Making Room, a new exhibit at The Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) has struck a serious nerve with New Yorkers. The exhibit, which will be on view until September 15, shines a light on many of the city’s biggest housing problems, and puts on display several architectural proposals designed to alleviate them. Mayor Bloomberg has even gotten the city government involved, and is strongly pushing for many of the solutions it suggests.

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg tours the Making Room Exhibit on January 22, 2013. Photo Credit: Spencer T. Tucker.

The impetus for the exhibit was a set of figures uncovered by the Citizen’s Housing Planning Council (CHPC) that showed a disparity between the types of available housing in New York, which are primarily designed for traditional nuclear households, and the increasing demand for single and other non-traditional housing. Currently, only about 18 percent of the city’s population is part of a nuclear family household. Yet over half of New York is single, and the city lacks enough single bedroom and studio spaces to house them.

Coupled with this are decades-old city regulations that place restrictions on how and where people can live. For instance it is illegal for more than three unrelated adults to share a residence, or for someone to inhabit a living space smaller than 400 square feet. These restrictions mean that residents are resorting to their own improvised solutions, which are often dangerous or illegal, to be able to live in this outmoded housing stock. Topping it off, the city will need to absorb a projected increase of over 600,000 new residents in the next twenty years, most of whom will also not find the current housing stock appropriate.

Sensing this problem back in 2011, CHPC and the Architectural League invited five teams of architects to submit proposals for housing solutions that could alleviate these problems, keeping restrictive zoning ordinances a non-factor in their designs. The submissions took several different approaches, primarily focusing on flexibility of use, compact living quarters and shared spaces. One design, by Deborah Gans, proposed a series of conversions that could be performed on a single family home in Queens, which would allow the owners to rent out extra sections of the house when they no longer needed the space themselves.

A rendering of a street of converted single family homes in Astoria, Queens. The conversions would allow the original owners to rent space in their homes that otherwise be would underutilized, while still maintaining adequate space and privacy for owner and renter. Rendering by Gans Studio. Courtesy MCNY. Read more…

I often find myself in scenarios that go something like this: After walking through a space, the client describes the architectural elements and tells me what’s important to see, as well as how the space will be used. “Yes,” I respond, “you can light it to perform any of the tasks you want to perform, and I can make it look the way you want it to look. But how do you want it to feel?”  In my view, that’s a critical question when it comes to lighting up a room.

Case in point: During a recent charrette to redesign a multipurpose art center, the architects were keen to have the lighting signal that each room, from gallery to classroom, has a unique function. They offered up inventive ideas on ways to design the architectural details and lighting fixtures to do just that. But my job is to shape the light itself. I want people to feel different in each room where they’ll be performing different kinds of tasks.

This affect is not as simple as emphasizing what you see directly in front of you. It can come from the periphery of your vision—the “fringe of your focus”—and it determines how you feel in a particular space. You absorb much of the affect without being acutely aware that you’re doing it through what we variously call the co-conscious, unconscious, or just the “noise around us”.  Some of this is sensed through the body—it’s everything we see out of the corners of our eyes.  Once I meet the clients’ goals of function and look, I work at the peripheral layer to establish both a sense of wellbeing and a desired emotional tone.

What, then, does it mean to talk about how a space feels? People usually respond in one of two ways.

For residential clients, the question of “how the lighting should feel” may ignite strong emotional responses, such as, “I hate fluorescent lights. I hate track. I love incandescent. I love candle light.” “My mother (or father) always went around turning off lights, and I can’t bear the feeling of not seeing.” “I hate it when it’s too bright; I feel ill.” “I’m afraid of the dark.”  “My partner and I totally disagree about the reading light in the bedroom and how bright the bathroom should be. We always fight about it.”

These intense emotional reactions—fear, hate, love, and anger are hard-wired biological functions of our nervous system—make sense to me. We grew up, as did our parents, in a world of plentiful artificial light. It is inextricably fused with our memories of home, whether gloomy or bright, candlelit or washed by a single circular fluorescent in the center of the kitchen. We remember the (now unimaginably) high levels of illumination above our desks in elementary school, and the acutely bright light at the hospital where we were rushed with broken bones, or visited relatives.

