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 EDITOR IN CHIEF Cathleen McGuigan, mcguiganc@[Link]

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10 2018
NEWS PROJECTS 118 FUTURE TOWERS, INDIA MVRDV
By Clifford A. Pearson
25 ARCHITECTS RESPOND TO RISING INTEREST IN 66 GLENSTONE MUSEUM, MARYLAND THOMAS PHIFER
& PARTNERS By Cathleen McGuigan 124 PELLEPORT SOCIAL HOUSING, PARIS BRUTHER
ACCESSORY DWELLINGS By Miriam Sitz
By Josephine Minutillo
27 THE FORUM OPENS AT COLUMBIA’S
128 BASAREN APARTMENTS, STOCKHOLM WINGÅRDHS
MANHATTANVILLE CAMPUS By Heather Corcoran Special Section: By Ana Martins
29 NEW TALLEST PASSIVE TOWER PERFORMS ON A Housing Crisis in America
BUDGET By Katharine Logan
79 INTRODUCTION
30 ARCHITECTS TACKLE “BRIDGE” HOUSING IN L.A. TECHNOLOGY
By Alex Klimoski 80 LIVING IN THE U.S.: AT WHAT COST?
By Diana Lind 134 RESILIENT RATING SYSTEMS NEW GUIDELINES HELP
84 OAKLAND By John King ARCHITECTS DESIGN BUILDINGS THAT CAN RESPOND
DEPARTMENTS TO A BROAD RANGE OF THREATS.
88 NEW YORK By Ronda Kaysen By Katharine Logan
20 EDITOR’S LETTER: THE HOUSING CRISIS
92 ORLANDO By Mary Shanklin
35 HOUSE OF THE MONTH: CRAIG STEELY’S 156 DATES & EVENTS
96 GENTRIFICATION WITHOUT DISPLACEMENT
ROOFLESS HOUSE By Joann Gonchar, FAIA 160 SNAPSHOT: AMOS REX BY JKMM ARCHITECTS IN
By James Russell HELSINKI By Peter MacKeith
41 GUESS THE ARCHITECT
99 Q&A WITH ROSANNE HAGGERTY
45 LANDSCAPE: CIRAGREEN BY ERDY MCHENRY By Cathleen McGuigan & Suzanne Stephens
By Josephine Minutillo THIS PAGE: DUJARDIN MEWS, LONDON, BY KARAKUSEVIC
101 ON THE BOARDS HOUSING By Alex Klimoski CARSON & MACCREANORLAVINGTON. PHOTO BY TIM CROCKER.
49 BOOKS: COOK’S CAMDEN: THE MAKING OF MODERN
HOUSING, BY MARK SWENARTON COVER: DRIVELINES, JOHANNESBURG, BY LOT-EK. PHOTO BY
Reviewed by Hugh Pearman DAVE SOUTHWOOD.
BUILDING TYPE STUDY 999
51 BOOKS: HOUSING AS INTERVENTION, EDITED
BY KAREN KUBEY Reviewed by Alexander
INTERNATIONAL URBAN HOUSING See expanded coverage of Projects and Building Type Studies as well as
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52 BOOKS: MARCEL BREUER: BUILDING GLOBAL 108 DRIVELINES, JOHANNESBURG LOT-EK
INSTITUTIONS, EDITED BY BARRY BERGDOLL AND By Karen Eiker
JONATHAN MASSEY Reviewed by George Baird
114 DUJARDIN MEWS, LONDON KARAKUSEVIC CARSON
57 PRODUCTS: SURFACING By Kelly Beamon & MACCREANORLAVINGTON By Hugh Pearman
61 PRODUCTS: ACCESSIBLE DESIGN By Kelly Beamon
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16 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018

for the RECORD

Beyond the printed page: highlights from our website, live events, and other happenings.

RECORD ARCHIVES
Thanks to a new partnership
with USModernist, most issues
of Architectural Record dating
back to 1891 are now available
to be viewed online.

P H O T O G R A P H Y ( L E F T C O L U M N , F R O M T O P ) : © LY N D O N F R E N C H ; A LV I S I K I R I M O T O ; N I C L E H O U X ; ( R I G H T C O L U M N ) : C O U R T E S Y A R C H I T EC T U R A L R EC O R D
INSIDE THE ACE DINING BY
DESIGN
Take a virtual tour of the Ace Hotel in Chicago by watching our exclusive video. The
project, by GREC Architects and COMMUNE Design, appeared in the April 2018 issue. Contributor Wendy
Moonan (at left in photo)
and features editor
Josephine Minutillo (at
right) visited the new
Four Seasons, which left
its storied location in
the Seagram building in
2016. Read about the
Isay Weinfeld renovation
of the New York
restaurant’s new space
on our website.

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

OCTOBER 4:
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Multifamily Housing in Austin, Texas
COVER-STORY CELEBRATIONS
Staff of the Rome-based architecture firm OCTOBER 18:
Alvisi Kirimoto celebrated their project’s Record on the Road:
appearance on the September cover of the
magazine. Read more about their work Mixed-Use Projects in San Diego
with CannonDesign on a private office in
Chicago in the 2018 Record Interiors issue. NOVEMBER 1:
Innovation Conference in New York

NOVEMBER 2:
Women in Architecture Forum & Awards
in New York

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20 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
editor’s letter

The Housing Crisis

The economy is booming, but the widening gap
between what people earn and what they must
pay for a home is a severe and growing problem.
In our current national housing crisis, there are occasionally lotteries
to select tenants for new or renovated affordable multifamily buildings.
For example, last year, nearly 94,000 people applied to rent 104 moder-
ately priced units in an apartment house on the Lower East Side of
Manhattan in New York City. You figure the odds on that one.
In a way, many of us have won—or lost—a kind of housing lottery. Did
you inherit your house? Did you buy at the low end of the market a
while back so your mortgage has remained a reasonable, fixed cost—and
you’ve been deducting the interest from your income tax? Has your
home gained significant value so you can borrow against it to renovate
your kitchen or help send your child to college? Do you live in an apart-
ment you don’t own, but in a city with regulations that keep your
monthly rent fairly stable?
Or are you one of the unlucky people who lost the lottery? Your home
ended up underwater when the housing bubble burst 10 years ago.
You’re a young adult trying to make your way in the big city, but all you
can afford is an illegal basement apartment with four roommates.
You’re working two jobs at minimum wage and still spending more
than half your earnings on housing. Your urban neighborhood is gentri- highest housing markets than any other state. The ever-widening gap
fying, and your landlord is jacking up the rent to force you out. You or a between what people earn—whether low-income or middle-class—and
family member had a health emergency or other unexpected expense what decent housing costs is one of the most acute and poorly addressed
that caused you to miss a couple months’ rent, and now you’re facing problems our country is facing.
eviction. We do not pretend to know the answers. But we know that architects,
The lack of adequate affordable housing is a vast, complex conun- with their design, construction, and problem-solving skills—and often
drum that touches tens of millions of American lives across a socio- deep knowledge about how cities work—can assist policymakers, devel-
economic spectrum that begins with the chronically homeless—up by opers, community leaders, and other stakeholders in grappling with a
12 percent since 2016, despite low unemployment and a thriving econo- crisis that is largely being confronted on the local, not the federal, level.
my—and stretches into the middle class. Under a new city government In this issue of record, we have begun to explore the severity of the
plan to create more affordable housing in New York, 20 percent of the affordable-housing shortage, with close-up views of three very different
units in the initiative would be set aside for families making, astonish- urban markets: Oakland, New York, and Orlando. We’ve also delved into
ingly, as much as $142,000 a year. the vexing question of gentrification, to ask the question, can low in-
Of course, what that really means is that in cities like New York and come neighborhoods be improved, as they should be, without
San Francisco, with soaring housing markets, you can make a good threatening the displacement of longtime residents? We have talked
salary and still be paying more than 30 percent of your income—the with one of the nation’s leaders on homelessness, Rosanne Haggerty,
national recommended benchmark—to put a roof over your head. When about new strategies that can help families, veterans, and others deeply
the average price to buy an apartment in Manhattan is $2 million, or in need of obtaining permanent homes. And, lastly, we’ve looked at the

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © M I C H E L A R N AU D
the median cost of a house in San Francisco is $1.6 million, you probably wider world to find models of innovative architecture for housing a
need to win the real Lotto just to live in either place. broad range of communities.
But in smaller, non-coastal cities, residents are also feeling a big
pinch. The obvious reasons: the median home price rose 41 percent
faster than overall inflation between 1990 and 2016. And the supply of
housing is nowhere near meeting demand: according to the National
Cathleen McGuigan, Editor in Chief
Low Income Housing Coalition, the U.S. is short 7.2 million affordable
rental units, 1 million of them in California, which has more of the
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 perspective
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
news 25

D A I LY U P D AT E S
[Link]/news
[Link]/archrecord

Nevada was decimated a decade ago by the housing crisis . . .

I have this fear that it’s all going to happen again . . . it feels like nobody learned their lesson.
—Leo Murrieta, director of a nonprofit, Make the Road Nevada, that protects the rights of immigrants and working families, speaking on NPR’s On Point.

Architects Respond to Rising Interest in Accessory Dwellings

BY MIRIAM SITZ
Granny flats, carriage houses, garage apart-
ments: while accessory dwelling units (ADUs)
go by many names and come in many forms,
they’ve long been heralded for their ability to
increase density without disrupting the exist-
ing fabric of a neighborhood and to mitigate
gentrification by providing original homeown-
ers steady rental income, with the added social
benefit of accommodating multigenerational
families whose members wish to live together.
As many urban and suburban areas grapple
with rising demand (and rising costs) for hous-
ing, interest in building ADUs is resurgent.
Architects are partnering with officials, aca-
demics, developers, and nonprofits to pioneer
new models for designing, funding, and deliv-
ering these compact homes.
Even so, there are many barriers to the large-
scale development of ADUs—not least of which United Dwelling aims to convert attached garages into
is legislative in nature. Dana Cuff has studied small residential units (above). The core of Rice
Construct’s +House consolidates the kitchen, bathroom,
accessory units for more than 10 years as the and essential systems into one compact unit (left).
cofounder and director of cityLAB, a think tank
I M AG E S : C O U R T E S Y U N I T E D D W E L L I N G / M O DAT I V E ( T O P ) ; © H E S T E R + H A R DAWAY ( B O T T O M )

within the Department of Architecture and is the line of research we’ve been conducting
Urban Design at UCLA. She found that second- for a number of years,” says Danny Samuels,
ary dwellings were being built informally Rice University architecture professor, who
across Los Angeles—on as many as 60 percent of codirects the school’s design-build studio, Rice
properties, in some communities. “But because Architecture Construct, with assistant profes-
of a couple of really arcane laws, it was almost sor Andrew Colopy. “The idea we eventually
impossible to do legally,” she says. hit on is that you prefabricate a core,” says
In 2016, armed with a decade of research, Samuels, consolidating the kitchen, bath-
Cuff and cityLAB fellow Jane Blumenfeld, room, and air-conditioning, heating, and
working in concert with colleagues at UC electrical systems into one compact unit.
Berkeley, coauthored a bill that removed a This vision came to fruition in +House, an
city’s ability to enforce regulations (such as the ADU with a 3,000-pound prefabricated core,
required addition of parking spaces, and high designed and built over the last four semesters
fees to connect to utilities) that were inhibit- by Construct students. Situated in the back-
ing the development of ADUs in California. yard of a house in Houston’s Third Ward, the
The bill went into effect in January 2017, open- 360-square-foot dwelling will accommodate
ing the floodgates for the construction of new live-in counselors who work for Agape
units and permitting of existing ones in the Development, which provides supportive
state, making it one of the friendliest in the housing (including the primary structure on
country to this type of housing. of each project typically necessitates some the +House site) to at-risk young adults.
Beyond legal hurdles, which still cripple the degree of customization. Existing infrastruc- The prefabricated-core model preserves the
widespread use of secondary dwellings in ture—such as the primary house, neighboring ability to customize a structure but offers the
many municipalities and states, the building buildings, driveways, and city utility hook- efficiencies of prefabrication—a crucial factor
type presents an interesting design challenge ups—means “each one of those things in making ADUs an attractive, viable option for
to architects. Many have pursued modular or interrupts scaling up production,” says Cuff. homeowners. “There are already economic
prefabricated solutions, but the unique context So how far can prefabrication extend? “This forces pushing people toward this solution,”

Visit our online section, [Link]/news.

26 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
perspectivenews
approach led Leavitt and Housing Choice Vouchers program (also
Návar to partner in May known as Section 8, which helps very low-
with venture capitalist income families and individuals afford private
Steven Dietz, whose new rental housing) to bring ADUs to people who
company, United Dwelling, are “asset-rich but cash-poor,” says architect
is one of several in the Elizabeth Timme. She founded the firm in
country aiming to flip the 2013 and serves as co-executive director with
grassroots model of ADU policy wonk and planner Helen Leung.
development on its head. Working with collaborators in the finance,
The startup will handle community-development, and nonprofit sec-
all aspects and costs of tors, LA-Más launched the Backyard Homes
converting a detached Project in July, which recruits homeowners to
garage into a living space, become Section 8 landlords, offering pro bono
then split the rental in- project management, discounted design and
come with homeowners for construction services, and flexible financing (a
a set number of years un- loan, rather than a second mortgage) in ex-
LA-Más designed this affordably built ADU for a pilot program with the city.
der a land-lease agreement. change for their five-year commitment to rent
says Colopy, “so we want to find more ways to Modative designed a standardized unit that to Section 8 tenants. Construction is slated to
encourage individual property owners to make works within that specific context. “By com- begin mid-2019 on the first cohort of 10 home-

R E N D E R I N G : C O U R T E S Y L A- M Á S
this decision.” ing into each project knowing that we’re owners’ accessory dwellings.
Architect Derek Leavitt, who cofounded the doing the exact same thing every time, we can “It’s really meaningful to apply our formal
Los Angeles–based design-build firm Modative get the cost way down,” says the architect. agenda to these alternative living spaces, to use
with contractor Christian Návar in 2006, is United Dwelling expects to sign their first history and precedent to make them some-
exploring a developer model to quickly deliver lease this fall. thing more,” says Timme. “What we really care
units. “We’re trying to get costs down by Elsewhere in Los Angeles, LA-Más is pio- about doing is supporting the most vulnerable
eliminating the custom-design portion of archi- neering another model: the urban-design populations in any community. Here, that’s
tecture”—which, he admits, “sounds very studio recently developed a program that renters, and the ADU was a clear mechanism
counterintuitive to say as an architect.” This leverages a novel loan product and the federal for maintaining neighborhood stability.” n

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perspective news 27

The Forum Opens at Columbia’s Manhattanville Campus

BY HEATHER CORCORAN
A new cityscApe, 17 years in the making, is
rising at the corner of 125th Street and Broad­
way in the West Harlem neighborhood of
Manhattan. Just beyond a century­old viaduct,
on a sliver of a block—where, not long ago, a
sign reading “Dear Columbia: No Forced
Displacement” hung above a gas station—
stands a gleaming structure of metal, glass,
and concrete panels.
The Forum, as it’s called, is the third compo­
nent to open at Columbia University’s new
Manhattanville campus. A massive uptown
expansion of the school, the $6.3 billion proj­
ect will transform more than 17 acres, or about
7 percent, of West Harlem into a multidisci­
plinary academic hub, complete with a master
plan by Renzo Piano Building Workshop
(RPBW) and SOM that achieved LEED Platinum
certification for neighborhood development.
Situated at the site’s southeastern­most corner,
the Forum—which will host conferences and
events and house Columbia World Projects, an
initiative to address global issues—may prove a
case study of how one of the city’s largest
landowners can coexist with a community.
Generous glazing at the street level is meant to give the impression that the Forum is floating. To underscore that idea
“The Forum is the entry point to the new during the design, Renzo Piano did not include a ground floor in any of his skeches of the building.
campus in every way,” says university presi­
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © F R A N K O U D E M A N ( T O P ) ; C O U R T E S Y C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y/ M A N N Y C H U N G ( B O T T O M )

dent Lee Bollinger. Together with two Mead & White campus less than a mile south, plains Chaaya, who sought to give these
completed structures just to the north—the in Manhattan’s Morningside Heights neighbor­ values form in the latest building. At street
Jerome L. Greene Science Center and the hood, where heavy iron gates emblazoned level, 10­foot setbacks create wide, welcoming
Lenfest Center for the Arts—the Forum makes with the words “May All Who Enter Find Peace sidewalks, while on the slightly larger, canti­
a trio of “modern yet classical” RPBW designs And Welcome” mark the boundaries, there’s levered upper floors, expanses of glass offer a
that set the tone for this new type of open, no such announcement of Columbia’s new glimpse of the work taking place inside.
collaborative campus. With their activated turf. Instead, there’s a shift from the sur­ According to Chaaya, the building’s massing,
street frontages and glazed facades, the struc­ rounding brick to RPBW’s variations on glass, material, and varying degrees of transpar­
tures provide a public­facing alternative to the metal, and concrete. The materials recall the ency offer hints of its function: open
cloistered academic environments of the past. area’s “industrial soul,” says RPBW partner in workspaces at one end and a 437­seat audito­
Unlike the university’s historic McKim, charge, Antoine Chaaya, and seamlessly blend rium at the other.
the “urban layer” with The building’s shape responds to the con­
public amenities like the straints of the site, including zoning changes
café and lobby, as sidewalk that came with the creation of the Special
transitions to radiant­ Manhattanville Mixed Use District, which was
heated polished­concrete approved in 2007 and allows for new commer­
interior floor. cial and residential spaces in the former
“Manhattanville ex­ manufacturing district. Since the master
presses the values of this plan’s proposal, some community members
century: tolerance, raised serious concerns that the school would
openness, permeability, overwhelm the neighborhood, displacing
transparency, and sharing residents and jobs in an area that’s 56.5 per­
space with others,” ex­ cent Latino and 27.2 percent black, and where
the mean income is about 44 percent below
Clustered around a public plaza
the city average. When Columbia responded
called the Small Square (left), the with plans to engage the community, it did
Forum (the triangular building) little to quell fears that the campus would
joins the Lenfest Center for the hasten large­scale gentrification—remnants of
Arts (at left in photo) and the
Jerome L. Greene Science Center the distrust seeded in 1968, when the school
(in the middle). proposed an athletic facility with a separate
28 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
perspective news
Flooded with natural light, the ground floor of the Forum is
open to the public.

pollution, and interruption, have helped

dampen protests.
Columbia spokespeople point out that the
neighborhood has benefited from infrastruc-
ture improvements (including updates to the
sewer system, water and gas lines, and electric
conduits), wider sidewalks, and Wi-Fi–enabled
public plazas, along with an influx of new
jobs. And beyond the new cafés, galleries, and
rock-climbing gym, there’s a community
Education Lab and Wellness Center already
operating in the Jerome L. Green Science
Center.
“In my view, this is still an unrealized
vision,” says Bollinger, who looks at the devel-

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © F R A N K O U D E M A N
opment in century-long terms. “I don’t for a
second think we have figured out how to
connect Manhattanville with the other parts
of Columbia University, or with the surround-
entrance for members of the local Harlem of New York’s demise in the recent Harper’s ing communities and New York City in all the
community. (That center, which was never magazine essay, “The Death of a Once Great ways that we should. But on every level, in
built, came to be known as “Gym Crow.”) City”), initiatives like a Community Benefit every dimension, our people are thinking
Though such large-scale development inevi- Agreement, to support local businesses and about this all the time.”
tably draws staunch criticism from some quality-of-life efforts, as well as a Clean And, now, there’s a Forum to further that
quarters (the campus was cited as a harbinger Construction Plan that mitigated noise, air conversation. n
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
perspective news 29

New Tallest Passive Tower Performs on a Budget

BY KATHARINE LOGAN
Passive House construction has reached new was monitored with a blower door test for each
heights. At 289 feet, Bolueta, a 28-story residential apartment during construction and a final test on
high-rise in Bilbao, Spain, has become the world’s completion.
tallest building certified under the standard. Named Because Passive House energy standards discourage
for the district in which it is located, the $14.5 million, irregular building forms and extensive glazing, build-
171-unit development (including a nine-story compan- ings attaining the standard risk coming off as banal.
ion to the high-rise) consists entirely of social housing. Bolueta bucks this trend with a dramatic black facade
“There are no excuses anymore,” says Germán of gleaming, large-format, composite aluminum pan-
Velázquez, a partner at Varquitectos, the project’s els applied in vertical bands of inclined planes. The
Pamplona-based architect. “It is possible to realize color refers to the city’s 250-year-old heritage of coal-
such a project in Bolueta, and it is just as possible to based industrial activity. (The shorter building will be
realize one almost anywhere out there.” clad in a gray version of the material, in a nod to the
The Passive House standard mandates an airtight, steel produced in the area’s foundries.) The reflective,
highly insulated weather envelope with triple-glazed dynamic nature of the panels gives Bolueta “a signifi-
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © VA R Q U I T E C T O S

windows and heat-recovery ventilation. Bolueta’s cantly lighter effect,” says Velázquez, than its large,
heating demand of just 5.7 kWh/m2a represents an 80 simple volume might otherwise have achieved.
percent reduction compared to a baseline building. To The project is being developed by the Basque gov-
achieve this within budget, the architect relied on ernment’s public-housing company, Visesa. The
careful detailing of basic materials rather than propri- owner’s goals are two-fold: to provide residents with
etary assemblies. Airtightness, the main challenge, maximum comfort for minimum energy costs, and
to serve as an example for private-sector developers.
Bolueta is the world’s new tallest Passive House–certified
Next door to Bolueta, Visesa continues to lead by
building, surpassing a residential tower by Handel Architects
called The House, which opened last year on the campus of example: another Passive House high-rise is now
Cornell Tech in New York. under construction. n
30 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
perspectivenews noted

Architects Tackle ÒBridgeÓ Housing RIBA Announces 2018

International Prize Shortlist
BY ALEX KLIMOSKI Finalists for the biennial prize include Phase 1 of
Central European University in Budapest by
O’Donnell + Tuomey; the Children Village
dormitory in Tocantins, Brazil, by Rosenbaum +
Aleph Zero; the Toho Gakuen School of Music in
Tokyo by Nikken Sekkei; and the Bosco Verticale
tower in Milan by Boeri Studio.

Brad Pitt’s “Make It Right” Faces

Legal Action from Homeowners
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the actor’s
nonprofit housing foundation built more than 100
homes in New Orleans’s Lower Ninth Ward. Now
Make It Right is facing lawsuits and complaints
from residents over alleged construction flaws
and the organization’s failure to make repairs.

AIA Adopts Changes to

Last month in downtown Los Angeles, the El
Professional Code of Ethics
Pueblo emergency homeless shelter opened on a In response to resolutions presented at the 2018
city-owned parking lot near Union Station. AIA Conference, the Board of Directors has
Composed of three trailers arranged around a approved changes to the organization’s Code of
central outdoor deck, El Pueblo is the first of 15 Ethics and Professional Conduct, to explicitly
planned “pop-up” shelters to open (one in each address sexual harassment, equity in the
city council district), funded through Mayor profession, and sustainability.
Eric Garcetti’s “A Bridge Home” program.
Launched in April, the initiative will Apartment Complex by Rudolph
implement recommendations outlined in a Schindler Listed for $10 Million
December 2017 report by the nonprofit Urban A 19,000-square-foot multifamily residential
Land Institute (ULI) to fast-track the construc- A prototype by Studio One Eleven and SWA features building on Laurelwood Drive in Los Angeles’

I M AG E S : C O U R T E S Y S T U D I O O N E E L E V E N / S WA ( T O P ) ; © S C A R L E T T Y I N G VO R A PA N T ( B O T T O M )
amenities, like a dog park, that can be used by the larger
tion of “bridge” housing, which provides Studio City neighborhood hit the market in
community (top). The El Pueblo shelter (bottom), which
immediate provisions for homeless individuals opened last month, includes shared recreation spaces. mid-September. Designed by the noted American
until more permanent options become avail- Modernist and built in the late 1940s, the 20-unit
able. According to the mayor’s office, over system that could be arranged to have open complex received landmark designation in 1980.
25,000 people are now living on the streets of space.” According to architect Michael Bohn of
Los Angeles. Studio One Eleven, who worked with SWA on
In July, the ULI selected three pairings of the 100-bed model, a primary concern was
architecture and landscape architecture how to integrate the facilities into existing 60
firms—DLR Group with EPT Design, SWA with neighborhoods. “We were interested in the 62 61 62
Studio One Eleven, and Realm with JFAK mixing zone—the sidewalk where the site 59 58
Architects—to develop design prototypes with meets the street,” says Bohn. One way they
50 55
the mayor’s office. The teams participated in an aimed to foster a sense of community was by
53 54
intensive half-day charrette to create models placing a widely appealing amenity at the edge 53 52
for 50-, 100-, and 150-bed facilities that could be of the project area: a dog park.
easily adapted to a number of sites. Although Currently, the remaining sites are being 40
the 45-bed El Pueblo shelter was designed—by identified, with the goal of having all loca- A S O N D J F M A M J J A
Gensler—before the prototypes were developed, tions at least under construction by July 2019. 2017 2018
it includes many of the same features: outdoor While the bridge-housing units will not solve INQUIRIES BILLINGS
areas, shared resources such as food trucks or the issue of homelessness, Garcetti’s program
community gardens, and modular structures is a necessary effort to minimize human
containing beds as well as social services. suffering, says John Maceri, CEO of the People Billings Rise for 11th Month
The charrette teams worked from a sprung Concern, the nonprofit that operates El The AIA’s latest data show that the Architectural
tent typology, along the lines of IKEA’s Better Pueblo. “This isn’t about just 45 beds—it’s Billings Index jumped from 50.7 in July to 54.2 in
Shelter design for refugees, but “we didn’t about the first 45 people and the next 45 August. (Scores over 50 indicate an increase in
want the facilities to look like relief housing,” people and the next after that, multiplied by billings.) The projects inquiries index and the
says ULI’s Los Angeles executive director, dozens of sites around the city,” he says. “It design contracts index both fell, by 2.5 points and
Marty Borko. “The goal was to have a modular will have a positive impact.” n 4.2 points respectively.
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 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
perspectivehouse of the month 35

A CLEVERLY DESIGNED STRUCTURE EDITS OUT MUCH OF A SURROUNDING

HODGEPODGE, WELCOMING IN SUN AND SKY. BY JOANN GONCHAR, FAIA

The residenTial archiTecTure of Atherton, California, is

nothing if not eclectic. Peeking out from behind the town’s ubiq-
uitous fences are modernist glass boxes, French chateaux, and
Italianate villas. But a just-finished house in this leafy Silicon
Valley suburb, by San Francisco–based architect Craig Steely,
defies stylistic categorization. The enigmatic one-story structure
on a long and skinny lot is defined by a sinuous, almost window-
less wall clad in vertical cedar planks. Although about half of the
5,900 square feet behind the curving enclosure are sheltered
under flat roofs, the architect has dubbed the residence the
Roofless House, since the remaining space is devoted to court-
yards and is open to the sky.
Steely’s aim was to create an “escape pod” for his software-
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © DA R R E N B R A D L E Y

engineer client, who hoped to take advantage of the temperate

Bay Area climate through as much outdoor area as possible, but
who also wanted to limit her views of the surrounding architec-
tural hodgepodge. The solution was to replace the typical
Atherton perimeter fence with the 14½-foot-tall wood wall, but
pull it well inside the boundaries of the half-acre property.
The gracefully snaking element, supported by a steel frame
with wood-stud infill, defines a house entered through a 7-foot-
From the street (top), the Roofless House appears to be windowless. But behind the curvilinear,
square glass pivot door into a foyer and approximately 14½-foot-tall cedar-clad enclosure are living spaces that open up onto courtyards through
100-foot-long circulation spine. The living areas open off this generously sized sliding glass doors (above).
36 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
perspectivehouse of the month

Thehouseisenteredthrougha7-foot-squareglasspivotdoorintothefoyer(left).The
livinganddiningroom(above,left)hascourtyardsontwosidesand,atoneend,the
kitchenpantry(above).ItisenclosedwithinaU-shaped,freestandingvolumemadeof
cedarplanks,likethewallthatsurroundsthehouse.

