What does it take to build a livable home for under $100 per square foot?
For a group of architecture students at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, that question was answered in a semester-long project that ended last week.
The project culminated with two students winning top honors among their classmates by having their projects selected for construction by Habitat for Humanity.
— nj.com
7 Comments
will she be an architect? no! she'll be a black female architect! yay!
Nice.
These are really excellent solutions, and it's awesome that they get to build their projects right away. I would love to see this sort of solution and design-build process implemented in more locations throughout the United States. There are a lot of areas that have very old, inefficient buildings that need significant improvements. Kudo's to Habitat for Humanity, NJIT, Levitta, and Andres for a wonderful solution.
Welcome to the club of Innervisions
FOR THE RECORD: there was a post before mine saying something along the lines of '..wow a future black female architect. so rare, almost like a unicorn.'. for some reason it was removed (?)
my post was in response to that - and i feel you're either an architect or you're not. i don't care about race or gender, just if you're a good architect (or whatever job you do or area you study).
Merry Christmas, y'all!
True. I think that if you are something then be good, or great at it and race shouldn't be a factor. Architects should define themselves through their work and involvement in their community.
Black architects have a very small representation in the profession. There are 288 Black female Architects (2012), and 1581 Black male Architects (2012) in the United States out of 113,700 total Architects (2010). That was the basis for my comment about Levitta being as rare as a unicorn when she becomes an Architect. Though, I thought that the comparison wasn't appropriate, as unicorns are mythical creatures and Levitta is a talented living-breathing designer that deserved a better more accurate representation. So I had the comment taken down. Personally I dislike the fact that you can't edit a comment once you have posted it but it has been a great learning experience.
Recently I stumbled on a great American Architect, Paul Williams, as I was researching the origins of "redlining." After reading about how redlining effected Paul Williams' generation, and even ours today, I dug deeper. There is so much information about how the profession has been instrumental in the separation of races within the built environment.
For example, Levitt Town was apart of all of our history classes but a little known fact is that this large planned community built after World War II, had a population 80,000 people yet not one of them was black. Even the black military officers who served this country weren't allowed to use their G.I. bill to live in these new communities, but were relegated to live in the "red zones." These red zoned areas which can still be seen today, and where Levitta's project is going to be built, are areas where banks would not lend resources to. So basically if you lived in red zones you couldn't get a loan to repair and update your house. You couldn't get a loan to buy a home in these areas as well. During this period it was also very difficult to buy a home if you were someone of color, in other areas outside of the red zones. As I dug deeper I found a great book called Black Wealth/White Wealth, by Melivn Oliver and Thomas Shapiro, which enlightened me, how difficult it has been for blacks to build wealth. 70% of Americans build their wealth through real estate. So as you can imagine, if you can't buy a home or property and transfer the ownership to your kin then you aren't building wealth. Even most recently in these red zones there was a disturbing trend called reverse redlining, where banks would give high interest loans within these areas knowing that there was a high probability of default based on how the loans were worded and structured. In turn transferring property ownership from within these areas to banks and investors.
It is exciting to see that Levitta and Andres will be able to watch their projects be constructed, and that they both might be Architects in the near future. Levitta’s project looks very interesting, and solves some great issues both architecturally and socially. It is great to see the support of the community and individuals, who are willing to spend $500,000 on spec homes, in areas that need major updates, and were designed by students. In a lot of ways we need to deal with these Red zones much more sustainably then has been, as a profession and a country.
I was in the first Habitat for Humanity Studio at NJIT a few years ago, and I have to say it's a great program that more schools should adapt. It was the first time I learned how to actually design for people. I am happy to see that the following years' designs have become more and more "out of the box" compared to what we started with in the first year, when the client still couldn't get rid of the idea that box = cheap. The greatest part of it all was not only did they educate us how to build socially, but we also educated them about architecture.
Unfortunately, the winning designs for the past years haven't been built due to many contaminated sites in the area. Hopefully, they will really build it this year!
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