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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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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.” — therealdeal.com
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
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. — NBC News
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... View full entry
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... View full entry
Home design is among the many subtle and not so subtle indicators of cultural norms that tell us what the ideal family should look like. But more families — through choice and circumstance — are creating families in ways that don’t match up with the nuclear family ideal. In post-World War II America, marriage rates have decreased and more children are born to unmarried parents. Today there is no one family form in which the majority of kids grow up. — PS Mag
If you could throw out all the conventions and constructs and limitations of our current understanding of family, what would you create for yourself? And what’s stopping you?For more on the politics of home design, check out these links:If you can’t stand the domesticity, get out of the... View full entry
In a typical year, [Humphreys & Partners] designs between 12 and 15 percent of all apartments built in the United States. [...]
Instead of starting from scratch on every project, he came up with the idea of “commoditizing” the process. He’d have a base product, like The Big House, that could be tweaked to fit in various markets throughout the country. It simplified things and kept costs down, giving Humphreys & Partners a competitive advantage.
— dmagazine.com