3 2
2 2
10 6
7
9
5
4 1

0 15 FT.
FLOOR PLAN
5 M.

1 ENTRY 6 MASTERBEDROOM
2 COURTYARD 7 BEDROOM
3 LIVING/DINING 8 GUESTBEDROOM
4 KITCHEN 9 GARAGE
5 PANTRY 10 BREEZEWAY

space, with three generous courtyards interspersed among them. Steely and interior living spaces. The travertine floors, meanwhile, continue P H O T O G R A P H Y:©DA R R E NB R A D L E Y

introduced the curves to the otherwise “conventional” plan, he says, as into the courtyards, although there the pavers are supported on pedestals
a means of selectively editing out undesirable views and instead direct- and are ungrouted, so that rainwater readily drains. These outdoor spaces
ing attention upward, toward the clouds and the tops of nearby mature include drought-resistant river birch trees, whose slender trunks extend
oaks and redwoods. through circular openings in the stone, creating the impression, says
The result is a house that is insular but not hermetic. The rooms are Steely, that the trees are growing indoors.
light and airy, and flow easily into the courtyards through oversized With such combinations of nature and architecture, curving and recti-
sliding glass doors. The white-painted drywall ceilings seemingly float linear, and spaces that are open and closed, Steely has created an
above the wood planks that clad not only the curving enclosure’s out- inventive house that ingeniously screens out its less remarkable neigh-
ward-facing facade but also serve as the wall surface for the courtyards bors, while framing the sky and inviting the sun and breezes inside. n
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Guess the Architect Contest

ENTER NOW! A monthly contest from the editors of RecoRd asks you to
guess the architect for a building of historical importance.
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © M I C H E L L E A N D C H R I S G E R A R D ( T O P ) ; R A FA E L VA R G A S ( B O T T O M )

CLUE: A WORLD-RENOWNED ARCHITECT DESIGNED THIS ENSEMBLE OF STEEL AND

GLASS ROWHOUSES AND HIGH-RISE APARTMENT BUILDINGS WITH RETAIL SPACE,
A SCHOOL, AND AN AMPLE PARK ON THE EDGE OF THE DOWNTOWN OF A MAJOR
AMERICAN CITY. THE COMPLEX BECAME AN INFLUENTIAL HOUSING MODEL FOR
MODERNIST DESIGN, EVEN WHEN THE CITY ITSELF SUFFERED ECONOMICALLY.

The architect for the September issue contest’s Sagrada Família Basilica in Barcelona was Antoni
Gaud’, who started working on its Gothic-organic design in 1915. By his death in 1926, only part
of the church was completed. Over the last century, others have tried to finish the task, with
completion expected in 2026, the centenary of Gaudí’s death.

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 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
perspective landscape 45

SANDWICHED BETWEEN TWO TOWERS IN PHILADELPHIA, A PLANTED ROOF

DECK SERVES AS A NEW PUBLIC SQUARE. BY JOSEPHINE MINUTILLO

When local architects Erdy McHenry were asked to

design Evo, a 34-story mixed-use tower on a narrow lot by the
banks of the Schuylkill River, straddling University City and
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © A L B E R T V E C E R K A ( T O P ) ; C H R I S T O P H E R K AO | P H I L LY BY D R O N E ( M I D D L E ) ;

the Central Business District in Philadelphia, the commission

from developer Brandywine Realty Trust came with an added
assignment—to create a public gathering space atop the exist-
ing 11-tier parking structure adjacent to their vacant site.
Known as CiraGreen, the roof connects to resident amenity
spaces in Evo, but is also accessible to the public from the
ground level via dedicated elevators connected to the garage.
(The garage itself had been designed to include several more
levels that were never built, so it was able to support the
green roof without additional structure.)
Though much of the 52,000-square-foot roof is planted, the
paved walkways and plaza space are designed as a blue roof
for enhanced stormwater retention. A 5-inch-thick cellular
membrane beneath the pervious paving acts as a horizontal
C O U R T E S Y H O N E YG R O W AT H L E T I C S ( B O T T O M )

cistern, capturing rainfall and releasing it gradually to the Much of the acre-plus
planted portions, which include areas of soil up to 2½ feet roof, including tilted
portions that act as
deep for trees. inclined seating for
In a couple of spots, the grassy deck is lifted to provide events, is covered in
inclined seating areas for viewing events, which have includ- lawn, though some
ed musical performances and, more recently, film screenings. parts are planted with
small trees, shrubs,
The larger of the two tilted areas rises 17 feet, offering views and flowers (top). The
of the Philadelphia skyline just across the river and conceal- roof offers views of
ing public toilets and storage space beneath it. downtown (above) and
CiraGreen has hosted numerous events and gatherings, has become the scene
for a range of events
from athletic boot camps and political fundraisers to a sea- and activities, including
sonal beer garden. It proves that, when you’re looking for a outdoor yoga classes
place to relax or party, the sky’s the limit. n (left).
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perspectivebooks

London’s Forgotten Legacy

Cook’s Camden: The Making of Modern Housing, by Mark Swenarton.
Lund Humphries, 327 pages, $89.99.

Reviewed by Hugh Pearman

Camden, one of the 32 boroughs making up

Greater London, lies just northwest of the
city’s center. It is famed in British architec-
ture for a very high standard of public-
housing projects of a unique kind, designed
and built in the 1960s and ’70s. The borough
architect was Sydney Cook (1910–79), whose
great achievement at the very end of his
career was to reject tower blocks in favor of
low-rise high-density developments, and to
assemble a team of ambitious young architects to design them.
What Cook reestablished during his eight-year tenure from 1965 to ’73
was the London tradition of a front door onto a street. Whereas in the
past this had meant conventional row housing, the Camden architects
experimented with a variety of newer forms. One of these was the
“stepped section,” whereby each floor was set back from the one below,
allowing garden terraces and walkways. In this manner, even upper-floor
apartments were connected to the public realm.
The most fully realized version of this approach is the Alexandra Road
Estate (1977), a human-scale concrete megastructure perched alongside
the tracks of one of the main rail lines into central London. In form like a
curving shallow valley, it is intensely social. This was designed by Cook’s
key protégé and effective second in command, American-born Neave
Brown. Indeed it was Brown rather than the eventually ailing Cook whose
name came to be most closely connected with the Camden projects.
Shortly before his death in January 2018, Brown was awarded the highest
honor of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Royal Gold Medal, in
recognition of his intensely important contribution to the history of
housing. Brown’s relatively small lifetime output is all now officially
protected as important architecturally and historically. Many other archi-
tects contributed projects at this time in Camden, particularly Gordon
Benson and Alan Forsyth (later to establish a successful private practice),
and Hungarian-born Peter Tabori.
Architectural historian Mark Swenarton’s book is thorough—he has
spoken to many of the key architects and politicians involved, Brown
included. Cook had recruited his designers mostly from the Architectural
Association School, the ideas hothouse, which itself had largely rejected
high-rise solutions for housing. Cook himself disliked big housing proj-
ects, preferring to perform urban repair with a greater number of smaller
ones. A key example—taking up a substantial section of this book—is
Benson & Forsyth’s Branch Hill Estate (1976) in upmarket Hampstead,
highly controversial politically and very expensive to build. The pairs of
21 attached houses step down the hill, intersected by alleys. The multi-
level interiors are sophisticated. This is social housing of a quality equal
to many luxury housing developments.
That project was a high-water mark. By then Cook had retired, and he
died the year Margaret Thatcher became prime minister and dismantled
much of the official apparatus of public-sector work of this nature. But
Cook left an extraordinary legacy. Swenarton notes, citing a famous
earlier architect of garden cities and suburbs, “not since Raymond
Unwin in 1902 had a British architect offered so clear-cut and coherent
an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy in housing design.” n

Hugh Pearman is a London-based architecture critic and editor of the RIBA Journal.
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perspectivebooks

Seeking Shelter
Housing As Intervention: Architecture Towards Social Equity, Karen Kubey,
guest editor. Architectural Design/Wiley, 144 pages, $45.

Reviewed by Alexander Gorlin, FAIA

This compendium makes an important contri-

bution to the discussion of the many strategies
architects are using to help deal with the glob-
al housing crisis. Edited by housing specialist
Karen Kubey, who trained as an architect and
teaches at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, it brings
together 16 essays on housing in the U.S., UK,
and Europe with excursions to Africa and
China. (Because of the time lag in book publish-
ing, none address new housing policy under
the Trump administration.)
But what it reveals, despite architects’ noble
intentions, are the limitations on what they can actually do to solve
the housing crisis. The architect is often called upon to fix problems in
the realm of public policy, politics, and finance. This expectation gives
short shrift to what they do best, which is to design.
Some essays are remarkable and insightful, but others not. For
example, while Matthew Lasner thankfully does not rehash the disil-
lusionment with such modern housing schemes as Le Corbusier’s
towers in the park or Jane Jacobs’s radical return to low-rise, he does
not present a convincing narrative in their place. To commend José
Lluis Sert for his dreary Roosevelt Island housing—and for “reinvigorat-
ing the field”—is very odd.
Robert Fishman outlines the housing crisis in the west from the
time of the withdrawal of big government, after building much hous-
ing following World War II, until the 1980s. Now it is up to private
developers, often in public-private partnerships, to build housing with
government subsidies or tax credits, so the quantity cannot keep up
with the demand. While Fishman does wax on about small nonprofit
developers who hire talented architects, he does not give enough cred-
it to for-profit developers who have created quality affordable housing
at a greater scale—for example, L&M Development Partners, who com-
missioned FX Collaborative to create mixed-income (including
supportive) housing at Navy Green, in Brooklyn.
Also missing throughout the book is any mention of the role of the
great community-organizing group the Metro Industrial Areas
Foundation (Metro IAF), started up in 1940 by Saul Alinsky. In
Brooklyn and the Bronx, it has built over 6,000 units of affordable
housing since 1983. (Full disclosure: my firm designed 500 units for its
Nehemiah program in Brooklyn.)
The best essays demonstrate changing policies that will advance the
cause of more affordable housing. Dana Cuff, director of cityLAB, a
think tank at UCLA, has successfully pushed to change the law to allow
Accessory Dwelling Units on every home in California. That is an
astounding 8 million lots, a tremendous sea change in permitting peo-
ple to add a backyard rental or granny flat to provide more housing.
All in all, this vast and intractable problem needs more than a 144-
page AD catalogue. (Unfortunately, the book’s graphics don’t help the
case: bold type is often printed over the images, and tiny drawings and
captions are set in a font more suitable to the bottom row of an eye
chart.) But, that said, this is worth a spot on your bookshelf as an
introduction to one of the acute global crises of our time. n

Alexander Gorlin, FAIA, has his own practice in New York.

 perspectivebooks

The Bearable Heaviness of Being

Marcel Breuer: Building Global Institutions, edited by Barry Bergdoll and Jonathan Massey. Lars Müller
Publishers, 368 pages, $40.

Reviewed by George Baird

While Marcel breuer’s reputa- troika with Pier Luigi Nervi

tion suffered a decline after his (structural engineer) and Bernard
death in 1981, it has picked up in Zehrfuss (project manager) re-
recent years. In this collection of porting to an assertive “advisory
essays, Columbia University archi- committee” of prominent inter-
tecture historian Barry Bergdoll, national architects.
and Jonathan Massey, dean of the Elsewhere in the book, struc-
University of Michigan’s architec- tural engineer Guy Nordenson
ture school, argue that the revival provides an account of how
started in 1985 with the Whitney Breuer learned about structure
Museum’s commission of Michael from Nervi—and the subsequent
Graves to design a major expan- problems stemming from
sion of Breuer’s 1966 New York Breuer’s only partial understand-
building, which proved to be extremely con- ing of the principles at stake. Massey addresses
troversial. Twenty years later, when the the series of projects Breuer’s firm undertook
Metropolitan Museum of Art took over and for New York University at its Bronx campus,
restored the Whitney as the Met Breuer, his focusing on how demographic changes af-
reputation was further elevated. fected its economics. The institution, designed
Two recent events spurred this publication: to serve the largely middle-class Jewish popu-
first, Syracuse University’s digitization of lation inhabiting the area, saw its exodus to
its Breuer archive and, second, a Breuer semi- the suburbs during the upheavals of the late
nar that Bergdoll conducted at Syracuse’s ’60s. The private campus closed and in 1973
architecture school in 2010, when Massey was was sold to the publicly owned City University
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UNESCO House in Paris (1958) and for Saint work, a question that deeply preoccupied the
John’s Abbey, in Collegeville, Minnesota (1961), authors of two previous monographs on the
turned him into the designer par excellence for pioneer architect: Isabelle Hyman’s Marcel
high-profile buildings during the following Breuer, Architect: The Career and the Buildings
decade and a half. In his essay on Saint John’s (2001) and Robert McCarter’s Breuer (2016).
Abbey, Bergdoll cites a formal characteristic he I find myself thinking that, despite the
calls “heavy lightness,” which differs from the strengths of Breuer’s late work—for example,
generic lightness typifying Breuer’s previous the Robert C. Weaver Federal Building in
work, such as the Bauhaus furniture he de- Washington, D.C. (1968)—it’s a little formalist
signed in the 1920s. and formulaic. Indeed, one of the purposes
A contributor, Timothy M. Rohan, an archi- of Breuer’s ubiquitous pilotis seems to be
tecture historian, examines a motif he calls to turn the building masses above into
Breuer’s “ancillary strategy.” This phrase refers objects to be contemplated as art, and leaves
to freestanding elements adjacent to the de- their relationship to the ground plane often
signer’s major buildings, such as the entry unresolved.
canopy of UNESCO House. Rohan compares Bergdoll and Massey do acknowledge that
this approach to Venturi and Scott Brown’s they have raised as many questions as they’ve
“signs” appended to “sheds” in their projects. answered. In spite of this, the handsome col-
Three additional essays are surprising in lection of essays, extensively illustrated with
the way they stretch the definition of what we photographs and drawings, bolsters their
think of as architectural historiography, typi- thesis regarding the important political and
cally reliant on biography and building professional role Breuer assumed late in his
analysis. Architecture historian Lucia Allais, career, as architect to an emerging global
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 67

Glenstone Museum | Maryland | Thomas Phifer & Partners

Arcadia for Art

Architecture and landscape come together for a unique cultural experience.
BY CATHLEEN MCGUIGAN
PHOTOGRAPHY BY IWAN BAAN
68 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018

P
icture a bright, sunny day, and a walk through a wood- public a 23,000-square-foot gallery, designed by the late Charles
land, over a bridge where a creek bubbles below and the Gwathmey, to show art from his foundation’s collection on what was
lofty trees dapple the light overhead. Beyond is a meadow, then a 125-acre site (record, June 2008). Since then, he has acquired
and as you follow a gravel path and turn up a gentle slope, more land, and he and his wife, Emily Wei Rales, the museum’s cofound-
an ensemble of solid, cubic architectural forms comes into er and director, have significantly expanded the collection. The parklike
view. The windowless volumes are crisp but seem rooted property has been undergoing a transformation for a longer time, with

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © R O N A M S T U T Z ( B O T T O M , L E F T )
in the earth like ancient ruins, their slightly mottled pale Adam Greenspan, design partner of the Berkeley-based PWP Landscape
gray walls of poured-concrete block softened by the swaying grasses Architecture, in the lead (record, August 2018), enhancing the contours
and black-eyed Susans that crowd up to the building’s edges. of the land, planting 8,000 trees and helping to site large-scale outdoor
In this idyllic procession from a distant parking lot to the front door sculpture by artists such as Richard Serra, Ellsworth Kelly, and Jeff
of the new museum at Glenstone, opening on October 4, every move Koons. In 2010, the clients—after six months of what Emily Rales calls
has been choreographed to create an experience meant to make visi- “auditions”—commissioned Thomas Phifer & Partners of New York to
tors feel that time has slowed, and they can lose themselves in an design a new 170,000-square-foot museum (the other final contenders
extraordinary melding of landscape, architecture, and contemporary were Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects, and Steven Holl Architects).
art. Set in 230 pastoral acres in suburban Potomac, Maryland, Glen- The final brief called for a museum of 11 galleries, nine designated
stone is just 15 miles away from Washington, D.C., but it might as well for the long-term installation of work by nine contemporary artists.
be light years: if you want to escape today’s political turmoil, this is the Thomas Phifer’s concept was to create the “village of buildings” that
place to come. you see as you approach; though the pavilions vary in size and propor-
The design of cultural experience has been evolving at Glenstone for tion, they are, in fact, all part of one cast-in-place-concrete and steel
more than a decade. In 2006, its cofounder, Mitchell Rales, opened to the structure, with an interior circulation route around a central water
GLENSTONE MUSEUM MARYLAND THOMAS PHIFER & PARTNERS 69

SLOW TIME
Glenstone’s 11 galleries are
dispersed among a
“village” of variously sized
cubic pavilions arranged
in the 230-acre landscape
(previous spread). Just
inside the entrance to the
museum (opposite, top) is
a wall piece by Lawrence
Weiner (opposite, bottom).
Both exterior and many
interior walls are
composed of smooth
poured-concrete blocks
(above). Visitors can sit
out on the central water
court designed by PWP, or
view it from above (right).
70 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018

DOWN TO EARTH
Although the pavilions, which
appear to sink gently into the
earth, look distinct from afar,
they are all part of one
cast-in-place-concrete and
steel structure, connected
below grade, with 50,000
square feet of galleries and
the water court (right). The
4 museum’s offices, on the
same lower level, look toward
a Michael Heizer piece,
3 Compression Line.

1 PAVILIONS
2 GALLERY
3 ARRIVAL HALL
4 PARKING GROVES
6 5 CAFÉ
6 WOODLAND TRAIL
1

GLENSTONE SITE PLAN

1 VISITOR ENTRANCE

4 2 LOADING DOCK
4 4 4
3 STAFF ENTRANCE
1 4 4 GALLERY

4 5 WATER COURT
4 5
A A 6 ADMINISTRATION
4
7 MECHANICAL
4 4

2 4
3
7

0 60 FT.
ENTRY-FLOOR PLAN GALLERIES FLOOR PLAN
20 M.

6 5 4
7 7
0 30 FT.
SECTION A - A
10 M.
GLENSTONE MUSEUM MARYLAND THOMAS PHIFER & PARTNERS 71

court, designed by PWP. Phifer organized the building on three levels, has been elevated to a high level of refinement: the 26,000 blocks in
largely embedded in the earth. The main entrance and foyer is a rela- the project, poured in North Carolina and Tennessee in plywood forms
tively small space on the ground floor; the 50,000 square feet of over two years, are silky to the touch and as elegant as stone in their
galleries—known as “rooms”—are one level below grade, as is the water softly variegated markings, the result of being fabricated in different
court and 12,000 square feet of museum offices. Two levels down is a weather and seasons.
basement for art storage and conservation. At first, Roman travertine was considered for the exterior cladding.
It is a powerful composition, with the striking architecture height- One voice against such a fancy material was the late Cy Twombly,
ened by a limited palette of materials, exquisite details, and the deft whose relatively little known sculptures grace one of the nine rooms at
deployment of daylight and deep shadows—just one example of the yin Glenstone. On a visit to his storefront studio in Lexington, Virginia,
and yang of visual experience throughout the project. before he died in 2011, Emily Rales recalls the artist said of the future
The seeming simplicity of the architecture echoes the vision that museum, “Don’t make it too precious or chic.” Once everyone settled
the Rales sought for viewing art—no crowds (visitors will be limited on poured-concrete blocks, the scale of each became a matter of study
to about 400 a day) and no distractions (a bookstore and two cafés and experimentation, partly in consideration of the budget. Yes, bud-
have been exiled to small cedar-clad and glass buildings elsewhere in get—according to Phifer, the Rales were “disciplined about costs” for
the park). Once inside the entrance, you confront a wall piece by con- the new building, which was $200 million to construct.
ceptual artist Lawrence Weiner. A text in 1-foot-high block letters From the Weiner wall, down a flight of stairs, you arrive on the
perfectly fills the 1-foot-high faces of several of the poured-concrete main level of galleries and get your first glimpse through a window
blocks that are Glenstone’s fundamental building component, inside wall of the water court, lush with lilies and rushes (and inspired, says
as well as out: 1 foot high, 1 foot deep, and 6 feet long, they are stacked Phifer, by the water feature of Carlo Scarpa’s Brion Tomb near Venice).
like giant Roman bricks, with ¼-inch open joints visible between each You are indoors looking outdoors, below grade but in a place awash
course of blocks. with daylight.
Weiner’s words include the line “a change in the destiny of the After turning, you snake past two very different sculptures by
material,” and you could take that to mean that a lowly concrete block Martin Puryear in the generous passageways—12 feet high and varying
72 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018

from 15 to 24 feet wide—with the walls of concrete block on one side as

you circulate, and the glass window walls overlooking the water court
along the other.
The first gallery you encounter is the largest, at 9,000 square feet, for
temporary exhibitions. Emily Rales has curated the inaugural show, of
65 works by 52 artists, drawn from the foundation’s collection—and it is
a knockout. In just the first space is a superb Franz Kline on the left
wall, a stunning 1952 Jackson Pollock, Number 1, dead ahead, and three
airy Ruth Asawa sculptures from the 1950s floating in a corner. As
Mitch Rales explains, about his early collecting, “I ultimately fell in
love with Abstract Expressionism.” He first bought that beautiful
Pollock, and then much more. When he and Emily married, they
moved deeply into contemporary art, much of it experimental. The
inaugural exhibition reveals their trajectory as collectors, from great
examples of modern blue-chip art to the more adventurous. One of
their strict criteria for acquiring a work is to ask this question: does it
change the way we think about art? Their challenging program for the
new Glenstone, with its eclectic range of long-term installations by
nine very different contemporary artists, is surely meant to provoke
the same question in visitors.
The architect and his team worked closely with the living artists,
and the estates of those who are dead, to tailor specific conditions for
the artists’ rooms. “We developed a particular proportion and particu-
lar light quality for each one,” he says. Phifer treats natural light as a
primary material, which—along with the stout masonry walls—reflects
the influence of Louis Kahn. “I didn’t want any artificial light in the
galleries at all,” he says. Though of course there is electric lighting, on a
bright day, it is unnecessary. Six of the 11 rooms bring in daylight from
above (another room, devoted to a sculpture by Michael Heizer, Collapse,
is open to the sky).
To avoid direct sunlight on artwork, either light wells with a laylight
at the top, or monitors with clerestories wrapping around them pro-
trude above the poured-concrete ceilings. The laminated glass
interlayers of these devices provide UV protection; all daylit rooms also
have shading systems. The largest clerestory is in the ceiling of a dra-
matic gallery that displays a single magisterial triptych commissioned
from Brice Marden, with a monitor in the 24-foot-high ceiling that is
13½ feet wide by 36 feet long by 13 feet high.
The daylighting features presented major engineering challenges.
For example, to span the 75-foot width of the column-free spaces of the
temporary gallery, Phifer and his team turned to engineers at SOM who
invented a ceiling system using steel trusses, two for each of the five
monitors, somewhat visible through the translucent glass of the clere-
stories. The poured-concrete ceiling slab is hung from the trusses,
while the concrete slab on top of each monitor rests on them.
Beyond the temporary gallery is a small room—but, at 36 feet high,
the loftiest—devoted to the late Japanese conceptual artist On Kawara,
which is installed with Moon Landing, a trio of his “date” paintings, for

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © R O N A M S T U T Z ( B O T T O M )
June 16, 1969, June 20, 1969, and June 21, 1969, marking the Apollo
lunar mission. Here, a light well, 12 feet high, is topped by a laylight.
Like all the galleries, it is sited on the cardinals of the compass; at one
moment daylight will be washing over the east wall while the next,
when a cloud passes overhead, the light softens and diffuses.
From the zen serenity of On Karawa, you move to a big room hosting
an installation by Robert Gober that includes a mural of a forest wrap-
ping the walls; eight industrial sinks with faucets running; and
bundles of old newspapers and boxes of rat poison scattered around the
edges of the floor (without daylighting but rather moody illumination
by lighting designer Jennifer Tipton). And so it goes—from the witty but
grim art of Gober to Charles Ray’s enigmatic sculpture, including Baled
Truck, a piece made from CNC-milled stainless-steel blocks that weighs
GLENSTONE MUSEUM MARYLAND THOMAS PHIFER & PARTNERS 73

15 tons (the concrete floor has been temporar-

ily shored up from below) to a room devoted to
the late Brazilian artist Lygia Pape, featuring
her 1961 Book of Time, a wall of 365 small, color-
ful abstract reliefs that was shown last year at
the Met Breuer in New York. (Two other major
women artists have work here: a video and
sound installation by Pipilotti Rist, and two
sculptures by Roni Horn, in a passageway.)
The architecture is a mediator in the
rhythm of the museum experience, providing
moments to pause after immersion in provoca-
tive work. Phifer deliberately created small
areas of shadow in counterpoint to the daylit
galleries. One room, for contemplation, is
entirely clad in maple, with a sensuous bench
made by Martin Puryear and Michael Hurwitz
that faces a window wall framing a view out-
side to a grove of honey locust trees. Along the
passageways, too, you can sit on benches of
Port Orford cedar, also made by Puryear and
Hurwitz, and look out at the water court,
where swallows wheel and dragonflies dart
LIGHT TOUCH Six of the galleries, including a room displaying sculptures by Cy Twombly (opposite, top), and one
above the abundant plant life.
containing a triptych by Brice Marden (this page, top), bring in daylight from above; a light well (Twombley’s) or a
The water court is the beating heart of monitor (Marden’s) protrude beyond the ceiling to keep direct sun from the artworks. Some passages that link the
Glenstone. The idea of a courtyard, says Phifer, galleries contain art, such as Martin Puryear’s Big Phrygian (opposite, bottom). Lygia Pape’s colorful Book of Time is
came from the famous rock garden at Ryoan-ji visible in her room (above, on the right).
74 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018

Temple in Kyoto, where the enclosing walls screen out all but the sky INSIDE OUT Swaying grasses and wild flowers surround the pavilions. The natural
and the treetops, erasing the horizon line. Similarly, the water court at landscape can also be enjoyed from passageways inside, which frame views outside
and to the water court with its abundant plant life.
Glenstone is entirely insulated from the larger world beyond the mu-
seum’s walls, yet here it is alive with natural phenomena.
Besides the museum’s overall concept, the building is a master class
in detailing and craft. The biggest challenge, says Phifer, “was getting
the precision we needed. The materials are very simple, but they had to
be done beautifully.” All that is evident in the poured-concrete ceilings
credits
ARCHITECT: Thomas Phifer & Partners SOURCES
and the square, knife-edged concrete columns in the passageways. (You
can’t touch the art, but you’ll want to run your hand over those velvety — Thomas Phifer, principal; Gabriel Smith, CONCRETE BLOCK: Gate Precast
surfaces.) The floors are a fine, epoxy-reinforced terrazzo. The lites of Andrew Mazor, Michael Trudeau, Rebecca STAINLESS-STEEL CURTAIN WALL:
the expansive glass walls are 9 feet wide and 24 feet high, held with Garnett, Jonathan Benner, John Bassett, MBM Konstruktionen, National Enclosure
slim, flush stainless-steel mullions; they slip below the floor plane and Bethany Mahre, Petra Pearsall, Remon ROOFING: Sika Sarnafil
extend far above the passageways’ ceilings, where they act as guard- Alberts, Greg Bonner, Robert Chan, Isaiah GREEN ROOF: American Hydrotech
rails on the walkable green roofs at grade that overlook the water King, Elijah Porter, Lamare Wimberly, PHOTOVOLTAIC SYSTEM: Astro Energy
court. But not everything is quite so ethereal: some markings on the design team Group, Enphase, IronRidge
blocks—the bug holes and slight striations—bothered Phifer at first, but ENGINEERS: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill WINDOWS: Schüco
he came to cherish them as signs of craftsmanship. “It’s like making a (structural); Altieri (m/e/p/fp) GLAZING: Thiele Glas, Saint-Gobain,
pie,” he says. “It has fingerprints.” CONSULTANTS: PWP Landscape Walker Glass, Viracon
A few fingerprints turn out to be a good thing, for the architecture’s Architecture, RAFT (landscape); Reg Hough SKYLIGHTS: Linel
only flaw may be its near-perfection. Yet in its austerity, it is just the Associates (concrete); Heintges (facade); DOORS: Steelcraft; Schweiss
right foil to the messy, expressive and cerebral art that it shelters, and Arup (lighting); Philip Dolphin (master PAINTS: Sherwin-Williams
the vibrancy of the ever-changing landscape in and around it. “In the mason); BuroHappold (sustainability) PLASTIC LAMINATE: Formica
end, you want the architecture to dissolve,” says Phifer. Fortunately, in
SOLID SURFACING: DuPont Corian
that he has not succeeded. Instead, it is central to the trinity of art,
LIGHTING: Bartco, Viabizzuno, EcoSense
architecture, and landscape that elevates to a rare level the design of
experience. n LIGHTING CONTROLS: Lutron
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 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 79

The Housing Crisis in America

Finding an affordable place to live is becoming an increasingly dire problem
for many Americans—from the growing homeless population to middle-
class families. The following special section explores the range of causes
and effects in a variety of challenged urban markets, and examines how
different municipalities are attempting to address this complex issue.
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © C H U C K S C H U G / G E T T Y I M A G E S

A DENSE RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITY

ON A HILLSIDE IN SAN FRANCISCO
80 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

Living in the U.S.: At What Cost?

