I want to talk a little bit about sustainable modern design in public and low-income housing projects. I know there is a long history of the relative successes and failures of these sometimes overly optimistic efforts, and I'm wondering if you can point me toward a few projects that you think were particularly successful and/or innovative in an aesthetic and sociological sense.
Here in St. Louis we are seeing mostly townhouse-style developments, which I gather is mainly a reaction to the high-rise failures of the 60s (i.e., Pruitt-Igoe) and stops short of other mixed-income and dispersion techniques that are often touted as social rehabilitators.
Anyway, I would appreciate any comments or links to interesting projects.
poor people cant afford to be sustainable and developers building cheap housing are not thinking twice about adding that heat pump into their initial development costs.
and New'rban pastiche style keeps the masses from rising up against the gentry not argon-filled double paned windows and icynene foam.
Im not sure if this falls into sustainible, but there have been a lot of interesting progressive social housing projects in Dutch architecture.
If you can get your hands on Europan 7 (as well as all previous ones), there is definately a lot of housing prototypes .. i think this yr it was dealing with densities and housing diversity... Although european, you will definatly find some interesting correlations and discussions as it relates to housing in the usa.
Not sure if this will help you, but I recently came across these articles. The Low Income Housing Institute is working on a small Denny Park project in Seattle as part of the Columbia, Md.-based Enterprise Foundation's Green Communities Initiative , which is offering $550 million in equity investment, backed by low-income-housing tax credits, for developers to build 8,500 units of green affordable housing nationwide over five years. Articles 1 & 2.
Then I always plug David Baker for bringing quality architecture to section 8 housing in SF.
was reading an interview with norman forster the other day- he made the folowing interesting point, that there is a stigma attached to low-income housing which seems strange in light of the advent of the Ikea, H&M, Easyjet etc. market. - i think this stigma hits the design aspect in arch. quite hard- and it prevents a lot of good work from ever even being on the boards. - Ikea et. al, though low budget, in marketing themselves to a group that could pay more but doesn't want to if offerend an equal design for less- this shakes the stigma, and opens the design to the people , who before, weren't able to access it. (Nov. of this year, Karl Lagerfeld chief at Chanel, and one of the heaviest heavy-hitters in the fashion industry, designd a line for H&M)
- there is also the threat of the elitism of 'good' design snuffing itself out, and going low-brow as a way of saving itself...
-check out Jean Nouvel's housing complex in Nantes or nimes? - a really lovely job.
it's interesting to see the different takes on welfare housing in the US vs more socialist europe- the way it is built, financed, and respected. I would say that in europe, saying you live in low cost housing doesn;t mean the same things it does here- in paris Fuksas designed an extravagent complex- ilot- Candie - in the 10th i think- 'project' housing technically but not in the way we mean it here in the US ( though paris too had it's pruitt-Igoe disasters - plenty of them)
- it would be cool for those companies to all sponsor an arch. competition-
-the Image/vs market is very interseting- where h+M offers bougie design one-offs at k-mart prices, the design their knocking off is often in ad campaigns etc, marketing itself as gritty/realistic/street-cred(albeit, hipster street-cred) sorry i've no links- but i think its all fairly googleable ...
The stigma partly c mentions comes from the problematic blur between truly 'low cost' housing and normal affordable housing. While, ideally, we would like to bring good design and good construction standards to all housing, it's difficult to sell the IKEA-demographic on something called 'low cost'. It may simply be a matter of clarifying the language, i.e., marketing.
Part of the confusion: A school design studio in which I participated as an instructor, sponsored by the Kentucky Housing Corporation, took a $150,000-$200,000 budget to be a benchmark for affordable, efficient housing. This shocked me because MY house was $91,000, and I think it's great. A decent 1000sf house can still be had in Louisville for $50,000. So what are we calling 'affordable' or 'low cost' and is it even reachable for those who really don't have money?
If architects are fooling themselves into thinking that $150 is low cost, we're actually still not giving good service to the truly impoverished would-be-home-buyer and they will continue to get what Habitat for Humanity offers. Those houses are fine and HfH is doing wonderful things, but I bet we'll never admire them as design solutions. Not until we as designers are willing to take on the $30K to $50K house...
Sustainability can be part of this challenge, but it will require more than prominently placed photovoltaics. We'll have to rething our inventory of materials used in home construction, maybe tilt more toward those used in manufacturing. (As I've noted in other threads, I'm moving more and more into the prefab camp all the time.)
Low-income housing projects
I want to talk a little bit about sustainable modern design in public and low-income housing projects. I know there is a long history of the relative successes and failures of these sometimes overly optimistic efforts, and I'm wondering if you can point me toward a few projects that you think were particularly successful and/or innovative in an aesthetic and sociological sense.
