American Institute of Architects - Housing and Community Design Awards

Project Place – Gatehouse of Boston, Massachusetts,

is a new 6-story mixed-use building developed by a non-profit agency that helps men and women experiencing homelessness reestablish themselves in society by offering job training, work experience, education, housing, and support services. The building contains 14 units of affordable SRO apartments on the top two floors, a multi-function space for community use, and a ground floor commercial restaurant space, which subsidizes the rent for the building’s SRO units and is a job generator for the neighborhood. This sustainable building, currently pending LEED certification, includes two geothermal wells which provide this on-profit agency with an energy efficient means of heating and cooling the building, thus allowing the agency to help the environment, reduce their operating budget, and preserve more funds for their ongoing programming efforts.

Bridgeton Neighborhood Revitalization of Bridgeton, New Jersey, located in a small town in southern New Jersey, is not the stereotypical HOPE VI grant recipient. The grant typically awards large cities, addressing huge swaths of distressed public housing through urban revitalization projects. This project represents the maturation of the HOPE VI program, addressing urban neighborhoods more sensitively in a broader variety of city contexts. The revitalization plan evolved from the careful identification of where – and where not – to build. Parcels scatters in the northern quarter of the city were selected, all of them nearly vacant blocks, almost entirely paved over from former industrial uses. These parcels were physical barriers to predestrian and social connectivity, and presented havens for illicit activity. Conversely, the former public housing site was revitalized by removing the existing buildings and restoring the site as a park, reconnecting the neighborhood to the Cohansey River parks and knitting the two sides of the city back together.

Irvington Terrace of Fremont, California.

This 100-unit low-income housing development in Irvine strikes a fine balance between progressive modernist forms and a traditional village-square-like community. It forms a block-long perimeter of flat-roofed rental apartments, articulated with interlocking rectilinear volumes that define individual units. These fused and richly textured units avoid the monumental austerity of past failed experiments in modernist affordable housing by providing street wall relief and variety, complete with street-enlivening stoops and porches. The rows of housing surround two town-square courtyards with adjacent public amenities. The project successfully balances the design aspirations with the risk of cultural dislocation of the residents. As a result, all stakeholders, including both client and residents, can relate to the project design.