Home prices in San Francisco (above) rose
14.5 percent in the past year. Rents in
changing areas like Downtown Brooklyn,
NY (opposite), are rising with new towers.
Rising housing prices are outpacing wage increases nationwide,
housing. Fully 80 percent of rent­
threatening a living standard that once seemed an inalienable right. ers making less than $30,000 in
2016 were deemed cost­burdened.
BY DIANA LIND The National Low Income Housing
Coalition (NLIHC) found that to
It’s no longer shocking, but it land costs have soared—have renters—paid more than 30 per­ afford the rent for an average
should be: the average price of a become accustomed to mind­bog­ cent of their incomes for housing one­bedroom apartment, workers
Manhattan apartment hovers gling house prices, but now cities in 2016. While the situation has would need an hourly wage of
around $2 million; in San Fran­ like Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and been tough for homeowners, it’s $17.90 at a full­time job. (Do the
cisco, the median price of a home Salt Lake City are witnessing been undoubtedly worse for rent­ math: a worker at the national
increased by 14.5 percent in the unprecedented price appreciation. ers. According to the Harvard minimum wage of $7.25 per hour
past year, and now coasts above The median home price rose 41 Joint Center on Housing Studies, would need to work 99 hours per
$1.6 million; in some neighbor­ percent faster than overall infla­ almost half of all renters are week, 52 weeks per year to afford
hoods in Seattle, prices have tion between 1990 and 2016. paying more than the federal the same rent.) While renters
increased 40 percent in a year. Nearly one­third of U.S. house­ benchmark of affordability of 30 make up 36 percent of households
Residents of coastal cities—where holds—38.1 million owners and percent of their gross income for nationwide, they’re the majority in
 81

42 of the country’s 100 largest applicants with Section 8 vouchers

cities, where the housing crisis is at rates as high as 78 percent in
most acute. And there’s little relief areas such as Fort Worth; not
in sight. surprisingly, more denials occur
But unaffordable housing is not in low-poverty neighborhoods,
just an unfortunate economic thwarting the Housing Choice
situation. Studies show that the Voucher program’s goal of helping
high cost of housing is driving the people access high-opportunity
United States’ widening inequality neigborhoods.
and serving as an obstacle to For decades now, federal invest-
economic mobility, especially for ment in affordable housing
young people. It also correlates through HUD’s signature Com-
with racial segregation. The home- munity Development Block Grants
ownership gap between black and (CDBG) has been declining.
white Americans is growing larg- Created in 1974, the CDBG pro-
er. Between 1994 and 2016, black gram’s budget has remained
home-ownership rates increased approximately $3 billion per year
just 0.3 percent while white rates and thus has lost 80 percent of its
rose 2.2 percent; black and white value due to inflation. In the face
home-ownership rates now stand of the federal government’s step-
at 41.6 percent and 72.9 percent, ping back from the severe current
respectively. And while homeown- problems, cities across the coun-
ers get economic benefits such try are racing to find new sources
as a mortgage-interest tax deduc- of housing revenue in the form of
tion (up to $750,000 in the new tax taxes and bond measures, as well
bill) or the ability to leverage as solutions such as zoning that
home equity for college loans or mandates some affordable hous-
medical expenses, renters fall ing. But none comes easily, or
further behind. without controversy.
Homelessness is on the rise too, Seattle made headlines earlier
a stark reality when viewed this year for its proposed “head
against cities’ booming economies tax” on large businesses, like
and low unemployment. While Amazon, that would have fun-
chronic homelessness (a condition neled some $47 million toward
defined as homeless for more than affordable housing and addressing
one year with a disabling condi- homelessness; but after corpora-
tion) was declining for much of tions protested, the tax was
the last decade, it has increased by repealed. On the first day of this
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © H A I Z H A N Z H E N G /G E T T Y I M AG E S (O P P O S I T E ) ; JA M E S E W I N G

12 percent since 2016. One might fall’s legislative session, Philadel-

typically think of the homeless as
single men, but 33 percent of all
Nearly one-third of U.S. phia’s mayor and city council
agreed to withdraw a long-debated
people experiencing homeless- households paid more than proposal for a tax on all construc-
ness are families and, tragically, tion, and instead will secure
another 7.4 percent are unaccom- 30 percent of their incomes approximately $71 million for
panied youth under 25 years old.
Not surprisingly, the lack of
for housing in 2016. affordable housing over the next
five years through the city’s gen-
affordable housing can be linked eral fund and by collecting fees
to lower mental and physical sis. And yet the U.S. Department Low Income Housing Coalition, is from developers who pay for
well-being. Living in substandard of Housing and Urban Develop- that “if people were to just try density bonuses. Meanwhile, a
housing increases risks to health ment (HUD) under Secretary Ben harder, they wouldn’t be as chal- handful of cities such as Wash-
such as asthma and exposure to Carson views federal subsidies for lenged by housing affordability. ington, D.C., and Boston have
lead, while experiencing a housing as a hindrance to self- Which is just so clearly wrong at a directed that residential construc-
foreclosure—even living near sufficiency, as evidenced by the time when the housing-affordabil- tion in some areas include a
foreclosures—is associated with proposed Making Affordable ity crisis has reached historic percentage of affordable housing
elevated levels of anxiety, depres- Housing Work Act, which would heights.” What many officials or that developers pay a fee to a
sion, and violent behavior. require public-housing authorities don’t see is the frustrating and housing building fund. But these
There is agreement among to raise the minimum rent on time-consuming effort required to inclusionary zoning programs are
many local and state governments their lowest-income residents access subsidized housing. generating far too few units con-
that we have a housing crisis on from $50 to $150 per month. According to a recent study by the sidering the scale of the problem
our hands, and therefore, an Carson’s perspective, notes Diane Urban Institute, actually spon- —some hundreds of units against
economic, social, and health cri- Yentel, president of the National sored by HUD, landlords reject thousands of people on wait lists.
82 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

found that there are 7.2 million

affordable­housing units lacking
across the country, and 1 million
of those are in California alone.
To reduce the time and costs of
constructing housing, new com­
panies are touting business
models based on technology and
prefabrication. Katerra, a Silicon
Valley end­to­end building pro­
vider now valued at $3 billion
(record, July 2018) is seeking to
disrupt the traditional housing
industry with factory and jobsite
integration that increases produc­
tivity and lessens construction
waste. Earlier this year, New
York’s Department of Housing
Development and Preservation
issued its first­ever RFP to build a
modular, multiuse, mixed­income
housing development in Brook­
lyn’s East New York neighbor­
hood, showing how cities can
make building affordable hous­
ing, well, more affordable. The
nonprofit New Story Charity is
exploring 3­D printing and other
Homeless populations are growing in cities technologies to create new hous­
like Philadelphia (above) and Seattle (left); ing cheaply: the company says it
Tiny houses, such as this one in Detroit
(opposite, top), are being built to address
can 3­D­print a 650­square­foot

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © P H I L AU G U S TAVO/G E T T Y I M AG E S ( B O T T O M ) ; ZO D E B A L A /G E T T Y I M AG E S ( T O P ) ; B R U C E
their needs. San Francisco’s Hunters View house for just $10,000. Its main
(opposite bottom), a joint venture between applications will be in disaster

DA M O N T E (O P P O S I T E , B O T T O M ) ; C O U R T E S Y C A S S C O M M U N I T Y S O C I A L S E R V I C E S (O P P O S I T E , T O P )
Paulett Taggart Architects and David zones, but one can imagine the
Baker Architects, addresses many
public-housing issues.
eventual use in U.S. communities.
Blokable, another Silicon Valley
company, offers a 328­square­foot
cottage for $58,000. Suddenly, a
$1 billion toward a program to thoughtfully designed tiny house
assist people with incomes at 60 becomes as affordable as a mobile
percent or below Area Median home. But Schuetz warns that
Income. Proposition 10 would much of the time spent develop­
reverse a law that prevented mu­ ing housing isn’t for construction.
nicipalities from imposing rent It’s the slowdowns, from land
controls on new multifamily acquisition to zoning to permit­
buildings. ting, that can add years—and
“These proposals could be a big costs—to preconstruction. And,
boost for California’s efforts to indeed, such tiny houses aren’t
end homelessness and the afford­ legal in many locales.
“The evidence on inclusionary and preservation of affordable able­housing crisis,” says Yentel. One way cities are looking at
zoning is mixed, and I’m not housing. California, which is “While these ballot proposi­ speeding up the supply of new
optimistic that it will make a dent home to 21 of the 30 most expen­ tions may provide much needed housing is to legalize outlawed
in the problem,” says Jenny sive rental markets in the country, rent relief,” says Vincent Reina, alternatives to the single­family
Schuetz, David M. Rubinstein will pose two housing­related assistant professor, City and house, such as the tiny houses,
Fellow at the Brookings Insti­ ballot questions to voters this Regional Planning, at the accessory dwelling units (ADUs)—
tution. “But an awful lot of places November. Proposition 1 would University of Pennsylvania, “they aka granny flats—and co­living.
have used it as a Band­Aid and a allow the state to take out $4 do not address a key driver of the After years of fighting ADUs,
way to show they care about billion in general obligation bonds affordability problem, which is California now supports them as
affordable housing.” for housing­related programs, the severe shortage of supply in a way to create density without
State governments are also including $1 billion in loans for response to the state’s overwhelm­ upzoning. In Detroit and
getting involved in the creation veterans to purchase housing and ing demand.” The NLIHC has Nashville, tiny houses are ad­
 83

Millennials have taken up

the mantle of YIMBYism
(Yes in My Backyard) to
fight for more housing.
ing crisis. When the market is approaches have helped encour-
king, developers have to step up, age high-density construction in
and a younger generation is urban areas and provide cover
calling for changes in the mar- for politicians who want to see
ket altogether, with easier and more development too.
faster development processes Yet, as Yentel reminds us,
that both stimulate the produc- “there is no silver bullet for af-
tion of housing and encourage fordable housing.” The fact that
housing quality and stability. there is no easy fix can feel dis-
Often strapped with debt and heartening, but it does mean that
priced out of desirable housing no one entity is responsible for
markets, millennials have taken addressing the affordable-
up the mantle of YIMBYism (Yes housing crisis. Policymakers,
In My Backyard) to fight for developers, planners, architects,
more housing supply. A new and advocates of all stripes must
dressing homelessness. In New process, including a bill to expand generation of urbanites, play an active role in pushing for
Orleans, the city approved a the Low Income Housing Tax NUMTOTs (New Urbanist Memes creative solutions. n
233-unit co-living development Credit, and a bill introduced by for Transit Oriented Teens) are
for service-industry workers, so Senator Todd Young (R-Indiana) to using social media to fight for Diana Lind is the founding managing
long as the developers pledge to create a national affordable-hous- better transit options, to ensure director of the Penn Fels Policy Re-
freeze rents at affordable rates. ing task force. access to affordable housing in search Initiative. Previously she was
In Philadelphia, the city is con- But government is only one more outlying urban neigh- editor in chief and executive director
sidering bringing old-fashioned channel for attacking the hous- borhoods. Such grassroots of Next City.
rooming houses up to code.
Clearly, new thinking is needed
to address such an enormous
national problem. Two recent
proposals for housing relief from
Senator Kamala Harris (D-
California) and Senator Cory
Booker (D-New Jersey) would
provide tax rebates to those pay-
ing more than 30 percent of their
income on rent. The separate
proposals attack the inequality in
tax policy for homeowners and
renters, but there is a potential
downside. “The challenge will be
if the market then reflects the tax
benefit, and landlords then just
charge higher rents,” says Reina.
Yentel sees these “big, bold”
proposals as a sign that the
country is ready for a national
conversation about the affordabil-
ity crisis in the next presidential
election, if not as soon as the
midterms this November. And it’s
not just coastal Democrats making
housing an issue: there are a num-
ber of bipartisan bills making
their way through the political
84 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

tech-fueled economic boom still

DATELINE: Oakland at full force, Oakland instead is
showing how tough it can be for
Despite a wide range of initiatives, this diverse city in the booming any city in a prosperous region to
control its fate.
Bay Area still struggles to preserve its affordability. “It’s not easy to hold back
the tide of change,” says Carol
BY JOHN KING
Galante, a professor of affordable
housing and urban policy at the
The sTaTe of the Oakland hous- away, is decidedly more humble—a University of California, Berkeley,
ing market in 2018—what is cluster of 20 repurposed garden Population: 425,000 College of Environmental Design.
needed and what’s actually being sheds nestled against an elevated Before that, the Oakland resident
Median Price of Home in
built—can be gauged by a pair of highway at 27th Street and North- 2012: $260,400* spent five years as an assistant
very different new developments gate Avenue. Each upgraded shed secretary at the U.S. Department
Median Price of Home in
located within this city of 425,000 holds two people who formerly of Housing and Urban Develop-
2017: $638,100*
that lies eight miles and a deep lived in tent camps near the site ment. “Oakland’s trying to hold
body of water directly east of San that were cleared by the city after Average Rent for 1-BR on to the [racial and economic]
Francisco. the “community cabins” opened Apartment in 2012: $1,562** balance that residents value, but
One is a 33-story tower at 1640 in May; the doors have deadbolts, Average Rent for 1-BR it’s not a given that they’ll be
Broadway, designed by Solomon and there are double-pane win- Apartment in 2017: $2,361** able to.”
Cordwell Buenz, that will hold dows to muffle the freeway noise. Sources: *Metrostudy **Rainmaker Insights Simple numbers tell much of
254 apartments atop an artfully But toilet facilities are shared, and the story. Since the end of 2012, a
screened parking podium when it each shed has only enough elec- period during which the Bay Area
opens next spring; monthly rents tricity to power a single light and diverse large cities, and one that added roughly 600,000 jobs, the
are likely to start above $2,500 for recharge cell phones. in recent years has pursued a median price of a home in Oak-
the smallest studio apartments, Extremes of this sort are seen wide range of initiatives to pro- land more than doubled from
with amenities that will include a today across urban America, but vide and protect housing for $260,400 to $638,100, according to
rooftop lounge with fire pits. The they’re particularly troubling in people of all income levels. Yet the real-estate analysis firm
other, located less than 12 blocks one of the nation’s most racially with the San Francisco Bay Area’s Metrostudy. In the city center
 85

districts known as Downtown and

Uptown, there are more than a
dozen market-rate housing com-
plexes under construction or
recently completed. Also on the
rise is the city’s homeless popula-
tion—the official federal count of
2,761 in 2017 was 25 percent high-
er than the one taken two years
earlier. By contrast, the homeless
numbers for San Francisco during
that period remained stable.
What the numbers don’t cap-
ture is the tension in a city that
long has prided itself on being an
authentic place unto itself, the
Town to San Francisco’s the City.
To understand why, put aside
the notion that this is the West
Coast’s version of Brooklyn, an
adjunct to the main attraction.
Oakland is defined by a variety of
communities and topographies—
from Lake Merritt, a popular spot
for strolling and picnicking that
flanks downtown, to the tree-
shrouded residential hills along
the city’s eastern edge. Broadway, Oakland (opposite), just across the bay
the onetime commercial spine, from San Francisco, is a city of housing
contrasts. Examples of recent and current
struggled for decades but now projects are 1640 Broadway (left)—a
features such attractions as Oak-
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market-rate tower that includes such

landish, where locally made amenities as a rooftop lounge—and garden
T-shirts extoll the Port of Oakland’s sheds (above) installed under a freeway for
people who formerly lived in tent camps on
industrial cranes, or the Hive, a the same site.
rough-edged makeover of a car
dealership that goes beyond the been turned into an ad hoc artist
standard 21st-century millennial collective. Rents were kept low in
fare to include an African-Amer- part by ignoring basic building
ican-owned coffee roaster that codes. The resentment of per-
used crowdfunding to set up shop. ceived economic inequality and
But Broadway is also a 12- disruption can also lead to such
minute rapid-transit ride under destructive acts as a quartet of
the bay from San Francisco. arsonous fires in 2016 and 2017
Perennially desirable Berkeley that leveled market-rate
shares Oakland’s north border. apartment buildings during
Gentrification pressures date construction.
back at least to the 1980s, waxing Amid all this, the Schaaf ad-
and waning with the region’s ministration convened a “housing
economic tides. cabinet” that in 2016 released a
The difference with the current 52-page report with detailed rec-
wave of prosperity is its longevity. ommendations on how to offset
The growth in jobs and housing housing pressures, both by en-
demand has been insistent since more that Silicon Valley expands, and the intensity,” says Darin couraging the development of
2012, altering the landscape in the more convenient—and compel- Ranelletti, the policy director for 17,000 additional housing units by
profound ways. Facebook, for ling—Oakland becomes to young, housing security for first-term 2024, and by protecting a similar
instance, is headquartered in affluent workers who want to feel mayor Libby Schaaf. “It’s the number of households that other-
Menlo Park, near Stanford that they’re part of a scene. breadth and depth of the crisis.” wise might be displaced.
University. However, it has leased “The housing affordability That crisis can take a deadly The production side of the equa-
all 1.2 million square feet of office problem has been in the making turn: think back to December of tion is easy to track: Oakland has
space in two new towers in San for decades. The challenge this 2016, when 36 people were killed issued permits for 9,710 housing
Francisco’s Financial District. The time is the speed of the change, in the fire at a warehouse that had units since the end of 2015. More
86 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

a $500 signing bonus to entice

landlords to rent apartments to
residents with vouchers from the
federal housing assistance pro-
gram, popularly called Section 8.
Early signs are promising—there
were 684 new Section 8 leases in
Oakland in the first six months of
2018, twice the number of the year
before.
“The most pressing issue in
Oakland right now is housing
security,” says Ranelletti, who has
worked at City Hall since 2003 and
at one point was interim planning
director. “What we’re trying to do
goes beyond housing as buildings
and units. People should feel
secure in their homes.”
The “community cabins”
weren’t in the 2016 recommenda-
tions. Rather, they’re a city-
organized but privately funded
response to the spread of homeless
encampments that in some cases
line underpasses or spill into
lightly trafficked roadways. The
site planning and upgrades to the
sheds were done with the assis-
tance of Michael Pyatok, an
Oakland architect who is one of
the nation’s best-known designers
of affordable housing. He stepped
in on the cabins, which are accom-
panied by support services,
because he recognized an oppor-
tunity for a quick fix to a
daunting problem. “They’ll keep
someone warm, keep someone
safe, and that’s a huge step up-
ward from the streets,” Pyatok
says. As for the greater array of
housing challenges that face
Oakland, he sees a limited role for
architects: “It’s so much larger
than design solutions. We’re the
caboose in the development train,
not the engine.”
It’s hard to look at the current
situation and not want to turn
back the clock. Market-rate devel-
than 6,500 currently are under What’s more intriguing are the includes $100 million for such opers have only been required to
construction, with another 11,900 efforts to preserve housing op- initiatives as the purchase of resi- pay a housing-impact fee or in-
in the pipeline. Zoning was revised tions for low- and middle-income dential buildings by nonprofits clude lower-income units in their
to ease restrictions on accessory residents. City residents approved that will then guarantee perma- projects since 2016; 1640
dwelling units in the backyards of a measure in 2016 to extend rent- nent affordability. Eight properties Broadway and many of the other
single-family homes; there were 61 control protections to buildings have changed hands so far—from a current projects under construc-
such cottages approved in the first constructed as recently as 1995 handful of single-family homes to tion, since they already were in
six months of 2018, which may not (the prior cutoff was 1980). A $600 a 66-room single-occupancy hotel. the planning process, include no
sound like much, but in all of 2017 million infrastructure bond ap- In a similar vein, Oakland is “affordable” apartments. And
there were just 57. proved in the same election using streamlined paperwork and while the initiative to help non-
 87

The city, which covers 78 square miles, has varied topographies, including the popular recreation spot Lake Merritt (opposite, top); a mixed-use development known as the Hive, on
the site of a former car dealership (opposite, bottom); and Brooklyn Basin (above). Here, more than a decade after the approval of 3,100 housing units on former port land, the first
apartment buildings are finally on the rise.

profits purchase apartment “By the time they got started self-righteous about blocking It’s this backdrop that makes
buildings filled with working- and organized, speculators al- growth. Look at Silicon Valley’s some observers fatalistic about
class families is admirable, the ready were circling East Oakland Cupertino, where computer giant what Oakland can do.
money would have gone further if and picking up foreclosed proper- Apple is based—and state figures “The numbers that can be
the city had intervened aggres- ties for a song,” recalls Karen show that just 27 housing permits produced are nothing like de-
sively during the depths of the Chapple, a professor of city and were issued in 2017, the same year mand or the indirect forces of
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © E R I C K AY N E ; J E S S I C A C H R I S T I A N (O P P O S I T E )

2008 recession to purchase fore- regional planning at UC-Berkeley that Apple opened its Foster + displacement that have been set
closed-on houses in struggling who has studied housing trends Partners–designed headquarters into motion,” Chapple says. “It’s
African-American neighborhoods in Oakland for the past decade. that holds 3,000 workers. almost like a Band-Aid.”
that now are being gentrified. “It’s very hard to think as fast as In Oakland, the hurdles facing Ranelletti takes the broad
But governments respond to the market does. We’re well- large projects can be seen in the view that any solution to Oak-
the pressures of the moment, and intentioned folks, but they’re 65 acres of former port land now land’s bind must be regional, and
not always with effective speed. always ahead.” known as Brooklyn Basin. After that a more aggressive state in-
Housing-impact fees were brushed Today’s good intentions also years of debate, 3,100 housing vestment is needed in areas like
aside by prior administrations, run up against the entrenched units were approved in 2006, with housing subsidies and homeless-
except for one analysis completed realities of California, a state 460 to be reserved for low-income assistance programs. Nonetheless,
the year before the Great Reces- where residents have spent de- residents. Opponents then filed a he holds out hope that local
sion seemed to make it moot. And cades perfecting the art of lawsuit challenging the environ- efforts can make a beneficial
though the Oakland City Council obstruction. Often this has been mental-impact report, a common mark. “I’m optimistic,” says the
in 2009 steered $5 million to a for admirable reasons, such as tactic to slow down and perhaps City Hall veteran. “I think it’s
community land trust that was to preserving the open ridgelines and derail a project. They lost, as most absolutely solvable, or I wouldn’t
step in and buy 200 foreclosed-on farmland that kept the Bay Area opponents do—but the combina- be doing it.” n
houses, the process moved so from congealing into one mass of tion of the legal delays and the
slowly that the trust ended up sprawl. It also means a political recession means that the first John King is the San Francisco
purchasing fewer than two dozen. culture where suburbs may be units are only now being built. Chronicle’s urban-design critic.
88 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

Neighborhood and Housing

DATELINE: New York Development, an advocacy group.
“In some ways, since the found-
The nation’s largest city looks to accommodate growth ing of the city, we’ve expressed
our class struggles through the
without displacing low- and middle-income residents. struggle over space.”
New York City is the nation’s
BY RONDA KAYSEN
biggest public-housing landlord,
with 400,000 tenants living in 325
The poTenTial for what afford- promises to preserve or build developments controlled by the
able housing could look like in 300,000 units of affordable hous- Population: 8.6 million city’s housing authority, NYCHA.
New York is now just a field that ing by 2026, at a cost of $83 Median Price of Home in But the intense housing needs
spans nearly a square block in billion. Despite this impressive 2012: $782,300* here reach back into history. The
East Harlem. goal, the most ambitious in the state enacted its first rent-regula-
Median Price of Home in
But before the end of the year, country, New York faces serious 2017: $1,087,100* tion laws in 1920, in response to
ground will break on this city- hurdles to meet its housing needs housing shortages and spiraling
Average Rent for 1-BR
owned land between 111th and and keep the city livable for every- rents in the city. After World War
Apartment in 2012: $2,385**
112th streets and Park and one from the poorest residents up II, a mix of private and public
Madison avenues, making way for to the middle class. Average Rent for 1-BR investment led to the rise of vast,
Sendero Verde, a $350 million Roughly 77,000 New Yorkers are Apartment in 2017: $2,716** subsidized middle-class housing
Sources: *Metrostudy **Rainmaker Insights
mixed-use project that will deliver homeless, many of them families developments like Stuyvesant
655 units of affordable housing with children, according to a Town-Peter Cooper Village in
aimed at low- to middle-income report from HUD. The city’s port- Manhattan and Co-op City in the
residents. The three-building folio of public housing is aging real-estate market. But, unlike Bronx. And in the 1980s, under
complex, designed by Handel and the stock of city-owned land other cities facing a relatively Mayor Ed Koch, the city began
Architects, will house a YMCA, a is dwindling. At the same time, recent crisis, in New York, housing investing billions of dollars of its
charter school, a grocery store, middle-class New Yorkers are has always been a scarce resource. own capital to turn abandoned
a health center, and a pizzeria. migrating to outlying neighbor- “At every period, people have properties into affordable housing
Community gardens and a central hoods in search of cheaper rent, felt constrained by the physical units as a way to overcome blight.
plaza designed by AECOM will fill putting pressure on communities barriers of the city. We’ve always Although Koch’s plan was contro-
the inner courtyard. once considered immune from built higher, built deeper, built versial at the time, it has since
Sendero Verde brings the city’s gentrification. Short-term rental denser. It’s why housing issues become doctrine.
vision of a robust housing pro- services like Airbnb have cut into are so urgent here,” says Today, New York faces a differ-
gram into focus. The plan, now the housing supply, as tenants and Benjamin Dulchin, the executive ent kind of housing crisis. The
called Housing New York 2.0, landlords cash in on a hungry director of the Association for decline of the 1980s has been
 89