Here in St. Louis we are seeing mostly townhouse-style developments, which I gather is mainly a reaction to the high-rise failures of the 60s (i.e., Pruitt-Igoe) and stops short of other mixed-income and dispersion techniques that are often touted as social rehabilitators.
Anyway, I would appreciate any comments or links to interesting projects.
Thank you!
Marc S.
poor people cant afford to be sustainable and developers building cheap housing are not thinking twice about adding that heat pump into their initial development costs.
and New'rban pastiche style keeps the masses from rising up against the gentry not argon-filled double paned windows and icynene foam.
Im not sure if this falls into sustainible, but there have been a lot of interesting progressive social housing projects in Dutch architecture.
If you can get your hands on Europan 7 (as well as all previous ones), there is definately a lot of housing prototypes .. i think this yr it was dealing with densities and housing diversity... Although european, you will definatly find some interesting correlations and discussions as it relates to housing in the usa.
Not sure if this will help you, but I recently came across these articles. The Low Income Housing Institute is working on a small Denny Park project in Seattle as part of the Columbia, Md.-based Enterprise Foundation's Green Communities Initiative , which is offering $550 million in equity investment, backed by low-income-housing tax credits, for developers to build 8,500 units of green affordable housing nationwide over five years. Articles 1 & 2.
Then I always plug David Baker for bringing quality architecture to section 8 housing in SF.
wow, inspirational that david baker. thanks for the link and quick inspiration
was reading an interview with norman forster the other day- he made the folowing interesting point, that there is a stigma attached to low-income housing which seems strange in light of the advent of the Ikea, H&M, Easyjet etc. market. - i think this stigma hits the design aspect in arch. quite hard- and it prevents a lot of good work from ever even being on the boards. - Ikea et. al, though low budget, in marketing themselves to a group that could pay more but doesn't want to if offerend an equal design for less- this shakes the stigma, and opens the design to the people , who before, weren't able to access it. (Nov. of this year, Karl Lagerfeld chief at Chanel, and one of the heaviest heavy-hitters in the fashion industry, designd a line for H&M)
- there is also the threat of the elitism of 'good' design snuffing itself out, and going low-brow as a way of saving itself...
-check out Jean Nouvel's housing complex in Nantes or nimes? - a really lovely job.
it's interesting to see the different takes on welfare housing in the US vs more socialist europe- the way it is built, financed, and respected. I would say that in europe, saying you live in low cost housing doesn;t mean the same things it does here- in paris Fuksas designed an extravagent complex- ilot- Candie - in the 10th i think- 'project' housing technically but not in the way we mean it here in the US ( though paris too had it's pruitt-Igoe disasters - plenty of them)
- it would be cool for those companies to all sponsor an arch. competition-
-the Image/vs market is very interseting- where h+M offers bougie design one-offs at k-mart prices, the design their knocking off is often in ad campaigns etc, marketing itself as gritty/realistic/street-cred(albeit, hipster street-cred) sorry i've no links- but i think its all fairly googleable ...
The stigma partly c mentions comes from the problematic blur between truly 'low cost' housing and normal affordable housing. While, ideally, we would like to bring good design and good construction standards to all housing, it's difficult to sell the IKEA-demographic on something called 'low cost'. It may simply be a matter of clarifying the language, i.e., marketing.
Part of the confusion: A school design studio in which I participated as an instructor, sponsored by the Kentucky Housing Corporation, took a $150,000-$200,000 budget to be a benchmark for affordable, efficient housing. This shocked me because MY house was $91,000, and I think it's great. A decent 1000sf house can still be had in Louisville for $50,000. So what are we calling 'affordable' or 'low cost' and is it even reachable for those who really don't have money?
If architects are fooling themselves into thinking that $150 is low cost, we're actually still not giving good service to the truly impoverished would-be-home-buyer and they will continue to get what Habitat for Humanity offers. Those houses are fine and HfH is doing wonderful things, but I bet we'll never admire them as design solutions. Not until we as designers are willing to take on the $30K to $50K house...
Sustainability can be part of this challenge, but it will require more than prominently placed photovoltaics. We'll have to rething our inventory of materials used in home construction, maybe tilt more toward those used in manufacturing. (As I've noted in other threads, I'm moving more and more into the prefab camp all the time.)
UK: Peabody trust comissions great social housing schemes by architects such as Cartwright Pickard and others, worth checking out.
Cartwright Pickard - Murray Grove
Look for other projects by the Peabody trust.
Hope this helps.
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