Despite these common memories, when I ask, “How do you want the lighting to feel?” I’m met with blank stares. With our focus on function and look, describing “feeling” — some neuropsychologists distinguish feeling from emotion by its subtlety, complexity, and the way it mixes intelligence, judgment, and experience — is particularly difficult.

To break through this barrier, I might ask, “Do you want it to feel comforting, calm and orderly; cozy and intimate, enchanting or glamorous, mysterious,  friendly,  playful,  surprising?” Some of our feelings are unique to us, some we share with others. For homeowners whose spaces are deeply personal, I help identify the distinct feeling they want to have in each room. For public spaces with their diversity of users, I work from a more generalized idea of what the feeling should be, based on the desired activities and psychological states.

Here’s where the peripheral layer comes in. Once we establish the emotional tone for the environment, I think about shape, movement, and light-to-shadow relationships and wavelengths. This is what the eye and brain register outside the narrow cone of focus that takes in detail and exact color.

Dining room, Colorado, by Maya Lin.  Photo by Paul Warchol

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The Charleston piazza could easily hold the title for most regionally recognizable architectural flourish. Before talking about its impact, though, many might ask, “What is the Charleston piazza?” In its simplest sense, it is a porch. But for generations of Southerners it was and is so much more than that. Like many other porches it became another room beyond the confines of traditional walls for families to bond, entertain, and live.

According to Carl Lounsbury, the senior architectural historian for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the archetype for the Charleston piazza came from the Chesapeake region where an early example can be found at the College of William and Mary. The term was borrowed by the English from the Italian word meaning “open space” and eventually made its way to the new world with the rest of the colonial architecture. The final step to create the truly unique Charleston piazza was a result of city planning. The residential lots between the 1730s and the American Revolution were very narrow in the city, resulting in deep houses that were not very wide.

“Gradually, the construction of piazzas along one of the long sides of the houses made it possible to reorient the main entrance into the house… through a gate onto the piazza and then down the porch to the doorway in the middle of the house where the stair passage was located. This made for a more private house with little direct access from the street—more restrictive—more private,” said Lounsbury.

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One December day seven years ago, I was just about the only person driving around Gulfport, Mississippi. Hurricane Katrina had hit three months earlier, and the downtown and neighborhoods nearby still looked like Armageddon—house after house had been crushed or split open by the storm surge. Nobody was fixing anything. People were waiting on the government to draw up new flood maps so they would know what might be insured if they were to rebuild.

By now, a lot of people have rebuilt their houses in Gulfport. Many of them are quite close to the water, just like they were before Katrina. If you look at the street views on Google Maps, you see houses rebuilt, as if no 24-foot storm surge could ever happen again. There was a rule: If less than 50 percent of your house was damaged, you could rebuild at the previous elevation. If more than half was damaged, you had to build above a 17-foot elevation. People who rebuilt low to the ground in the surge zone either squirreled under the 50 percent threshold or they don’t have insurance. Many of these people can’t afford the high cost of insurance, the city’s director of economic development, David Nichols, told me recently. They may have had their house passed down through family, so they have no debt but no money either, and nowhere else to live. Redevelopment in Gulfport generally has been suppressed by unwillingness or inability to rebuild to the mandated elevations, or by a lack of insurance—there are still also plenty of empty sites in town. But for many who have rebuilt, you can see a disaster setting up all over again.

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Luca Nichetto, designer of the IMM Cologne’s 2013 “Das Haus” installation.

As you make plans for 2013, one of the must do’s is a visit to the IMM Cologne furniture fair. Why? It’s a great place to see strong furniture brands made in Germany. Austria, and Switzerland debuting innovative product releases. Earlier this year we saw the launch of Konstantin Grcic’s Pro chair for Flötotto that was a hit at the show.

Germany’s robust economy means that strong German furniture brands like Walter Knoll, Dauphin, and E15 continue to showcase innovative products (the fair organizers estimate that around 1,250 companies from more than 50 countries will be in attendance). And if you are on the look out for the next design wunderkind, the fair’s d3 Design Talents is among the best-curated exhibitions of young designers from around the world.