A crop of new high-rise residential towers—including Steiner NYC’s 55-story Hub (at left, opposite) by Dattner Architects—is changing the landscape of Downtown Brooklyn and
neighboring Fort Greene. The Rollins (above), by Beyer, Blinder, Belle, is a mixed-use, mixed-income residential and commercial building on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

replaced with a boom. The popula- mained relatively stable during more than a third of their earn- parking lots—in existing public-
tion is growing and expected to that time, rising 16 percent, while ings on rent. In New York, the housing complexes.
reach 9 million by 2030. The city in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, a Area Median Income, a federal “We’re going to need a lot more
is constantly building, with rough- Brooklyn neighborhood 45 min- figure, is $93,900 a year for a affordable housing,” says Jonathan
ly 25,000 new units constructed utes from Midtown, rent soared by family of three, meaning that F.P. Rose, the president of Jona-
each year, transforming the sky- 45 percent. All this comes at a such a family should spend no than Rose Companies, which is
line into one peppered with time of growing economic in- more than $2,608 a month on developing Sendero Verde with
cranes and the sidewalks a maze equality, with wages stagnating rent. The median rent for a two- L+M Development Partners and
of scaffolding and sheds. for many New Yorkers. bedroom apartment in Manhattan the Acacia Network. Rose, whose
Yet the demand for housing Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was was $4,050 per month in July, company was a developer of Via
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seems insatiable. As land values swept into office in 2013 on a according to a Douglas Elliman Verde in the Bronx (record, July
soar, landlords are pushing out platform decrying a “tale of two market report. 2012), estimates that the city
longtime rent-stabilized tenants to cities,” has been combating this The city, private developers, needs as many as 800,000 afford-
make room for those able to pay crisis using a mantra laid out by and nonprofit organizations are able units. “There is no one
more. Such evictions can lead to Koch: build more units. But af- exploring innovative solutions, solution,” he says. “We need hous-
homelessness, putting more pres- fordable-housing advocates worry like building new limited-equity ing for a broad range of people,
sure on an overburdened shelter that the centerpiece of his pro- co-op housing, where low or from the homeless to middle-
system. As New Yorkers move posal—to rezone neighborhoods, moderate-income New Yorkers income families.”
deeper into the outer boroughs like East Harlem, for larger buy apartments, some for less The apartments at Sendero
looking for housing, neighbor- development in exchange for than $200,000, and can later Verde aim to serve a wide cross
hoods that were once havens for mandatory affordable housing— resell them at restricted prices section of the population, from
the poor have become hot rental could exacerbate the problem, to other New Yorkers of moderate extremely low-income up to mid-
markets. A StreetEasy report rather than alleviate it. New means; developing micro-units dle-income. The development will
found that although rents rose 31 market-rate development brings for young professionals; enacting also include 79 units for seniors.
percent citywide between 2010 speculation and, inevitably, new tenant protections like legal Built to meet Passive House stan-
and 2018, the spike was far greater displacement. assistance for low-income tenants dards, the 750,000-square-foot
in poorer neighborhoods. For The city sets the rent tenants facing eviction; legalizing base- complex will use roughly a third
example, the report found that pay for affordable units based on ment apartments; and building of the energy that a typical devel-
rent in Midtown Manhattan re- income, so that renters do not pay on the open space—such as opment of that size does.
90 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

The demand for affordable units and 10.5 percent for families earn- see space that could be dedicated ability—nearly half of its rentals,
is intense, with tens of thousands ing up to $25,770. But it also to the neediest New Yorkers in- almost 1 million units, are stabi-
of people applying in lotteries for targets moderate and middle- stead going to those with other lized under state laws, with rules
just a few hundred spots—as at the income New Yorkers, with 20 options. Extremely low-income adjusted by legislators 150 miles
Rollins, a mixed-use building on percent of units intended for those New Yorkers “can’t make their away in Albany. Legislative chang-
the Lower East Side, where last making as much as $142,000 a way in the private housing mar- es have loosened the protection on
year nearly 94,000 people applied year, a figure that may seem ket,” says Thomas J. Waters, a these apartments over the past 25
for 104 affordable units. Designed startlingly high in lower-cost housing-policy analyst at the years, giving landlords the
to target a wide range of incomes, regions of the country, but points Community Service Society, an incentive to oust tenants so the
more than half of the units in the to just how far up the income advocacy group. “If you make apartments can be deregulated.
city’s plan are set aside for New ladder the housing shortage reach- $25,000 a year, you can afford Between 1994 and 2017, the city
Yorkers who earn no more than es in New York. $600 a month rent, and those lost 284,301 units to deregula-
about $69,000 for a family of The city argues that the rent apartments just don’t exist to tion—almost as many units as the
three. The initiative reaches down middle-income tenants pay helps match the numbers of people who goal is in the mayor’s current plan.
to the poorest residents, allocating subsidize the rents for the lowest- need them.” Holding onto a rent-stabilized
14.5 percent of the space for fami- income brackets. But housing The city does not actually apartment can feel like a blood
lies earning no more than $43,000, advocates look at those units and control its largest anchor of afford- sport, with landlords turning
buildings into never-ending con-
struction sites, offering tenants
paltry sums of cash to leave, or
bringing erroneous cases against
them to get an eviction. Lisa
Kirchner, a 65-year-old singer who
has lived at the Windermere on
the Upper West Side for 35 years,
was once offered $20,000 to vacate

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her studio. Ms. Kirchner, who pays
less than $1,000 a month, knew
that any new apartment would
cost significantly more, depleting
her windfall in a matter of months.
“Unless you leave with something
you can invest,” like enough mon-
ey for a down payment on an
apartment, she says, “you’ve ren-
dered yourself homeless.”
Mostly, the relationship with
the landlord involves confronta-
tions over repairs, noise, and
disruptions. “You feel like there
are buzzards circling—they are
waiting for you to vacate, either by
your own will or by the greater
will,” Kirchner said. “It’s a very
Handel Architects’ Sendero toxic environment.”
Verde (above) will be built The city has stepped up efforts
on a city-owned lot in East
Harlem (left). Developers
to protect tenants, offering ten-
Jonathan Rose Companies, ants harassment assistance and,
L+M Development Partners, with the passage of a 2017 city law,
and the Acacia Network guaranteeing low-income New
promise that the three-
building mixed-use complex
Yorkers facing eviction a right to
will be 100 percent counsel. The city has also created
affordable. The New York a fund to locate and buy stabilized
City Housing Authority buildings to keep them out of the
plans to add affordable
senior housing designed hands of investors eager for a
by Studio Libeskind quick profit, although it has not
(opposite) to its Sumner bought or designated any build-
Houses in Brooklyn’s ings as of yet.
Bedford-Stuyvesant
neighborhood. Both the city and the state have
cracked down on the use of online
short-term rental platforms like
 91

Airbnb, arguing that such services

contribute to rising rents by mak-
ing neighborhoods more transient
and taking potential rental apart-
ments out of circulation. “The risk
of running a high-cost city is that,
very quickly, it could become
solely a tourist destination,” says
Matt Murphy, the deputy commis-
sioner for policy and strategy at
the city’s Department for Housing
Preservation and Development.
However, rezoning gentrifying
neighborhoods could undermine
the city’s attempts to protect
existing housing. Earlier this year,
the City Council approved a plan
to rezone a 92-block stretch of
the southwest Bronx, setting the
stage for this longtime low-
income area, with low-rise com-
mercial buildings housing
auto-body shops, poultry slaugh- low- and moderate-income resi- public housing. It will be Daniel costs are), and there are still hur-
terhouses, and barbershops, to dents to buy an apartment in a Libeskind’s first residential devel- dles for affordable-housing
reemerge as one with high-rises limited-equity arrangement: a opment in the city. developers because various pro-
and new retail. future buyer will need to meet Solving the housing puzzle grams set their own limits on size.
Developers will be required to income requirements. Ownership means thinking differently. One In its quest for space, the city
include permanently affordable “allows people to stabilize over option: encourage micro-units, has been eyeing basement apart-
units in any residential develop- a long period of time,” says apartments smaller than code ments. Although many subter-
ment in a rezoned area, a mandate Christopher Illum, vice president previously allowed. Consider ranean quarters violate occupan-
known as inclusionary zoning. of housing services for Habitat for Caesura, a rental building with cy rules, they could ultimately
Housing advocates argue that Humanity New York City, which 123 mixed-income units in Fort deliver 40,000 more apartments.
rampant speculation sparked by is developing, with Almat Group, Greene, Brooklyn, designed by Last summer, legislation was
rezoning will cause rents to rise Sydney House, a 56-unit afford- Dattner Architects and developed introduced to the city council to
and ultimately displace people, able co-op of one-, two-, and by Jonathan Rose Companies. A legalize them, following a pilot
even if some units are set aside as three-bedroom apartments in the furnished market-rate studio, one program in East New York in
affordable. Bronx. “You have tenure and you of the 34 micro-units in the build- Brooklyn, where landlords were
“If you create a situation where don’t have to worry about deregu- ing, was listed for $2,955 a month encouraged to make safety im-
it makes sense for the developer to lation.” Illum says that Habitat for 300 square feet in August, or provements to the apartments
invest in that market-rate housing, for Humanity buyers are typically $118.20 per square foot—more while the city reviewed existing
that means people are willing to households headed by single than twice the Brooklyn average, codes, like those regulating
pay more for a fixed-up apartment mothers. The minimum income which was $46.67 per square foot minimum ceiling height and
across the street,” said the Com- needed for a Sidney House apart- in July, according to Douglas window size.
munity Service Society’s Waters. ment will be between $41,000 Elliman. Other overlooked corners to
“That’s displacement pressure.” and $72,000 a year, depending on Micro-units, in fact, are not consider include slivers of public
But the city argues that dis- the size of the unit. Sales will cheap, and do nothing to provide land too small for traditional
placement is happening whether begin in early 2019, with prices for families. But with common building but large enough for a
or not a neighborhood is rezoned. ranging from $188,823 to amenities, like the lending library tiny house. The city plans to
By facing the issue head on, af- $326,000. at Caesura, singles might be will- launch a design competition to
fordable housing is guaranteed at The city is looking at open ing to forgo space for the chance build homes no larger than 400
least a place at the table. “The space in public-housing complex- to live in New York without a square feet on some of these par-
rents are going up regardless of es controlled by NYCHA. Last roommate. cels. “We want to think about the
any rezoning, because the demand spring, Studio Libeskind was The city has been encouraging future as a more efficient city,”
is incredibly strong,” says HPD’s tapped to build a 10-story build- developers to build tinier apart- says Murphy. “Can we do some-
Murphy. ing for seniors on the site of the ments, removing minimum-size thing smart and visionary that
In a city where two-thirds of its Sumner Houses development in requirements in 2016 for market- people will want to live in?” n
residents rent, home ownership Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. rate apartments that were
gets less attention. The city has The white, geometric structure previously set at 400 square feet. Ronda Kaysen, a columnist for The
carved out an affordable co-op marks a departure from the The apartments must still have a New York Times, writes about
program in its plan that allows utilitarian brick style typical of kitchen and bathroom (where the housing and real estate.
92 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

DATELINE: Orlando Population: 2.5 million

(metro area)
The theme-park capital of the world faces serious Median Price of Home in
2012: $229,829
questions on how to house its exploding population.
Median Price of Home in
BY MARY SHANKLIN 2017: $265,000
Average Rent for 1-BR
Apartment in 2012: $827
OrlandO, the world’s top tourism for market-rate and luxury com- Minneapolis have twice the rate of
mecca, was so ripe with the munities. “They are basically affordable housing—at least 40 Average Rent for 1-BR
American Dream nine years ago building new towns with no af- affordable and available residenc- Apartment in 2017: $1,189
that first-time buyers could pur- fordable housing,” said Jaimie es for every 100 renter households Source: Housing & Community Development Dept.

chase a house for less than Ross, president of the Florida —while Orlando had just 17.
$100,000. Today, the superheated Housing Coalition. Orlando’s housing plight has estate flippers. And an A+E
residential market has become Adequate affordable housing captured Hollywood’s imagination Networks affiliate filmed the
unaffordable for many buyers. eludes most major U.S. metro and has figured in a number of series Zombie House Flipping about
Rent hikes have made Orlando a areas, but Orlando’s conditions are recent movies and television pro- purchasing, renovating, and sell-
darling of the multifamily invest- among the worst. Earlier this year, grams. Last year’s award-winning ing abandoned houses there.
ment crowd but have further the National Low Income Housing film The Florida Project depicts raw How a region known for afford-
strapped residents in a wage- Coalition reported that only Las motel life for poor families living ability less than a decade ago could
challenged economy. As the Vegas had a more severe shortage in the shadow of the city’s theme so quickly price out many residents
population swells, bulldozers are of rentals for the lowest-income parks. The movie 99 Homes shows is a story that centers on a boom-
demolishing old orange groves families and individuals. Cities Orlando’s foreclosure frontlines of ing population, a housing-market
and cheap housing to make way such as Boston, Pittsburgh, and evictions, squatters, and real- collapse, and wages that have

A cacophany of billboards and other signage along central Florida’s U.S. Highway 192 reflects the region’s vibe.
 93

Aging structures continue to provide shelter to families as mid-rise residential buildings sprout up around the city.

stagnated while prices spiked. Russia, and international markets as $10 an hour. The National Low down to 57 percent by last year.
Housing pressures have that aren’t tied to the local wages,” Income Housing Coalition recent- Orlando’s home-price collapse—
escalated in the last five years; last he says. ly found that the average wage for from a median of $264,000 in
year, on average, more than 1,000 Orlando’s housing crunch hits renters in the Orlando region was 2007 down to $95,000 in 2011—
new residents arrived each week everyone from the poor to the $16.80 an hour, which would meant many ordinary people
in the country’s eighth-fastest- middle class throughout the cover $818 monthly in rent, if could, in theory, suddenly afford
growing metro region, census 4,000-square-mile metro area. The following national guidelines that two median-priced houses, accord-
numbers show. About 40 percent onetime agricultural hub is bifur- recommend spending no more ing to data from the Orlando
of that growth came from other cated by 77.5 million annual than one-third of income on Regional Realtor Association. But
states, plus a similar share from theme park visitors to the south housing. But Orlando-area work- cash investors and equity groups
Puerto Rico (following Hurricane and 2.5 million metro-area resi- ers earning about $15 per hour quickly controlled the market at
Maria) and foreign countries. With dents largely to the north. This are paying about half their in- its depths (with a new wave of
Orlando’s unemployment rate divide has most shortchanged come for the median market-rate landlords buying foreclosed-on
dropping from 10 percent in 2010 blue-collar neighborhoods near apartments. Vacancies are in- houses to rent to newly arriving
to just 3 percent in mid-2018, jobs the theme parks in the region’s creasingly rare and tenants families and those who lost their
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © P H E L A N E B E N H AC K

have been the primary draw, but southern stretches. In Osceola typically need about $3,000 for homes and ruined their credit on
there are other factors as well. County, for instance, rents rose 11 deposits and initial rent. defaulted mortgages). Since then,
Central Florida Congressman percent from a year ago to a mid- Chances to build financial the metro area has regained a
Darren Soto, who has long point of $1,317, according to ALN stability by purchasing a house share of homeowners but still lags
represented working-class Apartment Data. have also diminished. In 2009, behind the national rate of 64
neighborhoods, says Orlando has Metro Orlando is home to six of three of every four houses had percent, so fewer residents are
simply become increasingly the world’s 10 most-attended owners living in them—far above building equity, and more face a
popular, while wages have lagged theme parks. Walt Disney World’s the national rate of 69 percent at future of rent increases that out-
far behind housing costs. “It’s Central Florida operations alone the time, according to the census. strip wage increases.
buyers competing with folks from employed 73,000 workers last Recessionary job losses and fore- The housing gap became most
the Northeast, Canada, Brazil, year. But theme parks pay as little closures drove the rate of owners evident this year with the opening
94 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

of Pendana at West Lakes, a two- Disney’s Animal Kingdom and the school teachers so supportive—a the region.
story complex of siding-clad site for a new Margaritaville recurring sentiment among those “We require first and last
apartment buildings. More than Resort, a young mother stands on who fled after Hurricane Maria month’s rent, and the tenant
half its 201 units had subsidized the balcony of Backlot Apart- and now hunt for permanent needs to be working,” says Mark
rents, charging just 30 percent of ments. The former Travelodge housing in the Orlando area. Four Vengroff, whose family business
tenants’ income for a handful of motel was built during Walt dozen families are currently living buys and redevelops motels
apartments. For other govern- Disney World’s infancy in 1973, in the repurposed motel, and throughout Florida and beyond.
ment-backed units, one-bedrooms and the 300-unit, six-building another 96 are on a waiting list for “There are people we take a
rent for an average of $593, and complex sold last year for $5.3 units set for completion in the fall. chance on.” Backlot is home to a
rent is $850 for market rate in this million. The property is currently Backlot’s small apartments wide variety of tenants—nurses,
blighted urban pocket. Months being converted into efficiency may not be ideal for families, but other hospital employees, and
before it opened in May, demand apartments, some already renting Santos has tried to make the most theme park workers, says
swelled, with inquiries from more at $750 per month. Faded bill- of it. Inside her clutter-free studio Vengroff. In addition, the local
than 8,000 prospective tenants— boards clutter the nearby stretch is a bunk bed for her two children school board directs homeless
or about 40 families vying for of U.S. Highway 192. “It’s better and a queen bed she shares with families to find housing there,
each apartment. In comparison, than being homeless,” says Eliza her longtime boyfriend. They have and FEMA sent Hurricane Maria
median regional rents of about Santos, 29, a Puerto Rican hurri- a one-wall kitchenette and a bath- evacuees, before ending the subsi-
$1,300 rose 7.5 percent during cane refugee who works at the room Santos decorated with a dies in September.
the last year as wages grew just front desk of an adjacent hotel. “I plume-filled vase to match the Throughout the region, even
1 percent. The public/private devel- have found a lot of help for my shower curtain. Renovations young professionals increasingly
opment group that launched kids. Really, to be here, it’s so include fresh paint, kitchen coun- lack the resources to become
Pendana recently halted applica- amazing.” She says she may have ters, sinks, refrigerators, and owners and look to nontraditional
tions while it works on plans to to return to her ravaged island but microwaves. A security gate and housing solutions. Two years ago,
expand with additional phases. would prefer to stay here because improved outdoor lighting help Caitlin Dineen purchased a
Just down the street from she finds her children’s public safeguard this neglected corner of 1,500-square-foot suburban house

A Travelodge motel on U.S. Highway 192 is being converted into the Backlot Apartments, to provide efficiency housing for working-class renters.
 95

Skyrocketing costs have led residents to consider alternative housing options like RVs and “park model” mobile homes like these at the Sherwood Forest RV Resort.

for $175,000. After a divorce, she pleted a series of housing summits land. Plans are in early stages as parts of Florida.
sold it last year for $190,000 but and proposed modifying land-use Bumpus and Associates, an archi- Despite the ideas and efforts,
then found limited options for a for more density. They seek to tecture firm in nearby Celebra- though, Orlando’s affordable-
place to call home. “The market increase the number of unrelated tion, develops the design, says Mary housing shortage is likely to
has only gotten more expensive people who may reside together Downey, executive director of the become more severe. Work has
here in Central Florida, and I and reduce parking requirements nonprofit Community Hope Center. started on just 15 percent of the
would have had to compromise a so developers can pass along re- “I like the idea of being a good 70,000 houses and apartments
lot,” says Dineen, 32, an adminis- duced rents that reflect lower steward of the environment and needed by 2021. And long-term
trator at the Orange County land-acquisition costs. upcycling,” she says of the scheme solutions have been further sty-
Convention Center. “I thought The Central Florida Founda- for containers as building blocks. mied as the state has redirected
about an apartment but, honestly, tion, a local philanthropic West of Orlando, ENB Archi- much of its affordable-housing
I couldn’t afford it even with my organization, plans to create a tects of Jacksonville is working trust fund over the last decade to
pay raise.” Instead, she purchased land trust, which would shave with a partnership of nonprofits pay for general state operations.
a new, 450-square-foot “park costs because residents would pay and the government on the Vil- Last year, for example, part of it
model” mobile home in the only for the structure on sites held lages at Mercy Drive apartment went to school safety after the
Sherwood Forest RV Resort. Most by the trust. In Orlando’s pricey complex, for low-income tenants. mass shooting at Parkland.
residents are twice her age and Winter Park area, the Hannibal The four-building development Near downtown Orlando,
many come for just the winter. Square Land Trust reclaimed a will draw on the Urban Land Pendana was funded with tax
Dineen said she paid about gentrifying neighborhood by Institute’s healthy standards to credits. The next phase, which
$50,000 for the light-filled unit, building small, cottage-style provide space for a food pantry, includes 120 low-income units, is
which has a loft bed, bathroom, Florida-vernacular homes so that community garden, fitness path, set to start in the fall. But credits
and small kitchen. “It feels like a longtime residents could afford to computer use, and jobs fairs. “It’s are limited geographically and
tiny house,” said Dineen, who stay. Near the tourist corridor, very much about supporting the cover only about 110 units annu-
tossed most of her belongings. “I Osceola County planners point to a whole person,” says Tom Norman, ally in each designated county,
don’t feel like I’m missing any- “missing middle” of housing types principal of ENB. notes Robert Ansley, president
thing.” Even though monthly costs that falls between traditional Orlando-area governments of the Orlando Neighborhood
are manageable, she’s unlikely to homes and apartment complexes. also are eyeing inclusionary Improvement Corporation. “Good
achieve savings that would help They want to change the zoning zoning, which calls on large- Lord,” he says, “We have that many
with a down payment or rent rules to accommodate granny flats scale residential projects to people move here every day.” n
deposit elsewhere. and garage apartments. include a percentage of units
Orlando’s spiraling lack of And one Osceola nonprofit is to be designated as affordable. Mary Shanklin is a freelance journal-
affordable-housing options has exploring construction of a four- While sometimes unpopular ist, specializing in real-estate coverage,
politicians, nonprofits, and busi- story rental community with as with developers, the model whose work has appeared in USA
nesses looking for answers. many as 256 units, using shipping has added below-market-rate Today, the Chicago Tribune, and the
Regional leaders recently com- containers on 5.5 acres of donated housing in Sarasota and other Orlando Sentinel.
96 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

There Goes the Neighborhood

Can gentrification improve urban communities without pushing out longtime residents?
BY JAMES RUSSELL

A plAin, one-story, 1890s wood

house of little distinction, barely
large enough for a couple and
their two children in Seattle’s
Ballard neighborhood, now brings
daily offers of $1 million to its
owners. It is not for sale. But enor-
mous wealth accumulation in the
once-affordable city has opened
up a growing gulf between the
tech class—whose high earners
can spend $1 million on an 1890s
box—and middle- and lower-class
earners, who are living in the
same economy of stagnant wages
as the rest of America.
A recent McKinsey report on
Seattle homelessness found that
the supply of housing for those
earning around the median in-
come had halved just since 2011.
Bill Rumpf, the president of
affordable-housing developer
Mercy Housing Northwest, de-
scribes the low-end rental market
as “brutal,” with many people just
a health crisis or costly car repair
away from eviction.
For decades, cities sought in-
vestment to revive blighted streets
and bring economic activity back
to decimated neighborhoods. Now
many urban neighborhoods fear
that new public investment or ster interest”—and that drove up Though gentrification is often the reality that there are not
catalytic development will draw prices. The architects’ 100K discussed as developers buying enough of them in cities around
real-estate developers, and they Houses, designed for developer housing low to sell high, it does the country. The scarcity attracts
will get pushed out—victims of Postgreen Homes, were meant to not operate in a vacuum but reacts more affluent gentrifiers, bids up
gentrification, not its beneficia- demonstrate that inventive archi- to larger market forces: more prices—and displaces long-term
ries. Where cities have prospered tecture and construction could people who desire walkable neigh- residents. In New York, nearly two-
and real-estate values soared, deliver a 1,000-square-foot house borhoods, with charm and thirds of the homeless population
designers and policymakers are for $100,000. “Within months of character, close to jobs. Such in shelters are families—many of
looking for ways to attract needed completion, others advertised urban neighborhoods appeal to them forced out of their homes by
investment without displacing homes ‘near the 100K Houses’ at money-strapped younger people as rising rents as waves of gentrifica-
longtime lower-income residents. higher prices,” says Phillips, well as empty-nesters who enjoy tion crash over formerly affordable
“We find the questions around making replication of the model city life and don’t want to depend neighborhoods.
gentrification very challenging,” impossible. “We’ve thought about on a car. And dense neighbor- Though this story is repeated in
says Brian Phillips, partner at doing quieter buildings, rather hoods work for low-income the coastal hubs of global wealth,
Philadelphia’s Interface Studio than a design piece that says a earners if jobs are accessible by gentrification has the power to
Architects (ISA). The firm’s efforts new market is around the corner.” mass transit. displace in less likely places. Young
to bring affordable new develop- How did gentrification turn The growing market for such people have been flocking to
ment to the Fishtown neighbor- into a losing proposition for low- neighborhoods—the classic gentri- inner-city neighborhoods in
hood turned out to attract “hip- income neighborhoods? fication magnet—is colliding with Atlanta for their pleasing scale and
 97

cozy cottages and bungalows; in The Hunter’s Point South Project (oppo-
recent years, the city’s population site), the 100K Houses (bottom), and a
nonprofit’s efforts to repair row houses in
has grown faster than the sur- Philadelphia (right) are part of an effort to
rounding suburban counties’—a maintain affordable housing in the U.S.
reversal of the historic norm. The
partly built 22-mile urban BeltLine Fixing dilapidated housing has
linear park touches dozens of a deep impact on those who are
neighborhoods, both rich and already vulnerable. “We linked
poor, as it circles downtown, and row house repairs to health,” says
has been spurring redevelop- Bolender, “because a ridiculous
ment—and displacement. number of African-American kids
Atlanta remains a relatively are hospitalized for asthma, and
inexpensive big city, partly be- the risk factors are in the house.”
cause of its high percentage of Seniors and children are most
people who live in poverty (25 susceptible to maladies related to
percent) or not far above it. One- leaks, peeling lead-contaminated
P H O T O G R A P H Y: C O U R T E S Y S T E V E F R E I H O N , R E L AT E D C O M PA N I E S (O P P O S I T E ) ; © R AC H E L S I M M O N S S C H A D E ( T O P ) ; S A M O B E R T E R P H O T O G R A P H Y ( B O T T O M )

fourth of renters are regarded as paint, pests, leaky plumbing, and

“extremely cost burdened”— dilapidated heating systems.
spending more than half their Cities also can support neigh-
income on housing—and are vul- borhoods by investing in the local
nerable to being pushed out even schools, libraries, clinics, and
if rents rise only modestly. other resources that help job
But there is a growing consen- readiness, encourage collabora- people in neighborhoods in SUPPORT SMALL LANDLORDS
sus about how cities can manage tion, and strengthen community transit-starved Atlanta. Last The Row House Project discovered
development pressure for every- bonds. The people who have kept spring, the Annie E. Casey many people they called “inadver-
one’s benefit. neighborhoods together over Foundation broke ground on tent landlords,” according to
decades of disinvestment are a Pittsburgh Yards (named after its Bolender, because they had inher-
INVEST IN LOW-INCOME powerful resource who have a neighborhood), a mixed-use devel- ited a house, or they take care of
COMMUNITIES claim—too often overlooked—on opment on a 31-acre site that will houses lived in by extended-family
Cities can support low-income the future. “What is the intention provide work spaces, designed by members. There are few aid pro-
areas by helping owners keep for the people who have lived in locally based Stevens and Wilkin- grams for small landlords, who
their houses in good repair and these neighborhoods for 40 son Architects. They will rent at often must overcome high bor-
strengthen the skills and earning years?” asks LaShawn Hoffmann, “accessible” rates for approximate- rowing barriers. “Small landlords
potential of local communities. an Atlanta-based community- ly 100 businesses, with a focus on can do a lot with $40,000 or less,”
Philadelphia’s nonprofit Healthy development consultant. His local hiring and local workforce Bolender notes. “A new house is
Row House Project successfully answer is to help bring jobs to development. going to cost at least $350,000.”
advocated for greatly expanded
financial assistance from the city
to owners who need essential
repairs like new roofs, windows,
or furnace replacements. It also
wrote guidelines for people to
maintain the historic character of
their row houses, many of which
date to the early 19th century.
Although several cities have
repair programs for older houses,
“getting to scale is the problem,”
says architect Kiki Bolender, a
Row House Project cofounder and
principal of her own firm. The
Project’s advocacy helped pass a
$100 million bond issue in 2017 to
support renovations. It provides
$60 million in grants for very
low-income households “who can’t
float $10,000 in debt.” The rest
supports loans to households with
moderate to middle incomes,
many of which have been denied
private-market funding.
98 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

rent. In spite of the growing

need, financing for affordable-
housing construction is declining
because the Low Income Housing
Tax Credit, an essential tool, has
been rendered all but worthless
by the Republican tax plan passed
last year: it lowered tax rates so
much that the banks and wealthy
individuals who used the credit to
reduce taxes no longer need to do
so. The tax plan also treats real-
estate investors generously, which
creates incentives to push up
real-estate values, because those
gains are taxed at lower rates
than other investments.
The collapse of consensus on
federal financing of surface trans-
portation some years ago has
prevented the creation of funding
for diverse modes of transit that
metropolitan areas need to help
attract more investment in hous-
ing. Ample supply of low-cost
With a unique facade and modern interiors, the Schermerhorn
in Brooklyn was designed to instill its formerly homeless
transportation that links jobs to
residents with a sense of pride in their lodgings, says architect needy neighborhoods is essential
Susan Rodriguez—and it enhanced the neighborhood. to producing the broad affordabil-
ity that reduces displacement as a
INVEST IN PUBLIC swaths of the city to accommodate REDUCE LAND-USE product of gentrification.
TRANSPORTATION denser development, with incen- REGULATIONS Design plays an important role
Doing a better job of connecting tives to include units for lower Changing zoning laws can lower in bringing about neighborhood
lower-income neighborhoods to incomes. The two-tower Hunter’s costs and increase housing sup- acceptance of low-income or
job-rich areas expands opportuni- Point South project, designed by ply. The worst regulations keep homeless housing. An award-
ties for long-term residents to SHoP Architects, offers 20 percent out middle- and lower-income winning project called the
move up the income ladder, help- of its 925 apartments as low- residents: large-lot/large-house Schermerhorn, in Brooklyn, New
ing them stay in neighborhoods income rentals, with the rest requirements; strictly limiting or York, by Susan Rodriguez, former
that attract investment. Hoffmann “moderately” affordable, i.e., prohibiting multifamily projects; partner at Ennead, enlivens the
says poorer neighborhoods seek somewhat below market. prohibitions against accessory street front with a ballet school,
the park and trail amenities the The challenge for architects is units; and approval processes and also includes a community
BeltLine will bring, “but we want to work with this new larger scale that are protracted and costly. room to encourage connection

