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In a new letter to faculty members at the Pratt School of Architecture, second-year Dean Quilian Riano has outlined the need for some $71 million worth of deferred maintenance and other upgrades to the 155-year-old Higgins Hall in keeping with the new Local Law 97 mandate for net zero operating... View full entry
Even though record prices on the secondary market have heightened anxiety about the rising costs of living in Singapore, one of the world’s most expensive cities, public housing remains broadly affordable — at least for those who qualify for government subsidies to buy units.
Today, close to 80 percent of Singapore’s residents live in public housing, and about 90 percent of the units are owned on a 99-year lease.
— The New York Times
The architect of Singapore’s successful “social engineering” campaign after 1965, Liu Thai Ker, is a Malaysian-born Yale graduate and former understudy of I.M. Pei, who told the New York Times recently that he was “sad” to see the city-state’s current market dynamics affecting some of... View full entry
A new report on California’s entrenched housing crisis from the state's independent Little Hoover Commission has identified the 54-year-old California Environmental Quality Act (or CEQA) as the greatest barrier currently in the way of architects and planners looking to meet the demand for... View full entry
San Francisco-based Cosmic has raised $1.5 million in funding for their micro-home product designs aimed at bringing “self-sustainable homes in California and beyond.” The company’s leading product, Cosmic ONE, is described as a “limited-edition high-quality micro-home” that... View full entry
Following last week’s look at an opening for a Japanese-speaking Retail Architect at O’Neil Langan Architects, we are using this week’s edition of our Job Highlights series to explore an open role on Archinect Jobs for a Staff Architect at Greater Indy Habitat... View full entry
California-based Samara has opened a factory in Mexicali, Mexico, to scale up manufacturing of their backyard ADU units. As we reported in late 2022, the startup is led by Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia alongside former Flex chief executive Mike McNamara. Image credit: Samara The 150,000-square-foot... View full entry
The White House has announced a series of moves to increase the production of manufactured housing in the United States. The initiatives are intended to both preserve and rehabilitate existing manufactured home communities and ease barriers to the construction of new units. The moves include a... View full entry
It wasn’t a visual spectacle, but it was handsome and dignified, standing out with its prefab metal facade not just in a neighborhood of empty lots, aging apartment blocks and derelict rail tracks but also against a backdrop of dreary, bare-bones affordable housing developments all across the city.
Most important, its goal was larger than itself: to reimagine subsidized housing for a new century. I promised in that column to report back on whether it succeeded.
Did it?
— The New York Times
The Via Verde redux is an interesting return to Kimmelman's very first Times column. He wrote the housing scheme’s developer Phipps “knows what it’s doing.” Whatever is working has got to be scaled up and replicated rather quickly. As he points out, both the city and New York State... View full entry
Vishaan Chakrabarti, founder of PAU, has unveiled his firm's analysis, courtesy of The New York Times, which suggests that enough housing could be created for one million New Yorkers. The PAU founder says there is space for up to 520,245 homes in the city on roughly 1,700 acres of unused land... View full entry
A new supportive housing concept in Los Angeles has been introduced by LA-based practices Kadre Architects and Lehrer Architects. The design teams shared it can become a new model for design resourcefulness and occupants’ dignity at a time when the city, as do many others in... View full entry
A plan to transform the former Hilton Hotel at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City into supportive housing has been announced as the inaugural effort of the important new Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA) program by Mayor Eric Adams. Aufgang Architects will be... View full entry
Boston-based French 2D has completed a 45,000-square-foot collective housing complex in Malden, on the outskirts of Boston. Named Bay State Commons Cohousing, the thirty-unit scheme was conceived as a collaboration with residents “through a participatory design process emphasized mutual support... View full entry
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... View full entry
A unique project addressing the need for affordable housing and library services has debuted in central Brooklyn with the completion of the recent Sunset Park Library & Apartments renovation from Magnusson Architecture and Planning and Mitchell Giurgola. The project establishes a new 49-unit... View full entry
German company PERI 3D Construction is collaborating with construction printer manufacturer COBOD on what the team describes as the “first 3D printed social housing apartment building in Germany and Europe.” The three-floor building will contain six apartment units ranging from 670 to... View full entry
