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…

About a month ago the Tulane School of Architecture announced that Maurice Cox had been appointed associate dean of community engagement. The title is an altogether apt one for Cox, who has spent almost two decades forging ties between design education, the political realm, and the public. Long associated with the architecture school at the University of Virginia, in Charlottesville, Cox served a handful of terms as city councilman and was elected mayor in 2002. He is a former design director of the National Endowment for the Arts, a Loeb fellow at Harvard, and is one of the co-founders of the SEED (Social, Economic, Environmental, Design) Network, an organization dedicated to public-interest architecture. I spoke to Cox, prior to the arrival of Hurricane Isaac, about his new job and new city.

Martin C. Pedersen: You were firmly established in Charlottesville. Why move to New Orleans?

Maurice Cox: Ken [Schwartz, dean of the Tulane School of Architecture] had been trying to get me to come here in some capacity since he got here. We were always searching for what would make it an attractive opportunity. For me it was interesting to see [Tulane] president Scott Cowen change the university mission and build it structurally into the learning of students across campus. It was part of the attraction of this school to have a university wide mission that intersects with the school of architecture’s mission, and with the fate of the city. And I suspect that it’s a major reason why their enrollment is expanding. Students understand that this city has aspirations and that the university’s mission intersects with those aspirations. They also know they’re going to be in the most unique American laboratory the next three, four or five years. That’s what attracted me. Ken said, “I need someone in my leadership circle who can put all of these disparate pieces together and tell a coherent story.”

MCP: Outline for me your purview. What will you oversee?

MC: Ken combined two appointments. One is the associate dean of community engagement and the other is director of the Tulane City Center. The associate dean is responsible for finding a framework by which our real estate program, preservation program, and architectural program can create synergies. What we’re trying to do is use the center to bring them together.

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