Affordable Housing Can Be Good Design–Architecture Critic Morgan

Affordable Housing Can Be Good Design–Architecture Critic Morgan

Providence desperately needs affordable housing. So, why is it that many of the new apartment buildings–at least downtown and on the East Side–are over-priced, under-built Ubiquiboxes? How do luxury apartments, like those at Hope and Waterman Streets, solve our housing crisis?

 

GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST

 

This visually crucial and historic East Side corner could have been a showcase of affordable housing rather than just another example of a sheep in sheep's clothing. Thoughtful developers and their architects could have demonstrated the possibilities of ingenious stacking, for example. Even so, it is hard to imagine the neighborhood or the preservationists overcoming the idea that affordable housing means people you don't want in your backyard. We will need to scrap that notion if we are to solve our housing crisis.

 

Not to say that Providence architects and housing groups are not working on some solutions (including rehabilitating the Industrial Trust Building), although these usually get pushed to peripheral areas of the city. One such project, Sheridan Small Homes along the Woonasquatucket River Greenway in Olneyville, demonstrates that sustainability and affordability are feasible. Sheridan consists of five homes, which are net-zero, solar-powered, and offers two bedrooms and 750 square feet starting around $140,000.

 

 

The genesis of the design was a RISD studio that entered the Race to Net Zero Student Design Competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. The City asked the class's director Jonathan Knowles to partner with ONE Neighborhood Builders to realize the students' scheme using building trades apprentices. Progress has been slowed by the pandemic, but as Knowles told GoLocal, "There was no financial pressure to rush, as the houses are being built by trainees, and the work is being done with care and craft."

Compared to the handful of homes on three-quarters of an acre at Sheridan, an experimental approach to sustainable housing in the historic maritime city of Newburyport, Massachusetts has forty-eight units on five acres, two of which are gardens. It was conceived in part to provide affordable housing for natives who were being displaced by gentrification.

Hillside Center for Sustainable Living is the brainchild of builder David Hall and architect Keith Moskow. They were able to keep rental costs down by employing a fully integrated approach–acquisition, permitting, design, construction, ownership, rental, and maintenance. Built on a remediated brownfield, Hillside is self-sustaining, affordable, and fabricated with a large-scale construction technique adapted for residential use.

 

 

Larger than the modest Sheridan, Hillside has houses with one, two, or three bedrooms, plus a community center, a greenhouse, and individual growing plots. A YWCA with rooms for ten single women shows Hillside's commitment to economic diversity. Certified LEED Platinum, Hillside's solar power exceeds all the energy needs for the village, including a fleet of community-owned electric cars.

The unique construction system, called tiltwall, is common to large commercial structures, such as giant warehouses or large office buildings, but is rare in residential design. Tiltwall consists of concrete wall panels, poured in place on engineered foam beds at the site, and then hoisted into vertical position to make the walls. Steel is used to bind the walls together, and joints are sealed with Styrofoam, simplifying construction time, materials, and costs. The concrete panels are essentially thermal batteries, making for tremendous savings on heating (an entire house can be heated with the electricity that it takes to run a hairdryer).

 

As opposed to the wooden balloon frames beneath most Ubiquiboxes, tiltwall construction allows for more complex fenestration. Tiltwall allows an infinite variety of wall treatments; the Newburyport houses replicate board-and-batten walls of 19th-century New England cottages. The Hillside houses are attractive, eschewing the oftentimes perceived "public housing" image. Far from the common assumption that concrete is cold and abrasive, these are houses in which most people would want to live.

 

 

Hillside’s developer-designers have embraced the contradictions of concrete and have built upon its efficiency to create something handsome, desirable, and replicable.

This revolutionary design solution is the sort of innovative approach that Providence should be embracing and emulating.

 

 

Architecture Critic Morgan taught in the School of Urban and Public Affairs at the University of Louisville. He lectured on American town planning at the Swedish-language university in Turku, Finland.