A rendering of “Das Haus” by Nichetto.

But the fair has other reasons that make it worth visiting. The LivingKitchen, which is held in odd-numbered years, is a great place to learn about the latest kitchen and bath trends. The famous engineering and precision of German luxury cars can also be found in the work of many of the country’s kitchen and bathroom manufacturers, including Miele, Hansgrohe, Gaggenau, Dornbracht, and Poggenpohl. With 160 exhibitors from 18 countries, you’ll be seeing popular kitchen trends that continue the idea of open plan kitchens, smart appliances, and the use of material combinations of ceramic, glass, stainless steel and wood.

The Torei tray tables by Nichetto for Cassina.

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Jeff Stein, photo by Jared Green

At 42 Arcosanti, a community north of Phoenix, Arizona has been celebrated, yet generally ignored, by the world at large. Nevertheless, the place that architect Paolo Soleri and his followers buit in the desert, survives. Indeed, it can teach us enormously important lessons about cities, buildings, people, nature, and authenticity of place. Jeff Stein, AIA, is president of the Cosanti Foundation. He has taught at Harvard University Graduate School of Design (GSD), Wentworth Institute, and was dean of Boston Architectural College for seven years. He attended his first building workshop at Arcosanti in 1975. Here he gives some revealing answers about how an urban system can function as a super-organism, how historic context can shape a place and its life, as well as thoughts on the efficient use of land, growing plants and making moisture in the desert, and many other timely topics.

Jared Green: Arcosanti is a living, experimental laboratory for the “arcology” theories of Italian architect, Paolo Soleri, who recently won the National Design Award for Lifetime Achievement. Arcology, a literal joining of the words architecture and ecology, calls for a new alternative to today’s “hyperconsumption,” a self-reliant urban system that functions like a super-organism. How are the theories of arcology working out in practice out here in the desert at Arcosanti?

Jeff Stein: They’re working out really well but at a very small level. Arcosanti, some 42 years after it first was begun in 1970, is just a tiny fragment of what it intends to become — a town for a few thousand people. Right now, we’re at a population of a little less than 100. It’s pretty easy at that small scale to join architecture and ecology, but we have in mind some bigger ideas. While they certainly come from Paolo Soleri, they also come from Henry David Thoreau.

Before I moved to Arcosanti this past year, my wife and I lived near Walden Pond for about a decade. The contrast between that place and this is pretty interesting, but the ideas that Thoreau and Soleri both have had are pretty congruous. Thoreau said, “Give me a wildness no civilization can endure,” which isn’t quite what we’re after exactly, but you could understand his attitude back then. There is wildness that no civilization can endure. Instead what we’re after is trying to create the beginnings of a civilization that wildness can endure.

Here at Arcosanti we’re only building on a few acres of a 4,000 acre land preserve. Some 3,985 of those acres are intended to remain wild. While at the center there isn’t a group of hermits but a lively cultural center. Arcosanti is meant for a few thousand people– not just as retirees living in apartments who have to drive 20 miles for groceries — but a living, working community whose architecture is gaining some light and heat in the wintertime and shading itself in the summertime, and whose solar greenhouses are recycling organic waste and growing food for the population and producing heat energy to power the town itself.

Arcosanti, photo courtesy of the Cosanti Foundation

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When people think architecture, they think of building spaces or developing sites for human use. Over the years, this concept has expanded to include social activism. In the U.S., for example, there is Architecture for Humanity, Project Row Houses, and Make It Right. These groups address issues of poverty, displacement, and housing. Human Rights, however, extends beyond creating spaces for the economically disadvantaged or the impoverished. In fact, as Graeme Bristol of the Centre for Architecture & Human Rights (CAHR) argues, development projects are responsible for displacing 105 million people around the world, more than disaster-, conflict-, and persecution-based displacements combined. Indeed, in this case, Human Rights are defined as freedom from development, rather than the freedom to pursue architectural development.

The problems lie in the model for non-profit organizations and NGO’s. One is that many of these organizations have predetermined agendas that dictate their interventions. Part of this is driven by the funding cycle. Donors are not always inspired by the creation of t-shirts or pig farms. Yet a school designed by a famous architect attracts new and loyal donors. But this emphasis on building ignores development-induced displacement and results in projects that are disconnected from the needs of local populations. Unneeded buildings waste resources, time, money, and labor.