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © DAV I D S U N D B E R G / E S T O , E N N E A D A R C H I T E C T S ( 2)
what park promoters initially while maintaining light, air, and Peeling back such regulations between tenants and the neigh-
promised: 5,800 units of afford- views within neighborhoods isn’t easy, because many affluent borhood. The architecture helped
able housing and light rail lines” already heavily built-up. SHoP’s neighborhoods passionately melt local resistance to the pres-
along the old rail rights of way. towers are staggered to make the disguise their exclusionary agen- ence of formerly homeless
The affordable units have been most of stunning waterfront da by citing “quality of life”—and individuals (116 units) and low-
slow in coming, and the transit vistas and minimize the impact have the means to make politi- income working people (101 units).
seems a distant dream. Ample on neighbors. But the develop- cians listen. Gentrification and displace-
public transit also expands access ment attracted 93,000 applica- Unfortunately, the federal ment too often have been treated
to more neighborhoods and there- tions, indicating just how inad- government, where the greatest as ultra-local problems, when
fore to more housing, thereby equate the supply is. resources could be tapped, has solutions at scale must ultimately
reducing price pressure. In Philadelphia, ISA seeks mar- failed to play a constructive role reckon with the human needs of
ginal lots to develop because the in reducing displacement and existing residents and the forces—
INCREASE THE SUPPLY OF lower land cost can reduce the homelessness. and failures—at the city, regional,
AFFORDABLE HOUSING sale price, according to Phillips. Only about one-fourth of and national levels. n
New units are most important “We did a 1,100-square-foot house households eligible for any fed-
when growth is driving prices up on a 12-foot by 29-foot lot” by eral housing aid receive it. James S. Russell, FAIA, is a strategic-
and the private market fails to building five stories. “We can Congress has failed to increase projects consultant, most recently with
serve the demand of both lower- unlock ways of living that are either affordable-housing subsi- the NYC Department of Design and
and middle-income households. desirable, though they can present dies or the vouchers—called Construction. A longtime journalist, he
New York has upzoned large some inconveniences.” Section 8—that help families pay is writing a book on tech and cities.
 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America 99

[ Q+A ]

Innovative Approach to Housing the Homeless

Rosanne Haggerty, a longtime entrepreneur for social causes, has developed new strategies
for a mounting problem.

In such a booming economy, very high-cost housing markets, What do you do about providing
why is homelessness spiking yet both have achieved zero housing to the homeless in a
and affordable housing reach- chronic and/or veteran homeless- high-cost market?
ing a crisis in many U.S. cities? ness. In the case of Bergen County, I’ll share one example of the
Homelessness is not spiking they’ve understood how to align local problem-solving required.
everywhere, but I would say it’s all their related housing policies: We just opened an affordable
the failure of housing policy and they learned who was really 66-unit apartment building this
practice to adapt quickly to chang- trapped in homelessness (the year outside Denver, a city with
ing demographics and dynamics. chronic) and were able to house high housing costs. The metro
Our work is focused on shifting everyone. They learned who had a Denver area has just over 300
mindsets about the nature of the less severe housing need, and had homeless veterans remaining to
problem, and building skills in a system in place that could re- be housed, with a less than 1
communities that enable them to spond quickly. They know who percent vacancy rate in rental
solve a problem that is not static has a disability that needs to be housing. We couldn’t find land-
or uniform in the way it is addressed with supportive lords willing to rent to these
An important leader addressing our experienced by individuals and services along with housing assis- veterans, all of whom had rental
nation’s homeless problem, Rosanne families, and requires disciplined tance. They know what units are subsidies and vouchers. So we
Haggerty founded Common Ground coordination of effort and resourc- available, where the vacancies are. bought an existing building, by
Community in New York in 1990. The es. That coordination calls for Both these counties are very disci- putting together a group of so-
nonprofit housing-development accurate and timely information plined about tying these pieces of cially minded investors. For a 3
organization built thousands of on what is actually happening— demand and supply together, and percent return, they’ll get their
affordable and supportive apart- does our community have fewer they are addressing the housing capital back in seven years—which
ments through an approach that people experiencing homelessness crisis in a transparent, account- enabled us to move very quickly to
brought together architects, health this month than last month? We able, comprehensive, and purchase the building before
and mental health providers, commu- now have the evidence that home- connected way. speculators arrived.
nity groups, and public and private lessness is a solvable problem. But
investors. Owing to her accomplish- communities need to think about What are the housing options You have suggested that corpo-
ments, Haggerty was named a housing as a system: how all the in those communities for rations should act as private
MacArthur Foundation Fellow in parts—zoning, land tenure, alloca- somebody moving from home- investors in housing.
2001. In 2011, she left Common tion of benefits, regulation of lessness to a dwelling? In Seattle and San Francisco,
Ground to start Community Solutions dwelling-unit types and use, plus Homelessness is a term we there is a desire to tax the tech
and address the larger problem of code enforcement—can better fit might want to think about retir- employers for having altered the
fragmented local housing and social- together. Much of our work con- ing. It’s like saying “sickness.” It housing market. Many big compa-
support systems. Through large-scale centrates on helping communities does not tell you enough about nies are sitting on a lot of cash–
initiatives including the 100,000 learn how to organize themselves what is going on, and there are instead of taxing them, why not
Homes Campaign and, now, Built for and use practices from other many different manifestations. convince them to invest in either
Zero, Community Solutions assists industries to encourage collabora- Various communities figured out preserving or building affordable
cities or counties in coordinating tive problem-solving. Most of all, that a significant percentage of housing? If you can cap returns at
resources and efforts of multiple an accountable group in each homeless individuals and families a workable level, it would be pos-
stakeholders to make homelessness community needs to know who is have something else going on in sible. These employers are stake-
rare, brief, and nonrecurring. The homeless and who is on the verge their lives—maybe a health-care holders in cities and towns that
organization’s innovative approach of homelessness. They could bring crisis or some legal issue. People are overwhelmed by homelessness
creates accountable housing systems the numbers down by aligning need well-informed assistance and the stress of high housing
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © J O S H W O O L

and has already eliminated chronic or policies and practices to support about their options in addressing costs on those with places to live.
veteran homelessness in 11 places. connectivity between local agen- those problems. Then they might Their creativity and resources can
More than three dozen other commu- cies and various stakeholders. solve their housing situation be tapped in new ways, once com-
nities are seeing steady improvement. largely on their own. Other munities take collective responsi-
record’s Cathleen McGuigan What are some places where households experiencing home- bility for this situation.
and Suzanne Stephens talked with such connectivity is working? lessness can be helped with We’re accustomed to affordable-
Haggerty about the thinking behind We could look at Bergen County essentially a one-time financial housing projects financed
her strategies for reducing homeless- in New Jersey and Montgomery reset, perhaps a rent subsidy for a through low-income housing tax
ness in America. County in Maryland. Both have few years. credits that take years to develop
100 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

and require multiple funding for Zero: The first phase is all
sources. We have used these pro- about getting person-specific,
grams ourselves, to build projects real-time data together on home-
like the John and Jill Ker Conway lessness in a community. It’s a
Residence in Washington, D.C. The process of building a clear, com-
architects DLR Group/Sorg de- prehensive picture of what this
signed the 124-unit complex, crisis looks like, and helping
which includes 60 apartments for organizations work as a team. The
formerly homeless veterans as second phase is using that data to
well as low-income residents. It’s a start bringing about reductions,
fantastic building, located near by bringing in successful ideas
the U.S. Capitol and the from other communities and
Washington Monument. But in- experimenting with new strate-
vestments from new sources could gies in short cycles to see what
fast-track the production of new works. There is no one solution for
affordable housing, and remove every community or every person.
the friction and inefficiency of the You need disciplined, constant
tools we’ve been using. testing of strategies targeted at
specific problems in the local
You have said hospitals and housing system for measurable
other institutions are becoming progress. The last phase is sustain-
stakeholders. For example? ing the elimination of chronic and
Kaiser Permanente announced veteran homelessness while ex-
a $200 million housing-investment panding this system to encompass
fund earlier this year. United all those experiencing homeless-
Healthcare is investing in housing ness in the community.
for high-cost patients who are
homeless in their markets. Trinity What about shelters and tempo-
Healthcare has an initiative to rary housing. Do they work?
support affordable housing in Every study of this question
targeted areas. These systems are Community Solutions spearheaded the John and Jill Ker Conway Residence in Wash- supports what we are seeing
ington, D.C., designed by architects DLRGroup/Sorg, with supportive/affordable units.
seeing that stable housing is cru- across the 70-plus communities
cial to health. no longer believed the rhetoric to support collaboration. It pro- that have been part of Built for
Another interesting thing we’re that it was just a matter of re- vides training and coaching in Zero: that the key to ending home-
seeing is that as health care shifts sources. We thought a new way of data analytics, human-centered lessness is helping people keep
to outpatient services, and there understanding the situation was design, and in developing new their housing or get back into
are more consolidations of hospi- needed. We were fortunate to be housing models. It also enables stable housing quickly. That’s
tal systems, old hospital real introduced to an organization learning from peers across com- probably what you most need to
estate becomes available. A con- called the Institute of Healthcare munities by regularly bringing know about homelessness.
certed practice of looking to these Improvement, and through them them all together and by docu- Shelters and temporary housing
sites for affordable housing makes to grasp systems thinking: home- menting and sharing practices should never be a community’s
sense. This is also true of religious lessness is a symptom of broken that are working. This is a team primary investment: it becomes
properties. As parishes consoli- housing and support systems. sport at every level. Each commu- an expensive industry while not
date, churches close or require Community Solutions establishes nity needs at the very least the solving homelessness. It’s a rough-
less space due to changing demo- teams of organizations with criti- mayor’s office, the Veterans ly $2 billion-plus annual industry
graphics, they can continue cal housing and support resources; Administration, the housing in New York City, for example–

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © R O B E R T B E N S O N P H O T O G R A P H Y
serving their communities by it works with communities that authority, and the consortia of and homelessness is at an all-time
making their properties available are willing to hold themselves not-for-profit service providers high there.
for affordable housing. accountable for results in reduc- working toward the same goal and Homelessness mirrors income
ing and ending homelessness, and holding each other accountable. inequality and racial inequity, and
How does Community Solutions analyzes and changes policies and Once Built for Zero communities demands attention for those rea-
differ from Common Ground? practices they have in place that have a clear grasp of the type of sons alone. Proof of what works is
During my 20 years at Common contribute to homelessness. housing units needed to reach now emerging. It clearly is a lead-
Ground, we built lots of affordable I can’t say enough about the “zero,” Community Solutions can ership issue at every level of
and supportive housing, but communities that have moved develop new affordable housing, government—one that needs to
homelessness in New York City past hand-wringing and blame plus finance models. challenge conventional approach-
continued to rise. It was clear that and are working as teams, not es, require a team-based system,
new housing alone, or being one competing organizations, to bring What is the process by which make targeted investments in
organization running good pro- about reductions. Our Built for Community Solutions helps put housing, and provide rental subsi-
grams, was not having much of an Zero team helps these communi- these projects in place? dies rather than shelters. Citizens
impact on the overall problem. We ties create the data infrastructure There are three phases to Built should expect no less. n
 101

ON T H E BOA R DS
BY ALEX KLIMOSKI

Amid the housing crisis, developers and architects are seeking out contemporary prototypes for housing that are not only
affordable and accessible but that also stimulate local economies and enhance community connection. From the South
Bronx, one of New York’s most rapidly evolving areas, to Bentonville, Arkansas, which is projected to experience a 75 per-
cent population boom over the next two decades, the following upcoming projects represent a range of single- and
multifamily, supportive, and affordable residences designed to revitalize their surrounding neighborhoods.

The Bronx, New York

1490 Southern Boulevard

Bernheimer Architecture
Two miles north of the Peninsula, in the Crotona Park East

I M AG E S : © W X Y/ B L A ( T O P, L E F T ) ; C O U R T E S Y B E R N H E I M E R A R C H I T EC T U R E ( T O P, R I G H T ) ;
neighborhood, an 85,000-square-foot senior-housing project will
The Peninsula also break ground in January. The 10-story building will be
WXY completely affordable; 30 percent of the units are to be reserved for
The site of a former juvenile-detention center is being transformed into a five-building mixed-use formerly homeless tenants. The ground level will serve a diverse
development with 740 affordable housing units and over 100,000 square feet of commercial and range of community functions, with spaces run by the Jewish
retail, community, and light-industrial facilities. When completed in 2024, the nearly five-acre site, Association Serving the Aging as well as the LGBT Network. Located
once a symbol of New York’s broken justice system, will be connected with its surrounding next to an elevated subway line, the design incorporates double-
neighborhood and serve as a new urban model for a nexus of health and creativity, with a food- glazed windows to mitigate noise while maximizing daylight.
production hub, wellness center, greengrocer, artist studios, and a preschool. The project, which is Residents can get more sun at an outdoor communal area on the
scheduled to break ground in January, will be completed in three phases. eighth floor. The project is slated to open in 2021.

Chicago

L A N D O N B O N E B A K E R A R C H I T EC T S ( B O T T O M )
La Casa Norte Pierce House
Landon Bone Baker Architects
A new supportive-housing facility and
community center is currently rising in
Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. The
51,000-square-foot building will provide 25
affordable housing units for at-risk or recently
homeless young adults and families, as well as
access to resources such as a nutrition center,
a teen drop-in center, a teaching kitchen and
café, and other social services. The project,
which opens in December, is on track for LEED
Silver certification, featuring edible gardens
for on-site food production, multitiered green
roofs, and a solar thermal system.
102 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 The Housing Crisis in America

New Orleans 3609-13 S Saratoga

Office of Jonathan Tate
This 3,800-square-foot double house will be
the third installment of the Starter Home*
initiative launched by Office of Jonathan
Tate. Formulated as a model alternative to
conventional funding processes aimed at
producing affordability, the program homes
in on overlooked opportunities to expand the
market. The Saratoga project is the first
crowd-funded real-estate equity in the
United States. Informed by its immediate
urban context, the 3-bedroom house, located
on a nonconforming lot in a transitioning
neighborhood, expands on the traditional
two-bay and makes use of fiber-cement
siding, keeping material costs low to
increase financial accessibility. Construction
starts this month and will wrap up next June.

I M AG E S : © W I L L C R O C K E R ( T O P, L E F T ) ; C O U R T E S Y O F F I C E O F J O N AT H A N TAT E ( T O P, R I G H T ) ; D I G S AU ( M I D D L E ) ; K E V I N DA LY A R C H I T E C T S ( B O T T O M )
Bentonville,
Arkansas
Housing NW Arkansas Site 1
Digsau
This winning entry for one of five sites,
all part of the Housing Northwest
Arkansas competition—an initiative by
the University of Arkansas’s Fay Jones
School of Architecture and Design to
come up with plans for mixed-use
attainable housing—comprises a range of
building forms inspired by regional
vernacular, arranged to mimic the
buildings on a traditional Ozark
farmstead. By stacking structures and
landscapes, the nine-acre plan—a mix of
single-family houses, multistory mixed-
use buildings, and open space—creates a
contextualized low-cost medium-density
residence solution, with the capacity for
inexpensive wood-frame expansion over
garages and commercial spaces. The
project is expected to break ground in
summer 2019.

Housing NW Arkansas Site 2

Kevin Daly Architects
The design for Site 2 of the competition features
low-rise housing in a pinwheel arrangement that
prioritizes open space and community-building.
Prominent pedestrian and bicycle pathways help
to integrate it with the existing landscape and
enhance the neighborhood. Live-work spaces, arts
retail, incubator offices, and local corporate offices
will be part of the five-acre development, which is
slated to begin construction in January. Pending
the completion and success of the first two plans,
the remaining three sites are also expected to
move forward.
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 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY 999 107

International
Models of
Urban Housing
Here in the U.S., we’ve become used to seeing
cutting-edge designs for luxury condo towers,
but the same can’t be said when it comes to most
affordable housing. Record searched the globe
for innovative architectural and social models
that offer well-designed living spaces to a
variety of income groups.

108 Drivelines, Johannesburg, by LOT-EK

114 Dujardin Mews, London, by Karakusevic Carson
and MaccreanorLavington
118 Future Towers, Pune, India, by MVRDV
124 Pelleport Social Housing, Paris, by Bruther
128 Basaren Block, Stockholm, by Wingårdhs
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © A N D R É P I H L

BASAREN BLOCK, STOCKHOLM

BY WING•RDHS
108 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

DATELINE: Johannesburg
ARCHITECT: LOT-EK
MODEL: Shipping Containers
BY KAREN EIKER
PHOTOGRAPHY BY DAVE SOUTHWOOD

L
ocated in the historically, culturally, and economically New York–based architecture firm LOT-EK, the 75,000-square-foot
complex Maboneng precinct in downtown Johannesburg, project is situated on Albertina Sisulu Road, a prominent arterial that
Drivelines is the largest residential shipping-container connects the east and west regions of the metropolis. Over the last
development in South Africa, where the type is becoming a decade, Maboneng has emerged as a cultural and tourist destination,
popular housing alternative for its affordable and sustain- with Arts on Main and Main Street Life creative hubs the center of a
able attributes. The building offers unique rental accommodations variety of cultural, retail, leisure, small-scale commercial, and mid-
while celebrating the beauty of existing objects and everyday activities income residential offerings. But the precinct has often been criticized
through its carefully considered design. as an attempt at gentrification that has excluded the existing commu-
Developed by South African company Propertuity and designed by nity of Jeppestown, an economically disadvantaged area of light
 109

industry, characterized by urban decay. CONTAIN YOURSELF Drivelines is the largest residential shipping-container
Jonathan Liebmann, Propertuity founder and visionary behind the development in South Africa (opposite). Generous walkways act as balconies (above).
development of the Maboneng precinct, explains, “Four years after we Drivelines, plays a crucial role in the development of Maboneng, since it
started work in Maboneng, we decided to focus on delivering affordable extends the northern boundary of the precinct beyond the busy
residential accommodation in anticipation of market demand. In Albertina Sisulu Road. “The primary design informant was the strange
Maboneng, the average rental has been about the equivalent of $330 triangular shape of the site, with frontage onto a major thoroughfare,”
per month, but we foresee this decreasing to around $230 over the next says LOT-EK principal Giuseppe Lignano. “It’s a very strong location, and
couple of years.” we had the opportunity to create a backdrop for Maboneng that would
The site, previously home to a small auto-mechanic shop called function as a billboard for the east and west approaches.”
110 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

As a studio, LOT-EK embraces a sustainable

approach to construction through upcycling,
with an extensive portfolio worldwide centered
on the reuse of shipping containers and other
industrial objects. This was why Liebmann
approached LOT-EK founders Lignano and Ada
Tolla.
“As we started working on the design, we
immediately thought about combining the
residential component with something more
collective,” notes Tolla. “We felt that Drivelines
could contribute to the surrounding commu-
nity through a retail component at ground
level, which forms a covered portico with
benches along the busy street edge and pro-
vides a threshold that connects the building to
the city. This sense of collective space could
then be carried further by hinging the two
arms of the building in response to the trian-
gular shape of the site to create an internal
courtyard space.”
LOT-EK was motivated by the qualities of
light and space and the idea of silence against
the noise of a busy road, opening the units to
the internal courtyard, and also by the con-
straints that come from using containers. “We
wanted to defy the narrowness of the contain-
er, to create wider and more gentle spaces for
residential use,” says Tolla. They achieved this
by designing two living units—which range in
size from 400 to 500 square feet—out of one
rectangular assembly of six containers, with a
central core for bathrooms, and windows
opening to the left and right, allowing the
diagonal bracing of the containers to dictate
very simple and efficient fenestration cuts in
the corrugated container walls.
Designing to the dimensions of containers
provided unexpected opportunities to include
communal spaces. The generous width of the
walkways between the units and the court-
yard generated transitional semiprivate hybrid
spaces, and the junction of the building’s two
arms accommodates stairs and an elevator at a
spot that provides narrow framed views and
informal meeting points for residents.
As a first for the South African market, the
building was not without its challenges. Local
companies that supplied the containers did
not have the capacity to transform the contain-
ers before delivering them, “so we decided to
build out the containers on-site. We had not
done that before,” says Lignano. “It was a
tough process, but everybody pulled together
to make it work with a lot of pride, passion,
and commitment.”
“The construction process had its own
efficiencies,” Tolla adds. “By handling the
metalwork on-site, a lot of cut-out material
could be reused for reinforcement. Even the
little sculptures in the courtyard are the glori-
 111

IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD
credits Drivelines is a towering
presence in Maboneng
ARCHITECT: LOT-EK — Ada Tolla,
(opposite, top). Its graphic
Giuseppe Lignano, principals; Sara facade serves as a
Valente, project architect backdrop at the end of a
ASSOCIATE ARCHITECT: Anita du Plessis busy road (opposite,
bottom). The containers’
ENGINEERS: Asakheni, Silman diagonal bracing dictated
(structural); VBK Engineering very simple and efficient
Systems, Abbink Consulting (m/e/p) fenestration cuts (above).
A covered portico with
CONSULTANT: SevenBar Consulting benches connects to the
(project management) street (left).
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Tri-Star
CLIENT: Propertuity
SIZE: 75,000 square feet
COST: withheld
COMPLETION DATE: November 2017
112 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

1 COURTYARD
5
2 WALKWAY

P H O T O G R A P H Y:C O U R T E S YL O T- E K ( B O T T O M ,3)

3 STUDIO
3
2 4 BATHROOMCORE
3 5 5 ONE-BEDROOM
1
5

0 20 FT. 0 6 FT.
TYPICAL-FLOOR PLAN TYPICAL-UNITS PLAN
6 M. 2 M.
 113

INSIDE JOB The upcycled shipping containers are transformed into simple dwellings (opposite). Walkways line the triangular courtyard, which serves as a social space for
residents (above).

fied leftovers from the window cutouts. We also decided not to paint Johannesburg, we have watched the evolution of Maboneng and are
the facades, but to source containers of the same color for each arm and very proud of this project as a presence in the neighborhood. On a
allow the rawness of the used objects to be expressed.” recent visit, it was gratifying to feel that the inhabitants are enjoying
LOT-EK collaborated with local architectural professionals Anita du daily life in the building. While the original intention was to provide
Plessis and Korine Kruger. “One of our biggest challenges was obtaining spaces for young people working in the city, we were pleased to see
approval from the City of Johannesburg fire department,” says du Plessis. that the studios are flexible enough to accommodate a diversity of
“We had to prove it was a rational design alternative in a residential tenants of all ages and backgrounds, including young families and
building, where cooking takes place, and demonstrate that we were retired professionals.”
adequately protecting all structural steel elements in the containers.” For Liebmann, the building has surpassed expectations, in terms of
“Much of the experience gained on the project can be explored as a both aesthetics and execution. Through its unusual construction meth-
model of living for other contexts,” says Tolla. “The concept is complete- odology, Drivelines pays homage to the industrial nature of Jeppestown
ly exportable—from proposing other ideas of beauty and integrating and, through its mixed-use and street interface, successfully embeds
social spaces, to the use of alternative methods and materials that itself within the urban community. n
might be more sustainable.”
“South Africa holds a very important place in the world, from a An architect and award-winning journalist, Karen Eicker is a director of the
sociopolitical perspective,” says Lignano. “As regular visitors to Architect Africa Network.
114 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

T
here can be few clearer examples than this project of how
housing architects revisit and reinvent old ideas. This new
street of row houses in outer London goes back to 18th- and
19th-century precedents in the shadow of the 1960s towers
that they are partly replacing.
British architects have been designing alternatives to high-rise social
housing since the late 1960s (see my review of Cook’s Camden on page 49),
in recent years often adopting the form of the high-density courtyard-
based development or mid-rise block. Dujardin Mews is different.
Designed by architects Karakusevic Carson with MaccreanorLavington,
it is a full-blooded return to the idea of the traditional street of attached
houses. But unlike some other developments in the UK—especially in
rural areas—it is not traditionalist in style.
The north–south street was built on part of a former gasworks next to
a railway line in Ponders End, a poor industrial and postindustrial dis-
trict in the outer North London borough of Enfield. Immediately to the
north of Dujardin Mews is the Alma Estate, a large blue-collar social
housing project from the 1960s that originally featured a mix of four tall
towers and lower buildings. The borough deemed this estate ripe for a
10-year, $400 million regeneration project. Although much of this has
been put in the hands of private developers, the borough decided it
would also directly build its first social housing in 40 years and that this
should be an exemplar project, to rehouse residents displaced by demoli-
tions on the Alma Estate.
A large new school was built on most of the old gasworks site, leav-
ing only a narrow strip at its western edge for housing. The brief to
competing architects envisaged a single row of houses facing the
school. But the school made it clear that it was not keen to be observed.
In a joint submission, the winning architects proposed instead a dou-
ble-sided street, achieving this by rotating the house plans on the
eastern side 90 degrees, resulting in shallow three-story houses with
wide frontages. In place of full-sized rear gardens, a second-floor ter-
race is provided over a garage in each house on this side, along with a
tiny, enclosed ground-floor backyard.
This simple move made a proper double-sided street possible.
Measuring 41 feet across, there is just enough space for a roadway,
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © J I M S T E P H E N S O N ( L E F T ) ; M A R K H A D D E N ( R I G H T )

BRICK HOUSE Window frames are timber faced with powder-coated aluminum on
the outside for low maintenance (above). The pedestrian-friendly street features
shared surfaces, landscaped areas, and on-street parking (right).
 115

