Every Monday until mid-August, first-year graduate students at the Yale School of Architecture are blogging about their progress building an affordable, accessible owner-renter residence in New Haven. Click here to read the previous posts.

The crew mounts scaffolding to paint the interior of the owner unit. Photos: courtesy the Vlock First Year Building Project

The issue of affordability has been a subject of discussion since the very first day that our class met with our program director, Adam, back in February. We had all gathered in the basement of the architecture building for our weekly meetings, during which we were introduced to the history, clients, schedule, process, and constraints of the annual Yale Vlock Building Project. Adam raised a question on an issue that many of us were not anticipating to be open for debate: he asked if we were interested in pursuing donations for the house or if we would rather work within the budget we were originally given. If I recall correctly, choosing to stay within budget would result in the use of cheap carpet (gasp) and standard vinyl siding (which, come to think of it, after three weeks of custom cedar siding, sounds amazing!) Naturally, as with the years before us, we thought that the former route would be beneficial to both the process and the outcome. And so, with 49 classmates alongside me (this was possibly the closest thing we’ve had to a class-wide consensus since my classmate Matt was offered free bagels for the site), we agreed to pursue donations as a substantial source of funding for the house.

Fast-forward to July 27. Read more…