Graeme Bristol, Founder & Executive Director, CAHR

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Philip S. Kennedy-Grant, FAIA, keynote speaker and principal at Kennedy-Grant

While the American economy continues to slumber, one area of business in New Jersey is, optimistically, waking up. The architecture community is seeing a resurgence of growth in residential building, and, as a result, an increasing need for the services of architects. (According to a report by the AIA, for the first time since 2007, the industry has reported two consecutive quarters of increased demand for residential architects.) In response to this trend, AIA New Jersey chapter is sponsoring a new seminar on the business and ethics of architecture. The program will educate architects, particularly young ones looking to set up shop, in the basics of administering a successful practice. “We’ll talk about the fundamental ideas architects can put in place to empower them to become better business people,” says Steve Whitehorn, managing principal at Whitehorn Financial Group, who will speak about business development, minimizing risk, and transition planning.

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Last week I experienced my first New Orleans hurricane. I’d been through big storms in the northeast before—a number of times, one time on a small island—but this one felt different. Maybe it was the timing, so close to the anniversary of Katrina. Maybe I’ve chosen to live in an inherently vulnerable city. The good news: the levees performed well (thank you, Army Corps of Engineers), the bad news: the local utility company didn’t. Hurricane Isaac did, however, provide some valuable life lessons:

1. There are only two kinds of hurricanes.
Boring hurricanes involve power outages, unrelenting heat, unrelenting rain, fierce winds, agitation, anger, dead cell phones, and acute internet withdrawal. “Interesting” hurricanes include all of the above, plus boats, helicopter evacuations, National Guard troops, motels in Arkansas, brushes with death, and occasionally death. Boring is better.

2. There is no such thing as a small hurricane.
Unlike tornados and earthquakes, hurricanes are easily tracked. You are given ample warning. Having experienced Isaac, I have now established a baseline metric for future evacuations: if a storm turns the corner at Key West and enters the warm waters of the Gulf already a hurricane, I will immediately start packing.

3. Blizzards are more fun than hurricanes.
At some point you can venture out into a snowstorm. Throw a snowball, make a snowman, frolic. In New Orleans you really can’t step outside in a hurricane until the tree limbs stop crashing to the ground. And then what?

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Photo by Chris Wehling.

I first noticed Eichlers in Sunnyvale while driving around looking at homes. When I came upon them and felt like I had landed on the moon. They were the most interesting houses that I had ever seen!  And I didn’t know anything about them. I immediately drove back to my real estate office and asked people what these houses were, getting mixed responses: “Oh those homes are crap!” or “What is an Eichler?” It bothered me that realtors didn’t know what I was talking about. So I started to research Eichler.

Turns out that there were 11,000 Eichlers in the bay area waiting for me to look at and meet the people who live in them. I started researching and hunting but could not find much about Joseph Eichler, his family, or his history. Then I came upon a book by a friend recommended, Eichler: Modernism Rebuilds the American Dream. It became my constant resource. I learned that there is a small, tight knit group of Eichler enthusiasts, a sort of a “cult” group of people that all know one other. I also learned that I had to do something special to get “in” with people living in their Eichler community for the last 30 some years. I also realized that these Eichler communities were self-sufficient. The neighbors know everything about each other. They meet at block parties almost every week. One owner told me, “We all have spare keys to each other’s homes and take care of each other.” This sounded strange yet wonderful to me. I can’t think of any neighborhood that I have ever lived in that is this way. Fascinating!

Photo by Chris Wehling.

I started calling the names listed in any Eichler publication, book, magazine, and blog. I learned that these homes are a form of modern art and convey a sense of mid-century modernist architectural expression. They are the epitome of California living with its culture of inside-outside. I learned many amazing things about Joseph Eichler himself. He was a tough little guy who never backed down and did what he wanted to do to optimize the housing industry in the post World War II years. He was also the first developer to allow African Americans, Asians, and Hispanics purchase his homes.

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