DATELINE: London
ARCHITECT: Karakusevic Carson
& MaccreanorLavington
MODEL: Row Houses
BY HUGH PEARMAN
116 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

1 COVERED ENTRANCE
2 GARDEN
3 TRASH BINS
4 KITCHEN/DINING
5 GARAGE

8 6 TERRACE
1
7 DOUBLE-HEIGHT
LIVING ROOM
7
3 8 BEDROOM
2
6
4

SECTIONAL AXONOMETRIC

2 2

1 1 1

1
8
5 5 5 5

0 50 FT.
GROUND-FLOOR PLAN
15 M.

credits
ARCHITECT: Karakusevic Carson
Architects
ASSOCIATE ARCHITECT:

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © T I M C R O C K E R ; E M A N U E L I S S TA S A I T I S (O P P O S I T E , 2)
MaccreanorLavington
ENGINEERS: Peter Brett Associates
(structural and civil); Designbrook
(m/e/p)
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: Durkan
CLIENT: Borough of Enfield, London
SIZE: 39,200 square feet
COST: $9.9 million
COMPLETION DATE: September 2017

SOURCES
BRICK: Freshfield Lane
TILE: Johnson Tiles, Waxman
Ceramics
RESILIENT FLOORING: Forbo
ACOUSTICAL CEILINGS: British Gypsum
DOORS: Premdor, Pendle Doors
 117

sidewalks, planted landscape areas, and on-street parking as well as the DAY TO DAY South-facing roof pitches feature PV panels (opposite). Some units include
garages—all in a Dutch-style pedestrian-friendly “Home zone” arrange- a terrace over the garage (above, left). Living rooms rise to the roof soffit (above).
ment of shared surfaces, where cars naturally move slowly and it’s
normal to stroll down the middle of the street. A “mews” was tradition- at ground level with duplexes above. At the rear, they are very differ-
ally a narrow secondary street with small servants’ dwellings over ent. But on the street-facing side, only subtle detail variations give this
coach houses and stables. Here, however, internal room dimensions are away. Similarly, MaccreanorLavington designed the houses on the
impressive: when you walk in, these houses feel spacious and full of western side of the street and the southern end-block, while
daylight despite the limited fenestration on the school side. Living Karakusevic Carson also designed the eastern row and acted as execu-
rooms are double-height, rising to the roof soffits. tive architect for the whole development. Says Paul Karakusevic, “We
Although there are only 38 units in total, the development contains like to collaborate with other practices on housing projects, to create
a number of different types, from one-bedroom apartments to four- distinctive neighborhoods with real character. For Dujardin Mews, the
bedroom houses. The mix is 50 percent social-rented and 50 percent collaboration yielded a street with a variety of frontages and dwelling
subsidized-sale. (UK “right to buy” legislation allows social-rent tenants types that respond to the surrounding context.”
to purchase their homes at a discount from market rates after three The various designs share a common language of materials—red
years of residence, so increasing private ownership is expected.) All are brick with gray concrete roof tiles and a mix of planted green and zinc
occupied by previous residents of the Alma Estate, who, along with the flat roofs. Detailing is of a high order, especially the texturing and
school, took part in consultation sessions with the architects as the modeling of brick on end gables, deep window reveals, and, on the
design progressed. Three-story flat-roofed apartment blocks at each end western side, green-glazed brick lintels. Construction quality is impres-
act as visual stops, the one at the south end also turning the corner so sive for a low-energy project that cost approximately $255 per square
as to screen existing industrial sheds. The variety of unit sizes could foot to build.
have made for a fussy aesthetic, but it is carefully controlled, with just Ideally, Dujardin Mews would be just the start of a grid or ladder of
enough visual variation. such streets, but at present it feels slightly marooned in the midst of all
A more conventional row house type with gardens occupies the west the redevelopment taking place around it. Perhaps anticipating this,
side of the street, while what appears at first glance to be a single block the architects designed the street to feel very self-contained and neigh-
at the northern end is in fact divided, with each of the two architects borly. This is a totally convincing revisit of a very London human-scale
designing half. The southern part, by MaccreanorLavington, is houses; domestic typology: to heal the scars of industry and of failed earlier
the northern, by Karakusevic Carson, consists of courtyard apartments housing experiments, it deserves to be studied and replicated widely. n
118 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing
 119

DATELINE: Pune, India

B
orrowing strategies from
both Europe and India,
MVRDV designed Future

ARCHITECT: MVRDV Towers to attract a broad

range of homebuyers in the
rapidly developing city of Pune in west-
MODEL: Megastructure ern India. The project’s bold formal
moves—arranging 17-, 20-, and 30-story
wings around hexagonal courtyards
BY CLIFFORD A. PEARSON
and punching variously sized voids
PHOTOGRAPHY BY OSSIP VAN DUIVENBODE
through the facades—derive from the
Amsterdam-based firm’s design DNA,
and its mix of income groups follows a
Dutch model of housing diversity. But
the narrow width of the wings and the
particular layouts of the 1,068 apart-
ments acknowledge local preferences.
The result is an intriguing hybrid that
stands out in a progressive 400-acre
development.
Located 90 miles southeast of
Mumbai, Pune has leveraged its con-
centration of higher-educational
institutions and its role as a leader in
India’s automobile-manufacturing
sector to become a technology hub
drawing young professionals from
around the country. Its altitude of
1,800 feet and its manageable size of
3.4 million people make it a more
comfortable alternative to the coun-
try’s teeming mega-cities. But, as in the
rest of India, the government hasn’t
been able to build the modern infra-
structure needed to support growth.
So, in 2005, the state of Maharashtra,
which includes Pune, passed legislation
to encourage private developers to
build so-called “townships” of at least
100 acres. In exchange for tax relief
and development rights, the companies
must build all of the power, water,
and sewer infrastructure, as well as
roads, schools, and hospitals needed for
residents.
Pune-based City Corporation Limited
began constructing Amanora Park
Town in 2007. Set on what had been
farmland, the town is now home to
more than 10,000 people, most living in
high-rise buildings, but some in single-
family villas. A 2.85 million-square-foot
shopping center, a fire station, a post

HOUSE DIVIDED Future Towers comprises

nine wings, as tall as 30 stories, around four
cores to maximize perimeters and provide
increased natural ventilation for the over 1,000
apartments. Large refuge spaces, from one to
three stories high, are carved out of the facade
to become defining elements of the building.
120 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

VERTICALCITY
The building follows a hexagonal grid
to provide views and ample daylight
for each of the apartments (above). At
ground level, trapezoidal voids
connect street-facing courtyards to a
central green (opposite, top). The
interconnected courtyards offer
residents relaxed social environments
2 (opposite, middle). The sloping top of
2 2 each wing features large terraces
(opposite, bottom).

2 2
credits
ARCHITECT: MVRDV —
Jacob van Rijs, partner
in charge
ENGINEERS: Neilsoft
(m/e/p); J+W (civil,
structural)
1 CORE CLIENT: City
2 SCOOP Corporation Limited
3 TERRACE SIZE: 1.5 million square
4 BALCONY feet
COST: withheld
COMPLETION DATE:
0 60 FT. January 2018
LEVEL-NINE PLAN
20 M.
 121

office, two primary schools, a high

school, a Neoclassical clubhouse with a
domed entry rotunda (trying to channel
the spirit of Brunelleschi), two artificial
lakes, a 26-acre central green, an out-
door amphitheater, and four
community centers are spread out
around the development.
A fiber-optic cable network and
digitally controlled infrastructure
provide a sophisticated communica-
tions and management network, while
systems for recycling nondegradable
waste, composting wet waste, and
harvesting rainwater make it more
environmentally sustainable than most
developments in the U.S.
Most of the apartment buildings at
Amanora Park cater to a particular
income group, though the township as
a whole must provide 10 percent of its
units to low-income families and set
aside land on the property for the farm-
ers who had lived there to build their
own homes. Jacob van Rijs, the MVRDV
principal in charge of Future Towers,
convinced the client to mix units for
low-, middle-, and upper-income resi-
dents in his firm’s project and integrate
them within the nine different wings
of the building. “We imported the
notion of creating a diverse social orga-
nization,” says van Rijs.
MVRDV won the project in an in-
vited competition that included the
venerable Hong Kong firm P&T, which
has designed other apartment build-
ings at Amanora Park, and several
Indian offices. The invitation came
after van Rijs had lectured in India and
MVRDV had done preliminary schemes
for other projects in India that did not
get built. It is MVRDV’s first in India to
be completed, though the firm has
another currently in construction and
two others in design, as well as two
more slightly smaller phases of Future
Towers.
Asked by the client to create a “ver-
tical city” that would be “an architec-
tural marvel,” MVRDV developed a
scheme inspired by landscape forma-
tions with “peaks and valleys, canyons
and bays, grottoes and caves,” says van
Rijs. In northern Europe, most apart-
ment buildings have compact
footprints to reduce perimeter sur-
faces and the need for insulation. But
in the hot climes of India, architects
usually maximize perimeters to in-
crease natural ventilation. Even in
122 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

AT HOME AND PLAY

MVRDV created a flexible system
that allows the developer to vary
the size of the units (above).
Various strategies are employed
to create a series of
neighborhoods within the
building (left). Colorful murals
adorn the walls of the
“scoops”—open-air rooms for
various sporting and socializing
activities (opposite).
 123

Amanora Park, which has modern power generators for air-condi- to gather when it rains or the sun is too strong. The complex sits on a
tioning, homebuyers expect naturally ventilated rooms, says van Rijs. two-story plinth, with parking under all of the wings and retail facing
As a result, he and his team designed Future Towers as a snaking line the most active pedestrian areas.
of nine 60-foot-wide wings with apartments on either side of a cen- MVRDV didn’t design the apartments but created a flexible system
tral corridor. that allows the developer to vary the size of the units, which are for
The concrete-frame structures wrap around courtyards defined by a sale, depending on market demand. Every floor can include a mix of
partially expressed hexagonal grid. MVRDV used just four vertical studio and one-, two-, three-, and four-bedroom apartments, with the
circulation cores, with each one servicing three wings and acting as a largest ones usually at the end of each wing where they have large
knuckle connecting different pieces of the project. Rather than enclos- terraces on the sloped side of the building. Each unit gets an outdoor
ing the cores, the architects opened them to light and air. space—either a balcony or a terrace. As is typical in India, bathrooms
Faced with Indian building codes that require refuge spaces where and kitchens overlook airshafts containing plumbing lines.
people can gather in case of fire or emergency, MVRDV turned these In such a large complex, navigating the various cores and long cor-
spaces—called “scoops”—into defining elements. Varying in height ridors can be tricky for visitors. But the architects shrewdly placed the
from one to three stories, they act as open-air rooms for different scoops along the corridors to bring in daylight and break down dis-
activities (yoga, miniature golf, and socializing) and types of residents tances. The scoops and the courtyards also help create a series of
(toddlers, teens, and sports fans). MVRDV didn’t control the murals on neighborhoods and provide a more intimate scale to the project.
the walls wrapping these spaces, but did select the colors. With its distinctive profile and punctured facades, Future Towers
At the ground level, MVRDV cut trapezoidal voids where the wings stands as a visual landmark within the sprawling Amanora Park. Just
connect to the cores, allowing residents (and fire trucks) to move from as important, with young professionals living side by side with extend-
the street-facing courtyards to the central green. Painted in vibrant ed families and lower-income residents, it serves as a laboratory of
colors such as turquoise and mango, they serve as large, shaded places social diversity. n
124 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

DATELINE: Paris
A
mong the many challenges to
building, a difficult site poses one
of the most daunting. For a social-

ARCHITECT: Bruther housing complex in Paris’s hilly

20th arrondissement, in the

MODEL: Strategic Infill

northeast part of the city—a rapidly transform-
ing formerly working-class neighborhood—
Bruther, a 2017 Record Vanguard firm, faced a
particularly unusual spot. “It wasn’t obvious
BY JOSEPHINE MINUTILLO what to put there,” says Bruther cofounder
Alexandre Theriot. The architects were con-
fronted with a narrow, irregularly shaped lot
that opened onto two streets—Rue Pelleport, a
major road that runs through much of the
precinct, and Rue des Pavillons, a winding
street that descends to the west. Then there’s
context. On one side of the tight site was an
overwrought tower from the 1990s by Frédéric
Borel, known in France for his deconstructiv-
ist architecture; on the other, a tall, nearly
400-foot-long housing block from the 1970s. A
limited budget—just over $200 per square foot,
typical for this type of project, where rents are
often a fraction of market rate—left Bruther
with a triple whammy. To build anything at all
would be an achievement; that it turned out so
well, an exceptional one.
Bruther won the competition for the
Pelleport housing—their first win—back in
2009, shortly after the husband-and-wife team
of Theriot and Stéphanie Bru formed the Paris-
based practice. They’ve since completed several
award-winning buildings in Paris and else-
where in France while construction on this
project was stalled due to legal battles initi-
ated by opponents to the building, which
houses low-income and formerly homeless
residents.
The stripped-down aesthetic and minimal
material palette for which Bruther has become
known works extremely well here. Vast ex-
panses of glass and corrugated aluminum
define the poured-concrete structure, giving it
an ethereal, almost transparent quality. Yet it
is not intimidated by its imposing neighbors.
Instead, the highly articulated building asserts
itself as an antidote to the respectively pomp-
ous and behemoth forms on either side.
Though actually one building—connected
by a three-story bridgelike structure, contain-
ing a series of small studios under 300 square
feet apiece—it appears as two separate, trian-
gular-shaped ones facing a modest courtyard

TWO FACED The housing project consists of two

connected buildings fronting different streets. An
eight-story structure, with a facade of glass-enclosed
winter gardens, is a prominent presence on Rue
Pelleport (opposite), while a smaller structure faces the
descending Rue des Pavillons to the west (left).
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © M A X I M E D E LVAU X (O P P O S I T E ) ; J U L I E N H O U R C A D E
125
126 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

3 2

0 16 FT.
SECTION A - A
5 M.

A A
3
5

0 16 FT.
SECOND-FLOOR PLAN
8 5 M.

6 1 LOBBY
2 COMMERCIAL SPACE
3 BALCONY
4 WINTER GARDEN
5 COURTYARD
7
6 1970S BUILDING

8 7 PELLEPORT SOCIAL HOUSING

8 1990S BUILDING
SITE DIAGRAM

credits
ARCHITECT: Bruther — SIZE: 19,900 square feet
Stéphanie Bru, Alexandre COST: $4.4 million
Theriot, principals COMPLETION DATE:
ENGINEERS: Louis Choulet September 2017
(environmental); EVP
(structural)
SOURCES
GENERAL CONTRACTOR:
GLASS: Saint-Gobain
SBG Lutèce
METAL PANELS: Tolartois
CLIENT: Élogie-Siemp
 127
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © M A X I M E D E LVAU X (O P P O S I T E , B O T T O M ) ; J U L I E N H O U R C A D E (O P P O S I T E , T O P, A N D T H I S PAG E T O P, L E F T ) ; C O U R T E S Y B R U T H E R ( T O P, R I G H T )

COLOR CODED The rear of the Rue Pelleport structure features balconies with pensive way to add atmosphere and a personal touch,” says Theriot.
adjustable awnings (opposite, top). On the upper floors, they offer expansive views to The largest of the 25 living units—most of which have access to
the heart of Paris (opposite, bottom). Bruther conducted extensive studies to determine
their own outdoor space, whether winter garden or balcony—are
paint and curtain colors within the apartments and along the facades (top and right).
900-square-foot three-bedroom apartments. While finished very
in the middle and delicately hinged between neighbors. Along Rue simply, they feel ample in size. Exposed raw concrete columns and
Pelleport, the larger of the two structures presents a jagged, see- beams—not always lined up as you’d expect them to be—define
through facade comprising pivoting glazed shutters that enclose spaces and serve as strong architectural accents in the basic but
winter gardens for the apartments on the upper levels. A commercial light-filled interiors, which offer variegated spatial qualities because
space occupies the ground floor. of the unusual geometry of the plan (arrived at partially by zoning
Along Rue des Pavillons, where grade drops a full story due to the and partially for views) and steep roof pitch (on the larger structure).
slope of the side street, a smaller structure, more in scale with the The all-gray hallways and tiled lobby, rather than feeling oppressive,
low-rise buildings around it, features—like the rear of the Pelleport are unexpectedly pleasing, tying in with finishes in the rest of the
structure looming in the background—balconies with manually ad- building to offer clean, bright public areas.
justable awnings. As an ensemble, the multiple faces of the building, It’s frequently said that constraints help the design process. In this
including the pivoting winter-garden shutters, offer dynamic, con- case, facing acute site and budget limitations, Bruther pulled off an
stantly changing surfaces. On Rue des Pavillons, this is further impressive piece of architecture, not only for its commanding street
enhanced with color. Bruther selected an array of paint and curtain presence but also for its generous accommodations—many with ex-
hues for the rooms along the balconies, which the majority of tenants pansive views over the heart of Paris—in a building type that all too
have maintained since moving in late last year. “It is an easy and inex- often is considered less worthy of such. ■
128 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing
 129

I
’m well known to have no style,
DATELINE: Stockholm architecturally speaking, so I
can adopt any style,” says Gert

ARCHITECT: Wingårdhs Wingårdh, founder of Swedish

architecture firm Wingårdhs. It is
not surprising then that the designer of
MODEL: Contextual Mid-rise many of Sweden’s most well-known exam-
ples of contemporary architecture—Aula
Medica in Stockholm (2013), the Emporia
BY ANA MARTINS shopping complex in Malmö (2012), and the
Kuggen office building in Gothenburg
(2011), to name a few—is also the master-
mind behind Stockholm’s most recent
“monument to functionalism,” as former
Wingårdhs collaborator, architect Anna
Söderberg, calls the Basaren apartment
building.
The architects took a stylistic cue not
only from a rational 1930s two-story com-
mercial structure that was razed from the
site, but also from the requirements of the
client, Stockholms Kooperativa Bostadsför-
ening (SKB). SKB, a housing cooperative
founded in 1916, builds, rents to, and man-
ages properties for its member-residents.
Since this is the third project Wingårdhs
has designed for SKB, the Gothenburg-
based firm was well aware of the
organization’s expectations when they won
the competition for Basaren in 2006:
quality, low-maintenance, democratic,
community-focused design. The goal was
not “a building that would stand out, but
one that would fit in,” Wingårdh says.
The white brick-clad structure is adapted
to its surroundings as if it couldn’t have
been designed any other way. Yet the
scheme is, in some measure, the outcome
of a long battle with the city. “At some
stage of the design, there were three stair-
cases and elevator cores, all leading up to
the same height,” Wingårdh explains. “The
city thought the building was a bit too big
and messy, so we dropped one of the stair-
cases on the upper levels.” Following this
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © A N D R É P I H L

simple gesture, the smaller floor plates

resulted in two towers, with eight and 10
stories respectively, that were given the
same heights as their neighboring build-
ings. Their corners were rounded, not only

STREAMLINED Offset windows and balcony doors

lend rhythm to the curving facade, which meets the
street level through a simple change from unglazed to
glazed white bricks (left).
130 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

credits
ARCHITECT: Wingårdh Arkitektkontor
— Gert Wingårdh, principal; Anna
Söderberg, project architect
ENGINEER: KE-gruppen (structural)
CONSULTANTS: ACAD-International
(acoustics); Nyréns Arkitektkontor
(landscape); Projektel (electrical,
lighting); Creanova (heating)
GENERAL CONTRACTOR: BTH Bygg
CLIENT: Stockholms Kooperativa
Bostadsförening
SIZE: 74,300 square feet
COST: $19.4 million
COMPLETION DATE: June 2018

SOURCES
BRICK: Randers Tegel
BALCONY RAILINGS: FHT Konstruktion
ACOUSTICAL CEILINGS: LEAB Undertak
METAL DOORS: Daloc
ELEVATORS: ALT Hiss
APPLIANCES: Miele, Electrolux

to allow light to travel continuously around

the facade without creating hard shadows,
but to create a direct dialogue with a curv-
5 5
ing building across the street.

P H O T O G R A P H Y:©A N D R ÉP I H L( T H I SPAG EA N DO P P O S I T E ,T O P ) ;R U I -X I NL I(O P P O S I T E ,B O T T O M )
In addition to its shape, reminiscent of the
country’s 1930s functionalist forms, the
building’s key decorative elements are the
strong horizontal bands created by the balco-
UPPER-FLOOR PLAN nies, and the brickwork details of the
ventilation ducts above the entrance. And
even though designing an International Style
pastiche was not the goal, the architects did
5 5
borrow some of those key principles and, in
5
doing so, arrived at contemporary solutions
that perfectly reconcile the building and
environment with its inhabitants.
Completed in June, the Basaren housing
complex sits on a privileged hilltop location,
LOWER-FLOOR PLAN
a corner plot between busy Hantverkargatan
and a quiet backstreet in Stockholm’s central
Kungsholmen borough. Its 44 units, ranging
2 3
3 3 4 4 from 345-square-foot studios to 1,270-square-
5
foot 4-bedroom dwellings, all enjoy a south-
facing balcony and unified interiors: terrazzo
2
6 7 floors in the entry hall and bathrooms, and
2
1 oak parquet elsewhere; an open-plan kitchen
and living room; and all-white finishes that,
0 16 FT. together with large windows, maximize
LOWER STREET LEVEL PLAN
5 M. daylight during the dark Swedish winters.
The 74,300-square-foot building features an
1 MAINTENANT 2 STORAGE 4 LAUNDRY 6 MEETINGROOM ample entry floor with multipurpose com-
ENTRANCE 3 MECHANICAL 5 HALLWAY 7 BIKESTORAGE mon rooms and bike storage, as well as
 131

IN CONTEXT The balconies change size gradually, from

bigger facing the water to smaller facing the street
(opposite). The heights of Basaren’s two towers match
adjacent buildings (above). The stark hallways feature
terrazzo floors (right).

commercial spaces, including an upscale

restaurant, at street level.
The not-for-profit cooperative tenancy
model presents an appealing alternative to
the regular rental market, offering slightly
more affordable, permanent contracts to
their members, who pay a yearly fee in order
to keep their place in the queue to rent an
apartment. “On the edge of affordability,” as
Wingårdh puts it, projects like Basaren do
not address the lack of affordable housing
for low-income populations, but they do offer
a solution to other problems that are also
part of the housing crisis hitting cities world-
wide. Coop developments offer a variety of
apartment typologies as they strive to ac-
commodate different households; they are
132 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 BUILDING TYPE STUDY International Models of Urban Housing

SCANDI STYLE Light oak floors and white-painted

interiors maximize daylight during the dark Swedish
winters (above). A colorful upscale restaurant occupies
the ground floor (left).

designed to foster community among resi-

dents; and, as the building’s permanent
owners, the organizations ensure a high
quality of construction, as well as continu-
ous maintenance.
With Basaren, the building gives back to
the city in beautifully composed architec-
tural harmony, where form follows
generosity. While centrally located within
Stockholm, this model might just be the
recipe for change that increasingly segre-
P H O T O G R A P H Y: © R U I -X I N L I

gated areas of Sweden’s suburbs so

desperately need. According to Wingårdh,
“We think that building better properties in
those areas is key, and it’s possible to do so
on a very economically sound basis.” n

Netherlands-based freelance editor and journalist

Ana Martins writes about architecture and design.
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134 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 RESILIENCE RATING SYSTEMS

Adapt for an Uncertain Future

New guidelines and rating systems help architects design
buildings that can respond to a broad range of threats.
By Katharine Logan

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE FSY’s Silver Star Apartments, housing for

formerly homeless veterans in Los Angeles, incorporates a variety of
strategies that should help it weather disruptive events. The measures
include orientation-specific window shading, rooftop PVs with battery
storage, and a configuration that promotes natural ventilation.
 135

Each frEsh disastEr, whether comprehensive resilience rating

hurricane, wildfire, flood, or tornado, system the U.S. Green Building
and each sign of global warming, Council (USGBC) is poised to launch.
whether rising seas, recurring “Many of the strategies that im-
drought, melting permafrost, or new prove sustainability under LEED
disease, makes the urgency of resil- inherently improve resilience as
ient design more emphatic. Resilience well,” says Jennifer Druliner, vice
is sustainability for an unstable world president of governance at the USGBC.
—the capacity to adapt to changing A project illustrating her point is
conditions, to maintain or regain Silver Star Apartments, a 49-unit
functionality in the face of stress and LEED Platinum–certified housing
disturbance, and to continue to development for formerly homeless
thrive. As growing public awareness veterans, completed in 2017. Designed
increasingly prioritizes resilience, a by Los Angeles–based FSY Architects,
slew of new guidelines and rating Silver Star is the first zero net energy
systems are emerging to help. (ZNE) affordable housing project in
“As with sustainable building, L.A. and is on track to achieve Living
where the LEED rating system—most Building Challenge Zero Energy
prominently—provided an easy way certification from the International
for a building owner to specify green, Living Future Institute (ILFI).
a rating system can do the same for Beyond being designed to with-
resilience,” says Alex Wilson, presi- stand earthquakes in accordance
dent of the Resilient Design Institute. with the city’s strict seismic regu-
Some frameworks target a single lations, the three-story wood struc-
hazard. The Resilience-based Earth- ture’s strategies for sustainability
quake Design Initiative (REDi) and the will help its tenants to weather a
U.S. Resiliency Council rating sys- range of disruptions. For instance,
tems, for example, address seismic in the aftermath of a disaster that
events—although the latter plans to results in power outages, Silver Star
expand its scope. Others, such as the will be able to draw on solar-generat-
Insurance Institute for Business and ed electricity from its ILFI-mandated
Home Safety’s Fortified programs, battery storage system to power
focus on weather. But, here, record essential functions in a common
investigates a handful of systems that area. Residents will be able to charge
are more broadly based, helping users communication devices, for example,
address a gamut of acute shocks and and refrigerate medicines and food.
chronic stresses, including RELi, a Complementing the emergency
I M AG E S :©N ATA L I A K N E Z E V I C P H O T O G R A P H Y( L E F T ) ;C O U R T E S YF S Y( R I G H T )

3
4

6
1

3 5
2

SUSTAINABILITYMEASURES

1 P
 V/SOLARTHERMALPANELS 4 HEATPUMPS
2 THERMALMASS 5 PERMEABLEPAVING
3 SOLARSHADING 6 RAINWATERSTORAGE/
  GROUNDWATERRECYCLING
136 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 RESILIENCE RATING SYSTEMS

