Following our site visit to Congo Street Initiative in Dallas, the Bruner Foundation team headed to New York City to our next 2013 Rudy Bruner Award finalist site, Via Verde. Submitted by Jonathan Rose Companies and Phipps Houses, Via Verde (the “Green Way”) is a 222-unit affordable housing development in the Melrose section of the South Bronx. The project, completed in 2012, was designed as a model for healthy and sustainable urban living.

View of Via Verde from fourth floor fruit tree orchard.  Photograph: ©David Sundberg/Esto

We spent two cold, windy days on site, touring the project with the design and development team, taking photographs, as well as meeting with people involved in its development, design, and operation in the Bronx and Manhattan. Like the Congo Street Initiative, Via Verde illustrates another approach to designing affordable, sustainable housing, albeit at a larger scale and catalyzed by a different set of circumstances.

Via Verde grew out of two international design competitions that were part of the New Housing New York (NHNY) Legacy Project, which sought to create a new standard for affordable housing and development. The first, the 2004 NHNY Design Ideas Competition, was sponsored by AIA New York (AIANY) in partnership with New York City Council and the City University of New York and solicited design concepts for three sites. Powerhouse: New Housing New York, an exhibit and public programming supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, showcased selected entries at AIANY’s Center for Architecture. Read more…

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”
-Chinese Proverb

After Hurricane Katrina and the spectacular failure of the levees, nothing is purely academic in New Orleans. This is certainly true of Tulane University, in particular the School of Architecture, and the role it has played in NOLA’s recovery and rejuvenation. Building on the school’s successes in that regard, dean Ken Schwartz saw an opportunity for his institution to be more proactive in the areas of land use and development while positively impacting the quality of education in the architecture programs. I’m a graduate of Tulane’s School of Architecture and a member of the Dean’s Advisory Board. So when in 2009 Schwartz called me to participate in an informal planning group for a possible new real estate development program, I eagerly took up the challenge.

The new program was launched in 2011 as the Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development(MSRED), based in the architecture school. MSRED is modeled on other one-year graduate programs in real estate, with an intensive summer session followed by two full semesters of coursework. Its director, Alexandra Stroud, is a graduate of Tulane’s School of Architecture, as well as MIT’s real estate program. MSRED is distinctly different from the others, however. It’s one of the few such programs in the Gulf Coast, and the only U.S. real estate degree to focus explicitly on sustainability at its core.

Distinct from the accredited architecture degree programs at Tulane, MSRED infuses the school with practical discussions of how to initiate, finance, and operate a successful project. The ongoing exposure of professional degree candidates to the practicalities of business and aspects development strengthens the traditional role of the architect. Similarly, by teaching real estate development within an architecture program, Tulane emphasizes the value of traditional design expertise to future developers/clients.

Read more…

Photo: Darius Siwek

CHIP (Compact, Hyper-Insulated Prototype) is a new architectural proposition for sustainable housing. It uses the platform of the Solar Decathlon (through October 2) to disseminate big ideas to a wide audience. Developed over two and a half years, the project is a result of a unique collaboration between two schools, each on the leading edge of their respective fields of Architecture and Engineering.  Students from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have learned to speak each other’s language in a generative effort to create a truly innovative home that furthers the discourse of green-tech housing.

Read more…

The interior of the house designed by Ying chee Chui as part of MIT’s 1K House project. Photo: Ying chee Chui

Interesting news out of Cambridge last week: MIT announced that the first prototype from its 2009 “1K House Project” was recently completed in Sichuan  Province,  China.  Designed bya recent graduate of the architecture school, Ying chee Chui, the Pinwheel House is a steel-reinforced brick house (created to withstand an 8.0 earthquake) with a modular layout comprised of simple rectangular rooms surrounded by a traditional courtyard.

The goal of the studio project—conceived by Tony Ciochetti, chairman of MIT’s Center for Real Estateand clearly modeled after Nicholas Negroponte’s One Laptop Per Child—was a daunting one: design and build a $1,000 house. Like the one-hundred-dollar laptop, the one-thousand-dollar house has a nice, clean media-friendly ring to it. It’s certainly eye-catching as a concept. But what are we to make of the news, slightly buried in the MIT release, that construction costs for the Chui house totaled $5925, or six times the stated goal?

