen a hike of 16%, so have the rents and the property prices. And while real estate in the city is booming, little of the development is targeted towards the growing demand for affordable housing.

Today 75% of Seattle's residential land is zoned for single-family use, prohibiting the development of much needed higher density housing like apartment complexes throughout most of the city. This March, to address the affordable housing scarcity, Mayor Jenny Durkan signed a Mandatory Housing Affordability policy, which would change the zoning of 27 neighborhoods from single-family to multifamily. This "upzoning" is projected to generate 6,000 new homes over the next decade.

In its search for more progressive zoning, the Seattle City Council is also considering laws that'd allow construction of ADUs.

19th century refurbished home and new addition come together in the vineyards of Switzerland

2018-02-01T19:05:00-05:00

When tasked with refurbishing a cluster of houses dating back from the 19th century, Swiss architect Dieter Dietz was asked by his clients for a design that "fostered the coexistence of shared and individual living spaces to provide an opportunity to live independently within a community of friends and their families." In response, Dietz proposed the refurbishment of a former press house (Pressoir) along with the design for a new house (Grange).

New construction to the rural site—a vineyard in Chigny, Switzerland—takes its characteristics from the barn-type. Its exoskeleton, built entirely of nano-film coated solar-cells that provide energy for both houses, is a reverberation of its 19th century neighbor's exposed roof truss. With an exterior of exposed steel, the typical structural order is reversed and the home, completed by a secondary structure made of timber.

Two Hous...