BRACED FOR CHANGE (ORP), for example, the product of a public-

The buckling-restrained braced private collaboration, released in 2013,
frame structure (left) at the
addresses the impacts of earthquakes and
Mahlum-designed middle school
for Oregon’s Beaverton School tsunamis. It has inspired revisions to the state
District should enhance its land-use plan that will restrict development
seismic performance. The within a tsunami-inundation zone, the devel-
commons (above) has a backup
power supply so that it can serve
opment of a Resilient Transportation Plan, and
as an emergency shelter for local increased funding for the seismic upgrade of
residents. schools and essential facilities.
To meet and exceed ORP’s goal for shelters
power provision are a variety of strategies associate at FSY, “then you only have to do a to open almost immediately and schools to
familiar from LEED and LBC that will help the little bit more so that, in an emergency, people reopen within 30 days, the state’s Beaverton
building remain habitable even without power. can continue to function.” School District established three goals for its
These include a courtyard configuration to Projects certifying under the LEED system disaster-resilient new middle school, by the
facilitate cooling and natural ventilation, for new construction will soon have a frame- Portland office of Mahlum Architects. The first
shading devices appropriate to facade orienta- work for thinking explicitly about what that requires that staff and students are able to
tions, and daylighting. A less familiar passive little bit more entails. Three resilience pilot shelter in place for 96 hours; the second, that
strategy is the use of phase change material credits, which were available for a period the building and grounds be able to function
(PCM), a compound, installed in quiltlike following their launch in late 2015, are now in as a public shelter, distribution center, and
plastic sheets in the building envelope, that the process of being refined to harmonize campground for 30 days; and the third, that
hardens as it cools overnight and absorbs heat with RELi prior to being rereleased, according classes have capacity to resume while the
as it melts during the day. Intended to bring to sources on the USGBC’s Resilience Steering school continues to act as a refuge.
cooling loads within the capacity of the photo- Committee. The pilot credits provide practical In response, the 165,000-square-foot school,
voltaics that fit on Silver Star’s roof, the PCM ways for project teams to begin to integrate completed in 2016, includes several resilience-
will also help the building to remain habitable resilience into their designs, requiring risk specific measures as well as providing for
even if the air-conditioning stops working. assessment and planning, remedies to mitigate overall flexibility of use. The steel buckling-
One significant contributor to the develop- impacts, and provision for passive survivabil- restrained braced frame (BRBF) structure is
ment’s resilience is a design that fosters social ity (the ability to maintain a minimum level of designed so that the entire building, rather
connectivity. Besides being essential to the habitability during an extended loss of services than just designated areas, performs seismi-
well-being of the veterans who live here, many such as power, heating fuel, or water). cally as an essential facility that can be
of whom struggle with mental-health issues, Whether or not a project is pursuing certifi- occupied immediately, rather than meeting
the patterns of social interaction and mutual cation, a growing number of frameworks only the lesser and more common life-safety P H O T O G R A P H Y: © J O S H PA R T E E

support encouraged by the building’s plan can developed by states and municipalities, such as standard. The school is daylit throughout,
help provide a foundation for cooperation after the Oregon Resilience Plan, New York’s including interior stairwells and locker rooms,
a disruption. So laundry facilities are located to Climate Resiliency Design Guidelines, and so that operations can continue without elec-
attract people to the building’s courtyard and Resilient New Orleans, support resilience tric light. Provisions for water and waste
its central, open-air lounge. Staircases are planning. To varying degrees these guides include piping connections strengthened to
offset at each level to require a short walk have done the legwork of identifying the risks resist ruptures, and a bladder (an empty tank)
along floors other than a tenant’s own. And a pertinent to their region, and offer resources with 96-hour capacity, which can be filled in
community garden is in the works. “If sustain- and recommendations to design for them at a response to an earthquake-warning system or
ability is truly done well,” says Anuj Dua, an range of scales. The Oregon Resilience Plan by an emergency-response water truck after-
 137

gator for the RELi standard and a senior associ-

ate at Perkins+Will. The firm helped develop
the rating system with a host of collaborators,
including the University of Minnesota School
of Architecture. “The aim is to expand the
dialogue of what sustainability is,” he says.
RELi’s eight categories provide guidance to a
Panoramic Approach (planning, discovery, and
systems thinking); Hazard Preparedness;
Hazard Adaptation; Community Vitality;
Productivity, Health + Diversity; Energy, Water
+ Food; Materials + Artifacts; and Applied
Creativity (innovation). In addition to develop-
ing new measures, RELi incorporates the
relevant strategies from other standards so as
not to reinvent—or to lose sight of—what they
already do well.
A handful of Perkins+Will projects that
have piloted RELi, or aspects of it, demonstrate
its utility. Christus Spohn Shoreline Hospital
SHELTER FROM THE STORM Perkins+Will’s schemes for a pair of hospitals, one in Corpus Christi, Texas (above), in Corpus Christi, Texas (a 400,000-square-foot
and another in Oklahoma City (below), respond to threats specific to their locations, including hurricanes and tornadoes.
tower supporting the consolidation of two
ward. The gymnasium and commons would code,” says Rene Berndt, associate principal at hospitals), and a new 10-story tower at the
shelter displaced community members, with a Mahlum. Berndt cites the gap between mea- University of Oklahoma Medical Center in
backup generator providing power for emer- sures that engineering makes possible and Oklahoma City, both under construction, are
gency needs, such as heating, ventilation, measures that jurisdictions will accept as one the standard’s first two full projects. They
pumping water, and cooking. of the biggest challenges resilience initiatives share some strategies, including redundancy
During normal operations, a 138-kilowatt face. That, and the rising costs of construction. in the central plant, provision for a shelter-in-
photovoltaic array on the school roof generates Ultimately, resilience encompasses more place period, and a command and communi-
renewable electricity, with shortfalls taken than passive survivability, as RELi, a preexist- cation center. Yet each facility’s resilience
from the grid and surpluses returned to it. If ing rating system adopted by the USGBC for provisions are different, in anticipation of
the grid fails, a switch allows the PV system to rerelease this year, makes clear. Similar in local threats.
be disconnected from it so solar energy can structure to LEED, with categories, requisites, Christus Spohn is built above the 500-year
continue to power the building without risk of and a menu of credits leading toward four flood plain, with hurricane-resistant structure
sending electricity into a system under repair. certification levels, RELi takes a comprehensive and cladding and oversize roof drains. The
For now, however, this is only hypothetical; the approach to resilience across a range of scales. area under the ambulance canopy converts
building code does not permit the PVs to power “Besides being a narrow-scope response to into a mass-decontamination facility in case of
the building during a utility failure, even if the weather extremes or the specific elements of an oil-rig or other industrial disaster. And in
array is disconnected from the grid. “That’s climate adaptation, the goal is for it to be more recognition that not all disruption is environ-
why it would be better if the ORP became holistic,” says Douglas Pierce, principal investi- mental, its emergency department provides

1 1 TERRA-COTTA
RAINSCREEN
2 2 IMPACT-
RESISTANT
GLAZING
3 FIBERGLASS
REINFORCING
MESH

I M AG E S : C O U R T E S Y P E R K I N S + W I L L
3
4 SHELTERED
ENTRY
4 5 RADIANT
HEATING
6 BASEMENT
5
DEWATERING
6
SYSTEM

0 20 FT.
BUILDING SECTION
7 M.
138 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018 RESILIENCE RATING SYSTEMS

pointed out to visitors. The building envelope

also engages with the issue of diminished forest
diversity, expressed by Forest Stewardship
Council–certified thermally modified wood. On
the grounds, the landscape design features a
hybrid irrigation-bioswale-cum-vertebrate-
pond, designed to accommodate a 1,000-year
rainfall and at the same time to ensure that
water levels never fall below the minimum
required for habitat. The project’s low carbon
footprint—which meets the 2030 Challenge (a
program of phased targets toward a goal of all
carbon-neutral building by the year 2030)—also
does its bit to mitigate climate-change-caused
habitat loss and species migration.
“The revolution here is in seeing the world
as a whole system,” says Pierce. “It’s really
about systems thinking.” In the five years
since work on RELi began, scientists’ under-
standing of climate change has evolved. While
we might all have hoped to avert it with car-
bon mitigation, says Pierce, the emerging
consensus seems to be that abrupt climate
change is now under way. As architects are
ECOSYSTEMS
increasingly called on to design for adaptation,
THINKING
The Bell Museum of resilience rating systems, both familiar and
Natural History, in St. new, can help. n
Paul, Minnesota, by
Perkins+Will, has
Katharine Logan is a designer and writer focusing
features aimed at
preserving biodiversity, on architecture, sustainability, and well-being.
including bird-safe glass
incorporating a subtle
horizontal frit (above),
and a pond that fosters Continuing Education
wildlife habitat (left). To earn one AIA learning unit (LU), including
one hour of health, safety, and welfare (HSW)
credit, read “Adapt for an Uncertain Future,”
review the supplemental material found
for two flows of traffic, so that patients in- diligence—it can be overwhelming.” But by the at [Link], and complete
jured in civil unrest, such as gang-related end of the design process, she says, “I think the quiz at [Link].
com or by using the Architectural Record CE
violence, can wait in a separate area from everybody realized the payoff—we’ve done
Center app available in the iTunes Store. Upon
patients in an opposing faction. something good and it’s going to perform.”
passing the test, you will receive a certificate of
At OUMC, where tornadoes are a central It’s clear why health-care facilities would
completion, and your credit will be automatically
worry, the building’s skin is hardened by push the frontiers of resilient design. A mu-
reported to the AIA. Additional information
steel-stud spacing reduced to 9 inches, a fiber- seum is a more surprising advocate. But the Bell regarding credit-reporting and continuing-
glass reinforcing mesh under the terra-cotta Museum of Natural History at the University of education requirements can be found at
rainscreen, impact-resistant glazing, and a Minnesota’s Twin Cities campus is very much [Link].
green roof to protect from penetration by aware of the United Nations’ finding that the
Learning Objectives
wind-driven objects (in addition to that fea- loss of biodiversity poses as great a threat to our
ture’s more familiar advantages). Radiant- society as climate change: only with a diversity 1 Describe the different types of resilience
standards, including those directed at specific
heating systems under exterior walkways and of species can ecosystems adapt. For a natural
threats, those addressing a broad range
driveways reduce the hazards of winter history museum, this issue is a logical fit, so the
of disruptive events, and those devised for P H O T O G R A P H Y: © C O R E Y G A F F E R
storms. And the building’s foundation and 90,000-square-foot building, designed by
particular regions.
steel frame are designed with moment and Perkins+Will’s Minneapolis studio and com-
2 Discuss the relationship between green
braced frames to mitigate seismic risk. pleted in 2017, makes biodiversity a priority,
building measures and resilience strategies.
The main challenge in using RELi on these deploying strategies that Pierce expects will
pilots, says Julie Frazier, a Perkins+Will senior inform RELi’s next iteration. 3 Explain the importance of biodiversity
medical planner who worked on both projects, To prevent bird strikes on glass that reflects preservation to resilience.
was “not so much the technical aspects as the sky or habitat (a significant factor in bird popu- 4 Explain concepts and terms relevant to
paradigm shift.” Frazier observed signs of lation decline), all of the museum’s glazing is resilient design, such as “passive survivability.”
rating-system fatigue among members of the fritted with tightly spaced narrow gray lines. AIA/CES Course #K1810A
project team: “another checklist, more due Surprisingly unobtrusive, the frit has to be
 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT 139

CONTINUING EDUCATION

CONTINUING EDUCATION
In this section, you’ll find four compelling courses highlighting creative solutions for tomorrow’s buildings brought to you by industry leaders. Read a course, and
then visit our online Continuing Education Center at [Link] to take the quiz free of charge to earn credits.
Photo courtesy of Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating

Image © 2017 Huber Engineered Woods LLC

p140 p149

Sustainability Without Compromise Overcoming Structural Floor Squeaks in

Sponsored by Guardian Glass, Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating, Wood-Framed Construction
ROCKWOOL™, and WAC Lighting Sponsored by AdvanTech® Subflooring, by Huber Engineered Woods

EM PM SU CREDIT: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 GBCI CE HOUR PM RE ST CREDIT: 1 AIA LU/HSW; 1 AIC CPD CREDIT
Photo courtesy of Georgia-Pacific Gypsum

Photo courtesy of Metal Construction Association

p150 p152

The Evolution of Water-Resistive and Air Barriers in The Metal Retrofit Revolution
Commercial Building Envelope Construction Sponsored by Metal Construction Association
Sponsored by Georgia-Pacific Gypsum – DensElement® Barrier System

BE LS PM CREDIT: 1 AIA LU/HSW BE PM SU CREDIT: 1 AIA LU

CATEGORIES
BE BUILDING ENVELOPE DESIGN PM PRODUCTS AND MATERIALS ST STRUCTURAL
EM ELECTRICAL AND MECHANICAL RE RESIDENTIAL SU SUSTAINABILITY
LS LIFE SAFETY & CODES

Courses may qualify for learning hours through most Canadian provincial architectural associations.
140 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT

Design firm Studio Gang

transformed the National
Polish Alliance building, built
in 1937, into its Chicago of-
CONTINUING EDUCATION

fice and earned the building

the City of Chicago Land-
mark status, while creating
a 21,000-square-foot office
interior that was comfort-
able and energy efficient.

Photo courtesy of Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating

Sustainability Without CONTINUING EDUCATION

Compromise 1 AIA LU/HSW

1 GBCI CE HOUR

A closer look at the HVAC, insulation, lighting, and glass Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you should be able to:
solutions that enable designers to balance the demands 1. Describe how a VRF HVAC system enabled the
of sustainable design Studio Gang Chicago office to reduce energy
use, improve occupant comfort, and satisfy
criteria to successfully transform the 1937 struc-
Sponsored by Guardian Glass, Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating, ture into a City of Chicago Landmark building.
ROCKWOOL™, and WAC Lighting | By Jeanette Fitzgerald Pitts 2. Explain how passive technologies, such as
stone wool insulation, were used by The

O
House at Cornell Tech to earn the rigorous
ver the years, the scale of sustain- Today, the market is much better equipped Passive House certification, significantly re-
able design has exploded, creating an to support the sustainable design effort. New ducing the need to spend energy heating and
exhaustive list of considerations that products, research, and approaches to design cooling a building.
range from the sustainability of the selected enable projects to better satisfy the many dif- 3. Explore the multi-faceted nature of sustainable
project site to the energy use and efficiency of ferent aspects of green building. This course design and the need for LED lighting fixtures
the building, the health and wellness supported will take a closer look at four projects that sat- that are highly efficient, manufactured in an
by the interior, and even the life-cycle impact isfied impressive sustainability objectives and environmentally responsible manner, and
capable of creating a comfortable, high-quality
and recycled content of every product included the technology and product solutions behind visual environment.
in the structure. In the past, navigating the their successful designs.
4. Give specific examples of how certain attri-
necessary compromise was one of the biggest butes and performance qualities of glass con-
challenges inherent in satisfying sustainable THE HVAC SOLUTION IN THE tribute toward satisfying criteria in the LEED v3
criteria. For example, providing occupants with HISTORIC RENOVATION OF THE and LEED v4 green building rating systems.
access to views also required protection from the STUDIO GANG CHICAGO OFFICE
glare and solar heat gain that causes discomfort The Polish National Alliance building in To receive AIA credit, you are required to
and increases the load on the HVAC system, or Chicago, originally built in 1937, was re- read the entire article and pass the test. Go to
choosing between products that would enable cently transformed into the new Studio Gang [Link] for complete text
and to take the test for free.
the building to perform with incredible effi- Chicago office, the architecture and urban
AIA COURSE #K1810F
ciency or products that were produced with low design practice founded and led by Jeanne GBCI COURSE #0920017283
environmental impact. Gang. The challenging renovation turned
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142 SUSTAINABILITY WITHOUT COMPROMISE EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT

Photo courtesy of Handel Architects

the existing structure into a 21,000-square- In terms of cost, it was pretty competitive with
foot office space featuring a prairie roof and a conventional system, but where VRF stood
CONTINUING EDUCATION

adjacent event space, and a City of Chicago out was that it met Landmark’s performance re-
Landmark building. quirements of exceeding ASHRAE standards by
The project had several unique sustainability- at least 17 percent. No other system could meet
related design goals. When the studio gang team that requirement,” Soenksen explains.
began thinking about HVAC, that Landmark sta-
tus became important and required that build- The VRF Results: Comfort and
ing performance significantly exceed current Energy Savings
ASHRAE standards, while the physical disrup- “We’ve been very happy,” said Studio Gang
tion to the original structure was to be minimal. Chief Financial Officer Meredith Mack. “The
Aesthetically, maintaining the appearance of VRF HVAC system has been far less noisy than
the historic building without visible modern- the old system and way more consistent and
day enhancements was critical. The building comfortable than our old office. People are way
also needed to function as a contemporary, more comfortable, and it’s actually costing us
high-performance office space, event space, and less per square foot,” Mack explains. The previ-
rooftop prairie. People in the building needed ous office space had a monthly expenditure
to feel comfortable and productive. The rooftop (electric + gas) of $0.14 per square foot. The new
needed to be aesthetically pleasing and suitable office space comes in at $0.11 per square foot. In
for guests. a 21,000-square-foot office space, that generates
Careful consideration was given to the a savings of more than $600 every month.
various building systems and technologies
available to find solutions that would help the INSULATING THE HOUSE AT CORNELL
project achieve its many sustainability and TECH TO ACHIEVE PASSIVE HOUSE
performance-driven objectives. This was es- CERTIFICATION
pecially true in the case of selecting a suitable The House at Cornell Tech (The House) is a The House at Cornell Tech earned certification
HVAC system. The design team needed to find 26-story residential high-rise for students, staff, from the rigorous Passive House building stan-
a system that could help the building exceed and faculty situated on Roosevelt Island in New dard as well as LEED Platinum status.
the ASHRAE baseline performance by at York City designed by Handel Architects and
least 17 percent, the mandatory performance Steven Winter Associates. Architecturally, this mal performance criteria of the Passive House
criteria for attaining Landmark status. It was project is notable because when it was built, it standard required semi-rigid stone wool insula-
also important to keep employees and clients was the world’s tallest building to earn certifica- tion boards 280 millimeters (11 inches) thick in
cozy in harsh Chicago weather without creat- tion from the rigorous Passive House interna- the exterior wall cavity. Lightweight, semi-rigid
ing a historically inaccurate eyesore that would tional building standard. It has earned LEED stone wool batt insulation was specified into the
aesthetically disrupt the rooftop space. Platinum status as well. steel-stud interior wall and floor. Multipurpose
For many reasons, designers knew that a The Passive House building standard uses stone wool boards were also incorporated into
conventional, big, packaged HVAC unit was not passive design principles to dramatically reduce the walls, ceilings, and floors of the project. “The
an appropriate solution. The Landmark Depart- the amount of energy necessary to heat and cool building envelope was constructed to exacting
ment was adamant about not being able to see an interior to keep it comfortable. In short, the standards,” explains Debra Moelis, AIA, PHCD,
the HVAC system components from the street, standard emphasizes the importance of proper senior associate, Handel Architects. “To achieve
which made it difficult to add a big unit onto insulation, proper windows, and the elimination of the necessary level of efficiency and thermal
the rooftop of the 1937 structure. The HVAC air leakages that enable hot air and heat energy to performance, new products, procedures, and
system would need to be discrete and ultra- leave a building. More specifically, a passive build- innovative details were incorporated, including
quiet so that people could enjoy the event space. ing employs continuous insulation throughout continuous insulation, overlapping vapor bar-
Interior comfort was also an important con- its entire envelope to minimize thermal bridg- riers, meticulous taping methods, and thermal
sideration. “In our previous office, which was ing. The building envelope is airtight, preventing separation of metals. Extensive, specialized train-
one open space, we had one massive HVAC unit infiltration of outside air and the loss of tempered ing ensured that the installation and sealing were
with a single zone. In the summer, we would air. Windows and doors are high performance, carried out with precision.”
never get cool air over where I sat, while other thermally broken, and triple glazed. There is often Every structure that earns Passive House cer-
people were too cold. Temperature striation was some form of balanced heat and moisture-recovery tification must pass a stringent on-site pressure
a big struggle,” explains Harry Soenksen, AIA, ventilation and a minimal space conditioning sys- test that ensures that these buildings are sealed
LEED AP, senior technical director at Studio tem. Buildings are oriented to maximize solar gain airtight, with no leaky windows or building
Gang. “We also needed something with a small in the winter and minimize it in the summer. The joints, making it possible for them to preserve
footprint that was acoustically reasonable for impact of these passive measures on HVAC energy indoor temperatures. Moelis notes that the
us, our neighbors, and attendees in the event use is nothing short of astounding. Buildings built building “heroically passed the notably difficult
space while being cost competitive.” in compliance with the Passive House standard Passive House blower door test, with results that
can reduce their demand for heating and cooling were four times better than required.”
The HVAC Solution: VRF energy by up to 90 percent. The House became Passive House certified in
The HVAC answer for the Studio Gang Chicago High-quality insulation is critical to design- the autumn of 2017, and it is estimated that this
office project was a variable refrigerant flow ing a successful passive construction project. residential structure will save 882 tons of CO2
(VRF) HVAC system. “VRF satisfied the func- Creating the well-insulated thermal envelope that emissions per year, which is the equivalent of
tional, cost, acoustic, and visual requirements. helped The House to surpass the aggressive ther- planting 5,300 new trees.
144 SUSTAINABILITY WITHOUT COMPROMISE EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT

LIGHTING THE HOLOCAUST longer than other products over their usable high-performance, undulating curtain-wall
MEMORIAL AND TOLERANCE life. For example, both the monopoints and wall facade. This distinct and beautiful blue-green
CONTINUING EDUCATION

CENTER OF NASSAU COUNTY wash fixtures installed onto this project have glass cladding also manages solar energy with
The Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center a rated life of 50,000 hours, which means they a superior level of precision, resulting in energy
of Nassau County in New York is tucked inside could be left on for almost six years before the performance capable of attaining impressive
the Welwyn Preserve in Glen Cove. It was the LED modules would need to be replaced. sustainable design certifications.
first Holocaust museum and educational center The new lighting also improved the versatil- “The Hawaiian name Anaha translates to
to serve the nearly 3 million people on Long ity of the museum space. “The new lights are mean the reflection of light,” explains Stra-
Island. In 2014, a $1-million renovation was very mobile. You can turn and angle them, chan Forgan, principal at SCB. “Abstractions
completed, launching The Claire Friedlander put them up or down, and this flexibility can of waves are common in the island’s artistic
Education Institute and dramatically improving really change the feel of an exhibition,” Turner traditions. The tower’s shape is derived from a
the operation of the existing museum facility. explains. The adjustability of the fixtures enable sequence of softly curved floor plates, wrapped
During the renovation, the lighting in museum personnel to tailor the beam angle and in a smooth glass skin. The composition is
the museum was replaced with architec- directionality of the throw to precisely match reminiscent of the play between the crests and
tural LED fixtures, including wall washers and the needs of each unique display. troughs of a calm ocean wave. Like a wave, the
monopoints. The lighting upgrade has resulted “Beyond the beautiful and energy-efficient reflection of light off the facade will constantly
in several important benefits, including energy fixtures, we chose these lighting fixtures because alter as the viewpoint and environmental con-
savings, simplified maintenance, and more flex- of the ethics behind the lighting company,” ditions change.”
ible light placement. “With the new lighting, the Turner continues. “I think we have very similar The Anaha Tower is clad in 275,000 square
lobby is now bright and inviting. It gives you a missions to make the world a better place.” feet of glass, 20,000 square feet of which is
sense that you are in a space of deep history and curved glass, also referred to as bent glass. “In
knowledge,” explains Helen Turner, education THE GLASS CLADDING ON ANAHA TOW- order for the design concept to be successfully
director at the Holocaust Memorial and Toler- ER BALANCES BEAUTY, PERFORMANCE, executed, it was important that the alternat-
ance Center of Nassau County. AND SUSTAINABILITY ing glass forms be read as soft and interlock-
“Before the renovation, we spent a lot of time The Anaha Tower in Honolulu, Hawaii, is a ing,” Forgan continues. “This was achieved by
and money replacing lightbulbs. With the new luxury, 40-story, 311-unit residential building using true radiused insulated units and not
lighting, we are saving a lot of money, which is in the most distinguished urban neighborhood faceting the windows at the corners. Selecting
very nice,” Turner says. The architectural LED on O’ahu. Designed by Chicago-based architect a high-performance coated glass that could
lighting selected for the Holocaust Memorial Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB) in partnership be radiused in large pieces, without optical
features proprietary drivers and LED modules with Hawaiian firm Benjamin Woo Architects, distortion, was a key technical decision in
that have been rigorously tested to perform this LEED Silver-certified project features a support of the design.”
Photo courtesy of WAC Lighting © Marco Garcia

The high-performance glass cladding selected for

the Anaha Tower in Hawaii could be radiused in
large pieces, without optical distortion, and met
During a renovation, the lighting in the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau important solar performance metrics in terms of
County was replaced with architectural LED fixtures, including wall washers and monopoints. glare control and solar heat gain management.
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146 SUSTAINABILITY WITHOUT COMPROMISE EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT

Photos courtesy of Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating

The functional performance of the glass “Traditional cooling and heating systems
facade had to balance the ability to maximize require tremendous energy to force air from
CONTINUING EDUCATION

the amount of beautiful Hawaiian light al- a central blower to a room through a complex
lowed into the residences, while preventing system of ductwork, which uses space in build-
glare and solar heat gain from causing dis- ings and wastes energy. With VRF systems,
comfort and spiking energy bills. Ultimately, installation time and costs are reduced, build-
the glass specified into the curtain wall ing occupants are comfortable, and energy bills
provided enhanced solar control that allowed are lower,” explains Kevin Miskewicz, director
residents to comfortably enjoy their stunning of commercial marketing, Mitsubishi Electric
views with minimal deployment of shades. Trane HVAC US.
“The glass we selected for the Anaha
Tower project featured the only coating on the Inverter-Driven Compressor
market that could be bent and meet the solar In HVAC terminology, the compressor is the
management performance criteria, in terms engine driving the HVAC system. In traditional
of solar heat gain control and visible light HVAC systems, the compressor speed is con- VRF HVAC solutions require smaller runs of
transmission, required by the energy require- stant. It can be on or off. In a VRF system, an ductwork to distribute the conditioned air,
ments,” Forgan says. inverter-driven compressor controls the speed dramatically reducing the necessary footprint
of the system.
These four projects showcase that sustain- of the system and can vary the speed depend-
ability no longer requires compromise when ing upon the HVAC needs of the building. The
the right solutions are selected. Keep reading variability of the compressor motor speed can
for more information on the systems that create incredible energy savings.
helped the designers of the featured projects
achieve their multifaceted goals. Heat Recovery
An HVAC system that is capable of heat recov-
THE HVAC SYSTEM THAT DELIVERS ery takes the heat extracted from zones that
COMFORT AND ENERGY SAVINGS require cooling and uses it in zones that require
WITH MINIMAL FOOTPRINT heat. This repurposing of available heat allows
The VRF HVAC system used in the Studio for better thermal performance across different
Gang Chicago office building delivered com- zones and contributes toward the impressive
fort and energy savings within a small enough energy efficiencies created across these systems.
footprint to enable the historical building to It is important to note that VRF systems ca-
achieve Landmark status. When looking to pable of heat recovery can simultaneously cool
specify a system that can provide this combi- and heat different zones within a building.
The use of a VRF HVAC system in the Studio
nation of benefits, seek a VRF HVAC solution Gang Chicago office created a comfortable
that incorporates an inverter-driven compres- Small and Simple Refrigerant Piping interior that reduced energy use by more than
sor technology, is capable of heat recovery, VRF HVAC systems distribute refrigerant to $600 per month.
and uses a two-pipe configuration that can the area of the building that needs it, condi-
simultaneously cool and heat different areas tioning air locally, rather than conditioning
within a building. Here is a little more infor- air in a central area and then distributing the piping needed for the project, making design
mation about a VRF system and how it differs conditioned air throughout the building. This and installation easier and less expensive. In
from the traditional HVAC solution. essentially flips the structure of the system as terms of functionality, there are two-pipe sys-
well. Instead of pulling one run of refriger- tems that can simultaneously heat and cool inte-
Introducing the VRF System ant piping from the outside unit to a central rior areas. A two-pipe system capable of heating
Traditional commercial HVAC systems location and having bulky ductwork traipse and cooling simultaneously was selected for the
inefficiently move conditioned air or water throughout the building to deliver conditioned Studio Gang Chicago office space.
throughout a building. Not only does it re- air, VRF HVAC systems feature more runs of
quire a lot of energy to move that air or water, the smaller refrigerant piping pulled to dif- Adoption of VRF Systems Worldwide
but those mediums are challenged to provide ferent areas of the building and shorter runs The technology is gaining popularity in the
precise temperature control. A variable refrig- of smaller, low-profile ductwork to deliver United States due to its ability to deliver an
erant flow (VRF) system moves conditioned the conditioned air into the immediate space, incredible combination of benefits, enabling
refrigerant directly to the zone to be cooled or making the footprint of these systems much designers to achieve aggressive energy per-
heated, conditioning the air within the space smaller and easier to design around. formance and interior comfort goals. The
and delivering precise and efficient comfort system’s small footprint makes it easier to
control. Many systems also provide the abil- Two-Pipe System Format incorporate into new construction as well as
ity to simultaneously cool some zones while A VRF system is available as either a two-pipe existing buildings.
heating others or to limit conditioning to only or three-pipe system. The two-pipe solution dra-
zones that are in use. matically reduces the total amount of refrigerant Continues at [Link]
 Life is inspiring

Stone wool insulation for design freedom

Inspiration can be fluid; safety is not. We have the By designing with the building envelope in mind,
solutions and support to help you design safe, pairing our non-combustible insulation with a cladding
energy-efficient buildings that meet NFPA 285 that brings your vision to life, you can create a building
requirements without inhibiting your creativity. that is safer to live in, and safer to work in.