Read more…

 One reason the U.S. government has been pushing for home ownership is because it’s said to reduce turnover and build strong communities. But, as I learned on a recent trip to Hong Kong, there may be other ways to get there.

Some background might be helpful here: In many Asian countries, commercial building landlords don’t finance tenant improvement allowances (the cost of paying for an office or retail tenant to customize their space), the way most do here. Leases are relatively short (often three years, vs our customary five to 10) but tenants tend to stay if the rents are reasonable, after all, they have invested in (and effectively own) an immoveable piece of the asset.

In Hong Kong, as I learned, subsidized housing works in much the same way. Thirty percent of the population lives in government subsidized housing–”Housing Estates”– as they are called. These units are rented out as bare shells. The apartments are essentially concrete boxes with only a skim coat of plaster (and plumbing conduit running on the outside of the building). As a result, the units are less prone to damage and can be more easily cleaned up when tenants change.  

(image: Hong Kong’s Ching Ho Tower, photo: Mark Huppert.) Read more…

Last December, Katherine Grove of William McDonough + Partners and Richard Maimon, of Kieran Timberlake, shared the stage at Ecobuild in Washington, DC. They were invited to discuss their work at the Make It Right project in New Orleans, where Cradle to Cradle provides a framework for the design of the community and of individual homes by several firms.

Make It Right is a pro bono effort to rebuild a community of safe and healthy homes. The emphasis is on affordability, high-quality, design, and sustainable construction. To date, 80 LEED Platinum homes have been built making the neighborhood a living laboratory of construction and material processes. Grove’s and Maimon’s presentations focused on the collaborative approach of the Make It Right interdisciplinary team, which has achieved remarkable effectiveness and efficiencies. They lowered the cost of building eco-friendly homes by managing the economics of the home designs, the costs of materials and labor, the education of staff and labor on site, contractor profit margins, insurance, legal and governmental fees, staff education, and the speed of construction.

Grove gave an overview of the Make It Right project and talked about how Cradle to Cradle was applied here: specifically with respect to materials assessment, target diagrams, and key performance goals for homes. Maimon presented an in-depth analysis of the Kieran Timberlake prototype house, including a look at how the design has evolved over multiple construction iterations, continually improving its effectiveness with regard to affordability, materials, and other factors. Grove followed this with a look at some lessons learned and initiatives under way, which include multiple modes of construction, workforce training, cross-training of builders, and more. After their presentation, I talked with them about the goals, lessons, and promise of Make It Right. Read more…

Depressing news from Kansas City: USA Today reported on Friday that Dan Rockhill’s celebrated Studio 804 design-build program has been unable to find buyers for its last two houses. As we reported in a feature story last February, Studio 804’s previous houses had attracted waiting lists of potential buyers. Unfortunately, the program moved into more expensive cutting-edge sustainable design—its 2009 house (pictured) earned Platinum LEED certification, and its new passive house is expected to do the same—just as the housing market imploded. Now, according to the USA Today article, Studio 804 is “essentially bankrupt,” with only $25 in its checking account.

Click here for information on how to donate money to Studio 804; to learn more about the program, read Daniel Akst’s feature story, “Platinum at a Price.”

“This is not a sales pitch.” That’s Rafael Viñoly introducing his presentation last night, at New York’s Center for Architecture, of his firm’s master plan for the redevelopment of the Domino Sugar Refinery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. One could be forgiven for expecting a bit of salesmanship. The Center’s new exhibition, The New Domino (on view until May 29), seems designed to foster goodwill for the $1.5 billion project as it approaches the final hurdles in a multi-year regulatory review process.

It’s been a bumpy ride for the developer, CPC Resources. Local opposition has long alleged that the proposed development is too dense for the neighborhood, and that the area’s already severely overtaxed public transit cannot accommodate the 2,200 new residential units. CPC, meanwhile, has been emphasizing the community-oriented aspects of its plan—30 percent of those units will be designated as affordable housing, and the development would create a quarter-mile public esplanade along the waterfront.

Read more…