Find solutions to meet NFPA 285 requirements at [Link]/fire-resilient-design

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148 ADVERTISEMENT

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 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT 149

Floor squeaks can be a sign of construction

problems. Overcoming them and creating a
quality finished project requires attention
to all aspects of a floor system.

Image © 2017 Huber Engineered Woods LLC

Overcoming Structural CONTINUING EDUCATION

Floor Squeaks in Wood- 1 AIA LU/HSW

Framed Construction 1 AIC CPD CREDIT

Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you should be able to:
Finished floors only perform as well as the subfloor 1. Recognize the behavioral characteristics
beneath them of high-performance wood-framed floor
systems with superior strength and stiffness
attributes.
Sponsored by AdvanTech® Subflooring, by Huber Engineered Woods 2. Investigate the multiple components of a
By Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP wood-framed floor system and the ways that
they all contribute to improved performance
and the elimination of movement and floor

W
ood-framed buildings are quite consistently strong, stiff materials in the
squeaks.
well understood by architects, form of trusses, laminated veneer lumber,
3. Assess the functional contributions of
carpenters, building code oriented strand board, plywood, I-joists,
engineered wood subflooring as it relates to
officials, and others, so why are there so and other advanced products. Fasteners structural strength, fastener retention, water
many squeaky wood f loors? The concepts of and adhesives have also gotten better with resistance, and overall stiffness.
platform framing have remained the same some notable engineering improvements. 4. Design and specify wood-framed floor
for decades. Even though material choices systems that perform as intended and
have changed, the basic principles haven’t. Continues at [Link] reduce or eliminate squeaks that are
Of course, dimensional framing lumber indicators of other issues.
has gotten smaller in actual dimensions, Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP,
f loor spans have tended to increase, and is a practicing architect, green building To receive AIA credit, you are required to
the availability of high-quality wood has read the entire article and pass the test. Go
consultant, continuing education presenter, and
to [Link] for complete
decreased, all of which could be contribut- prolific author engaged nationwide in advancing text and to take the test for free.
ing factors. In response, engineered wood building performance through better design.
AIA COURSE #K1610G
products have filled the void by providing [Link]/in/pjaarch

AdvanTech subflooring exceeds PS2 code minimum design standards for strength, stiffness, and fastener-holding power.
Documented in the ICC Evaluation Service Report, ESR-1785, AdvanTech subflooring’s advanced resin technology provides
consistent moisture protection throughout the panels so they stay flat without swelling, cupping, or warping to give finished floors
an even, solid feel. With a higher wood density, AdvanTech subfloors are the perfect substrate for a variety of flooring applications,
including common gypsum-concrete and two-layer floating subfloor systems in multifamily and light commercial construction.
150 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT

The Evolution of Water-Resistive and

CONTINUING EDUCATION

Air Barriers in Commercial Building

Envelope Construction
Exploring integrated sheathing solutions with barrier layers incorporated during
manufacturing instead of during construction
Sponsored by Georgia-Pacific Gypsum | By Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP

C
ommercial building envelopes have
evolved in recent decades, driven in
large part toward better performance
for durability, resilience, and energy efficiency.
Some of the motivation for these results has
been driven by code requirements, others by
green building standards, and some simply
by owner demands for better performance,
faster installation, and labor efficiencies. In
response, a number of building products have
used innovation backed up by performance
testing to address the particular need to create
the four barriers needed as part of any building
enclosure, namely water-resistive barriers

CONTINUING EDUCATION

1 AIA LU/HSW

Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you should be able to:
1. Explain the key functions required by
building codes for water-resistive barriers,
continuous air barriers, vapor retarders, and
thermal barriers in a building envelope/
enclosure.
2. Describe the durability, resilience, energy
efficiency, and advantages/disadvantages
of various traditional WRB and AB systems,
as well as the differences between all-in-one
(integrated sheathing with WRB-AB) systems
versus traditional WRB and AB systems.
3. Describe the differences—in manufacturing
and performance—between coated and fully
integrated methods of all-in-one sheathing
systems available in the marketplace today.
4. Design with integrated sheathing products to
achieve labor, material, and installation time
savings in commercial building envelope
Commercial buildings require construction.
continuous air and water-resistant
barriers in order to meet codes.
To receive AIA credit, you are required to
The means to provide those bar-
read the entire article and pass the test. Go to
riers has evolved since the 1960s
[Link] for complete text
with integrated solutions that save
and to take the test for free.
time and costs while delivering
high performance. AIA COURSE #K1810G

All images courtesy of Georgia-Pacific Gypsum

 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT 151

(WRBs), air barriers (ABs), thermal barriers,

and vapor retarders. In particular, there has Water/Rain Control Layer

CONTINUING EDUCATION
been a rapid acceleration of innovation in air
barriers and water-resistive barriers recently.
Therefore, in this course, we will focus on
helping architects get up to speed and stay abreast Air Control Layer
of some of the latest advances in these barriers.
Of particular note, all-in-one, integrated gypsum Exterior
sheathing systems will be looked at that include
WRB and AB systems during manufacturing as Vapor Control Layer
alternatives to field-applied water- and air-barrier
systems. These integrated systems can speed up
installation and save time and money during Thermal Control Layer
construction. And, since they have been shown to
reduce improper field installations, they provide
greater reliability and less professional risk com- The four barriers, or control layers, of an exterior wall envelope all need to be understood
pared to separate field-applied solutions. independently of each other

CODE-REQUIRED BARRIERS TO PROTECT International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) this case, the complete assembly must be tested,
THE BUILDING ENVELOPE now has very specific, mandatory requirements not just the sheathing or similar product, and
Typically, each of the four common barriers in a for providing continuous air barriers in build- demonstrate an air-penetration rate of no more
building envelope have been treated independently ing envelopes aimed at restricting or preventing than 0.04 cfm/ft2 (four hundredths of a cubic
by designers, contractors, and product manufac- the passage of air in order to assure minimum foot per minute per square foot of material), also
turers. Indeed, even the building codes address levels of code required energy performance. The when tested at a pressure difference of 75 Pascals.
them individually, as we will here as follows. code leaves it to the architect to determine the While the requirement for the assembly is less
best location of the AB, whether on an interior stringent that for the materials, it is nonetheless
Water-Resistive Barriers (WRBs) or exterior side of a construction assembly, but a dramatic, measurable improvement over previ-
This barrier is intended to do exactly what its does indicate that it needs to follow the same line ous versions of the IECC, which did not fully
name implies: resist bulk water from penetrating as the building thermal barrier. Its purpose is to address an AB. As a result, it means that much
into a wall assembly from the exterior side. WRBs essentially “wrap” the building shell to prevent more attention needs to be paid to the continuity
are specifically required by the International air passing from the outside to the inside due of the AB and that all seams, joints, penetrations,
Building Code (IBC) and the International Resi- to wind, building “stack effects,” or mechanical and openings must be carefully detailed and
dential Code (IRC) for the purpose of protecting ventilation pressure differences. To achieve this properly sealed.
the materials and components of a wall assembly in exterior walls, the AB is most typically located
from water that may penetrate past the exterior behind wall cladding on the face of sheathing or Vapor Retarders
cladding. Without such protection, unwanted similar surface, just like a WRB. While WRBs address bulk water and ABs
water penetration over time can intrude into the It is worth noting that the IECC identifies 16 address airborne moisture from one side of
assembly, thus producing deterioration, degrada- common building materials that qualify as an an assembly, there is also a concern for vapor
tion, and even failure, any of which can render a acceptable air barrier, including such things as penetration from the other side of the assem-
building unsafe or unhealthy for occupancy. To plywood, OSB, roof membranes, concrete, ma- bly. Therefore, the IBC and IRC require the
avoid those conditions, a properly tested WRB is sonry, metals, and gypsum board, among others. use of vapor retarders to protect the building
typically called for behind the exterior cladding This makes sense since it is hard to imagine air construction on both sides of an assembly.
of a wall assembly on the face of the sheathing or blowing directly through any of these materi- Most commonly, a vapor retarder is required
similar surface. The wall assembly then needs to be als. It clarifies the requirement and also allows in colder climates and should be installed on
designed to allow the WRB to function as a water- for other materials to be used as an approved air the interior face of an exterior wall, roof, or
control layer by channeling water down its exterior barrier if it can show by testing per ASTM E2178 floor assembly. The intent is to prevent warm,
face to drain harmlessly away to the exterior. In so that it achieves an air-penetration rate of no moist air from penetrating into the assembly
doing, it reduces or eliminates potential water and more than 0.004 cfm/ft2 (four thousandths of a and condensing to form water that can become
moisture problems inside a wall assembly, particu- cubic feet per minute per square foot of material) trapped and cause damage.
larly in cavity wall framed construction. when tested at a pressure difference of 75 Pascals.
This is fairly good news for most materials, but Continues at [Link]
Continuous Air Barriers (ABs) there is an additional requirement that cannot be
This barrier has received a lot of attention in re- overlooked, namely the seams, joints, openings, Peter J. Arsenault, FAIA, NCARB, LEED AP,
cent years since unwanted air infiltration has been or penetrations of those materials. Under the is a nationally known architect, consultant, continu-
seen as both a significant drain on energy per- IECC, in order to qualify as an acceptable con- ing education presenter, and prolific author advanc-
formance and a means to transfer unwanted air- tinuous air barrier, the entire assembly of materi- ing building performance through better design.
borne moisture into buildings. In particular, the als and products must restrict air penetration. In [Link], [Link]/in/pjaarch

DensGlass® disrupted the way commercial buildings are designed over 30 years ago, and now DensElement ® Barrier System continues
that legacy of innovation by integrating three products in one: gypsum sheathing, water-resistive barrier, and air barrier. This
advancement frees the industry from traditional methods of manually applying a WRB-AB over sheathing. [Link]
152 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT
CONTINUING EDUCATION

A perforated and corrugated zinc

retrofit envelope helped transform an
industrial, turn-of-the-century build-
ing—once a bottle-storage facility for an
adjacent brewery—into a prime example
of innovative sustainable, adaptive reuse
at 355 11th Street in San Francisco.

Photo courtesy of Metal Construction Association

Photo courtesy of XXXXXXX

The Metal Retrofit Revolution CONTINUING EDUCATION

Delivering longevity, durability, and great aesthetics, 1 AIA LU

metal roofing and cladding panels are a popular choice Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you should be able to:
for today’s retrofit and adaptive reuse projects 1. Discuss the details of the retrofit and
reroofing market, its size, and the
different roofing types.
Sponsored by Metal Construction Association 2. Differentiate between the advantages

L
and risks of retrofit and reroofing, and
ong-lasting and durable with a great of new roofing materials over a clean substrate pinpoint key design considerations for
aesthetic, metal roof and cladding systems of furring, decking, or purlins. these projects.
are a popular choice for today’s commer- The applicable market consists of the residen- 3. Identify the energy-generating and
cial and industrial buildings. While these prod- tial sector and the commercial/industrial market. saving options available with metal
ucts are in demand for new building projects, Residential buildings are typically high-slope, roofing projects.
the lion’s share of activity is taking place in the nonstructural roofing materials applied on a deck 4. Describe best-practice insights for metal
wall retrofits.
retrofit market. of furring or plywood. The commercial/indus-
Let’s start with some terminology: What is trial market is typically low slope with differing 5. Review helpful metal roofing and
cladding renovations.
the difference between retrofiting a roof and combinations of structural decking, insulation,
reroofing a roof? and membranes or structural metal panels ap-
To receive AIA credit, you are required to
Retrofitting is the installation of new roof- plied over open framing. Although the materials read the entire article and pass the test. Go to
ing materials over existing roofing materials may look similar, the difference can be significant [Link] for complete text
without removal of the original material. in several different ways (i.e., material type, mate- and to take the test for free.
Reroofing is the complete removal of the rial thickness, finish, structural spanning ability, AIA COURSE #K1810E
existing roofing materials and the installation and resistance to water intrusion).
 EDUCATIONAL-ADVERTISEMENT 153

When it comes to market size, Chuck rooftop photovoltaic systems becoming more original structural diaphragm strength used to
Howard, PE, president, Metal Roof Consul- popular, some building owners may consider design the original structure.

CONTINUING EDUCATION
tants, Cary, North Carolina, writes in the RCI roofing retrofit projects sooner than later.” “Without this lateral bracing, the second-
magazine article, “Stretching your Retrofit Workers are afforded a safer work surface ary roof for a standing-seam type system then
Dollars with Metal Retrofit,” replacement and since they are walking on the old roofing, as requires bridging or other types of bracing and
repair account for approximately 75 percent of compared to the open framing members like possibly the addition of new framing to meet
all roofing work, with about 30 billion square purlins and joists that workers must deal with current wind-loading requirements,” explains
feet of roofs requiring major repairs every year, when installing a new roof, explains Vincent E. Mark James, president, RetroSpec, Dallas.
according to industry sources. Sagan, PE, senior staff engineer, Metal Building “Granted, if the new roof is a thru-fastened
Furthermore, a national manufacturer of Manufacturers Association (MBMA), Cleveland. system, then remedial work may not be required
retrofit framing systems has identified one Furthermore, demolition waste and the need for a for bracing the roof. However, building teams
portion of the retrofit market—metal over large laydown area for temporary storage of roof- should still anticipate that additional framing
metal—to be about 24 billion square feet of ing materials is avoided. may be required to meet current wind loading.”
metal roofs ranging from 27 to 47 years old. “Retrofit takes full advantage of the existing “In any case, by simply overlaying a new
Emphasizing this, Brian Gardiner FRCI, RRC, insulation with the option of easily adding more roof over the old one,” Alex Getelman, execu-
CCS, BMG Enterprises, San Antonio, points insulation over an existing roof,” he adds. tive managing director, MBI Group, New York,
out that the view over any cityscape will show a Even uninsulated roofs still deliver an in- points out, “The infrastructure doesn’t have to
handful of buildings under construction. “Then creased energy efficiency if the cavity between be rebuilt. And if the old roof contains asbestos,
compare that with the huge inventory of exist- the old roof and bottom of the new metal roof retrofitting can be designed to take care of the
ing buildings that will eventually need another is ventilated. In particular, above-sheathing issue, thereby avoiding the need for expensive
roof,” he says. “Reroofing/retrofitting of existing ventilation (ASV) is recommended, and accord- removal and disposal.”
buildings substantially surpasses the amount of ing to Oak Ridge National Laboratory research, it “Retrofitting also keeps the building weather
roofing installed on new construction.” decreases heat gain through the roof assembly by resistant during the process, which is the main
Acknowledging the “very healthy market” for as much as 30 percent in the summer and delivers concern for keeping a building dry and intact,”
roofing retrofits, Mark Sullivan, AIA, LEED AP a similar heat loss reduction in the winter. With he adds. “The new high-quality roof can support
BD+C, NCARB, partner, Joshua Zinder Architec- the incorporation of a cool surface, this heat gain a building through the unusually strong storms
ture + Design, Princeton, New Jersey, says this is reduction can jump to as high as 45 percent. we are now seeing so that the building will stay
especially true for buildings with historic status Another advantage with retrofits is that the dry and safe.”
or with a desirable aesthetic that cannot be pre- through-fastened metal roof system diaphragm
served without the continued use of metal roofs. remains in place, thereby maintaining the Continues at [Link]
But generally speaking, he states, “Replacing
an existing metal roof with a new one ensures
durability, a long roof life, and an aesthetic that
no other material can replicate or match.”
Essentially, Tim Butler, AIA, Murphy Burn-
ham & Buttrick Architects (MBB), New York,
states, “Not only is this [retrofit/reroofing]
cost-effective, enabling owners to reposition
their properties within the marketplace, but it
is also a sustainable approach that helps meet
the ever-growing demand for new space.”

RETROFITTING VS. REROOFING

In comparing retrofits and reroofing proj-
ects, each offers its own advantages and
Photo courtesy of Drexel Metals, Inc.

disadvantages.
For starters, retrofits enable the original
roof to remain in place to both protect the
building interior during the installation and
allow building operations to continue. This
strategy is less expensive, less invasive, and can
be typically done at any time of the year.
Similarly, Andy Feth, P.E., DBIA, LEED
AP, project executive, C.W. Driver Companies,
San Diego, states, “There is always a market for
retrofitting roofs as the original installation Bringing new life to the Ocean City boardwalk is a bright-blue metal roof retrofit for the Surf Mall
reaches the limits of its useful life. Also, with in Ocean City, New Jersey.

The Metal Construction Association brings together a diverse industry for the purpose of expanding the use of metal in construction
through marketing, research, technology, and education. MCA member companies gain tremendous benefit from association
activities that focus on research, codes and standards, market development, and technical programs. [Link]
154
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156 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
dates&events
New and Upcoming notes detailing his journey photographing Ongoing Exhibitions
architect Louis I. Kahn’s creations. For more
Exhibitions information, visit [Link]. 1:1 Drawing, Design, and Communication
ADFF: NY New York
New York Paul Rudolph: The Hong Kong Journey Through November 10, 2018
October 16–21, 2018 New York The show at the New York School of Interior
This month, the Architecture & Design Film November 29, 2018–March 2, 2019 Design aims to expose the public to the varied
Festival will launch its 10th season in New ways designers have approached communica-
Through a series of previously unseen draw-
York. The event promises dozens of documen- tion over the centuries, with a specific
ings, sketches, and renderings, this exhibition
taries about creative visionaries, talks with emphasis on the necessities of communicating
at the Center for Architecture will focus on
filmmakers and architects, and interactive designs for production and presentation. The
the American architect’s three significant exhibit will include drawings, instructions,
installations. More at [Link].
projects in Hong Kong. For more information, objects, and interiors from over 20 historic and
Edward Burne-Jones visit [Link]. contemporary designers. More at [Link].
London
October 24, 2018–February 24, 2019 The Sea Ranch: Architecture, Environment, Mario Bellini for Murano
This exhibition at Tate Britain charts Burne- and Idealism Venice
Jones’s rise from an outsider of British art to San Francisco Through December 2, 2018
one of the great artists of the European fin de Architect and industrial designer Mario
December 22, 2018–April 28, 2019
siècle. The museum will display over 150 works Bellini’s glasswork is on display at the
This exhibition at the San Francisco Museum
in different media including paint, stained Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia as part of
of Modern Art will examine the early concepts Venice Glass Week. The exhibition features
glass, and tapestry. More at [Link].
and plans for a seminal Northern California recent productions, including his architecture
KAHNSCIOUS: Photographing Architecture Modern development through archival and for the Deutsche Bank headquarters in
New York contemporary photographs, original drawings Frankfurt (2011) and the Louvre’s Department
October 27, 2018–January 20, 2019 and sketches from the project’s designers, and of Islamic Art (2012). For more information, see
The Hudson Hall presents Scott Benedict’s a full-scale architectural replica. More infor- [Link].
collection of images, audio documents, and mation at [Link].
B. Wurtz: Kitchen Trees
New York
Through December 7, 2018
For his first public commission, artist B.
Wurtz created an installation of five sculp-
tures for New York’s City Hall Park. The
whimsical, large, arboreal-looking structures
INSTANT DOCK are composed of found kitchen items that
form “trunks” and cascading “branches,” with
hanging plastic fruits and vegetables. More at
[Link].

Investigating Where We Live

Washington, D.C.
Through December 31, 2018
The annual exhibit is the product of a five-
week program where teens explore and
document their interpretation of the city’s
residents and built environment through
photographs, artwork, and writing. The young
participants also design and install the exhibit.
At the National Building Museum. More infor-
LAG IT DOWN & PLUG IT IN YOU HAVE AN INSTANT DOCK! mation at [Link].

Services Any & All Height Trucks Treasures from the White City: Chicago
World’s Fair of 1893
View All 26 Models At Chicago
Through January 6, 2019
[Link] Held within a gallery that once hosted a recep-
tion for the World’s Fair of 1893, this exhibit
showcases original objects and memorabilia
that were designed for and displayed at that
international event. Highlighted objects in-
1-800-THE-DOCK
ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
dates&events
clude items from the respective pavilions of will follow the discussion. More information at
Tiffany & Company and Gorham Manufac­ [Link].
turing Company, which were seen as ground­
breaking for their use of silver production
at the time of the fair. At the Richard H.
Competitions
Driehaus Museum. For more information,
London Affordable Housing Challenge
visit [Link].
Registration deadline: October 9, 2018
Renzo Piano: The Art of Making Buildings As property prices continue to soar in London,
London this competition asks participants to design a
Through January 20, 2019 pilot­phase concept for affordable housing in
This exhibit examines the design process of Britain’s capital. For more information, go to
the Pritzker Prize winner and his firm, Renzo [Link]. Specializing in Government
Piano Building Workshop, through 16 projects. standards, Construction
Each building case study consists of drawings, LA+ ICONOCLAST Design Ideas Competition Cost Management, Inc.
models, photography, and full­scale maquettes, Deadline: October 10, 2018
as well as a new film by Thomas Riedel­ The contest invites landscape architects,
provides value-added cost
sheimer. At the Royal Academy of Arts. Visit architects, planners, artists, and designers management services from
[Link]. to reimagine New York’s Central Park. Five concept to completion.
winners will share $20,000 and be featured
Ai Weiwei: Life Cycle in a special issue of LA+ Journal. See more at
Los Angeles
Multi-discipline experience
[Link]/ICONOCLAST­Competition.
Through March 3, 2019 and expertise in the
Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s first major institu­ Memorial to the African Americans construction industry.
tional solo exhibition in the city features new Enslaved by William & Mary College
and previously unseen sculptural work made Deadline: October 12, 2018
in response to the global refugee crisis. The
The Lemon Project Committee on Memorial­ “If you absolutely need
title installation, Life Cycle, using the tradition­ accuracy – call us and see
ization invites design submissions for a
al Chinese medium of kite­making, depicts
memorial to the men, women, and children how we “measure” up! “
the inflatable boats refugees use to cross the
who were enslaved at the College of William &
Mediterranean Sea. At the Marciano Art
Mary. See [Link]/sites/enslavedmemorial. Katy Kothmann Abraham,
Foundation. Visit [Link].
President
The Rio Reimagined 2018 Ideas
Lectures, Conferences, Competition
and Symposia Registration deadline: October 28, 2018 US based, serving
The American Institute of Architects Phoenix Architectural and
2018 American Society of Landscape Metro Chapter calls on architects, urban Engineering firms worldwide.
Architects Annual Meeting and EXPO planners, landscape architects, developers,
Philadelphia and community leaders to submit proposals
October 19–22, 2018 that would help restore the Rio Salado’s 40 years of customer
The four­day event is the largest global gather­ natural ecosystem and spur economic satisfaction.
ing of landscape architects and students, with vitality in the surrounding eight Arizonan
over 6,000 attendees expected. The program communities that share it. For more informa­
will include more than 135 educational ses­ ü WOSB
tion, see aia­[Link]/competition­18.
sions, lectures, and tours, along with a trade ü HUBZone certified
show featuring 350 exhibitors. At the Penn­
2019 Richard Rogers Fellowship ü Family Owned
sylvania Convention Center. More information
Deadline: October 28, 2018
at [Link].
Established three years ago by Harvard
University’s Graduate School of Design, this
Modern House Day Symposium and Tour
New Canaan, Connecticut research­focused residency program takes
October 20, 2018 place at the British architect’s Wimbledon
Hosted by the New Canaan Historical Society, House in London. The fellowship is open to
this year’s symposium will center on ideals candidates who are interested in exploring
germane to the work of architects, including topics that have been central to Rogers’s ca­ Construction Cost
materiality, proportion, and sustainability. reer, including urbanism and sustainability. Management, Inc.
Panelists include Cooper Union’s architecture Go to [Link]. 2413 N. Main Street
school dean, Nader Tehrani, and architects Sean
Fort Worth, TX 76164
Godsell and Go Hasegawa. A tour of four modern E-mail information two months in advance to
houses, including Philip Johnson’s Glass House, areditor@[Link]. 817-625-6200
[Link]
158

Advertisers Index
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Advance Lifts Inc 156 Dacor 4, 5
Noon Home 31
AEP Span 26 Doug Mockett & Company, Inc. 49
Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® 2, 3
AGC Glass Company 24 Dri-Design 9
Ornamental Metal Institute of New York 10
ALPOLIC/Mitsubishi Plastics Earthcam 27
Composites America, Inc. 52 Petersen Aluminum 40
Easi-Set Worldwide 37
American Institute Of Architects 77 RH Tamlyn & Sons 15
Formica 17
American Specialties, Inc. 53 Rockwool 147
Fry Reglet CV3
Architectural Record - SAFTIFIRST 50
Record On The Road San Diego 22 FSB North America 47
Seiho 64
Architectural Record - ARCHtober 42 Georgia-Pacific Gypsum 150, 151
Sherwin-Williams 39
Architectural Record - Guardian Glass 141
Innovation Conference 104, 105 Skyscraper Museum 155
Harvey Building Products 46
Architectural Record - Steel Institute Of New York 8
The Buildings Show Construct Canada 54 Huber Engineered Woods LLC 59
Technical Glass Products CV2, 1
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Academy of Digital Learning Daylighting 18 Tournesol Siteworks 19
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Call For Entries Kitchen & Bath Contest 159 Landscape Forms 44
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Architectural Record - ADFF Show 76 Longboard (Mayne Coatings) 78
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Metal Construction Association 152, 153 WSP 55
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Bison 60 Modern Fan Co., The 33

C. R. Laurence Co., Inc. 65 modular Arts 51

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2019 Record
Kitchen & Bath
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and commercial projects that
feature unexpected materials,
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are designed in a manner that
allows these utilitarian spaces
to be functional, sustainable,
and beautiful. Winning
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PHOTOGRAPHY: © MATTHEW MILLMAN

RECORD KITCHEN & BATH 2017 WINNER: WINE COUNTRY FARMHOUSE BY BOHLIN CYWINSKI JACKSON
160 ARCHITECTURAL RECORD OCTOBER 2018
snapshot PROJECT
LOCATION
AMOS REX
HELSINKI
ARCHITECT JKMM ARCHITECTS
Helsinki’s arcHitectural depth and cultural vitality were enhanced this
summer with a lively newcomer: the Amos Rex art museum, a center-city
revitalization project by Finnish partnership JKMM, and the new home and
identity for the Amos Anderson Art Museum, a private collection housed in a
former office building that closed its doors in 2017. The iconic 1938 LasiPalatsi
(Glass Palace) was selected as the museum’s new venue. Fully renovated, the
low-slung white building (seen in the background) now provides entry to the
museum and its underground galleries, while the larger project
reimagines the adjacent square. Here, exuberant skateboard-
ers, giggling children, and bemused adults swarm around a
topography of playfully mounded concrete-tiled protrusions,
each tapering to a circular aperture. Below, the various
openings illuminate the exhibition spaces and provide
glimpses of the civic world outside. The project’s biggest
challenge, says JKMM principal Asmo Jaaksi, was how to
make a museum extension visible and attractive, even
though it’s subterranean. “Our idea,” he says, “was to ask:
what if the building refuses to go down completely? What if
it’s bubbling up from the ground?” Peter MacKeith

P H O T O G R A P H Y: © J K M M A R C H I T E C T S / M I K A H U I S M A N
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