CREJ - Multifamily Properties Quarterly - May 2017
Multifamily housing is a perpetual challenge met with a variety of strategies, from postwar rent control in New York City to the mega projects of the mid-20th century, and just about everything in between. We have gone through eras of centralizing and decentralizing, of density and sprawl. Heavy-handed systems in the former U.S.S.R. and now in China use housing as a form of collective control, whereas the American objectives focused on the pursuit of individual happiness while contending with the realities of managing post-industrial revolution migrations. The historical examples tend to trend with prevailing urban planning thinking, from prewar garden communities to modernist towers in a park. We are in a new era of housing in cities, as cities regain favor as places to work and live. Multifamily housing projects include everything from singlelot prototypes and micro units, to large developments that explore new relationships with community. While there is much history to draw from, challenges continue to evolve with the complexities and variables of societies. The architects’ goal for all housing – multifamily and otherwise – should be to create quality living environments. Healthy societies grow from within and start with the conditions of habitation. The first priority in planning housing is location. Cities serve as vital amenities to individual neighborhoods and connect us as a community. With mass transportation making a comeback, connectivity is broadly addressed. Urban developments should focus on proximity to transportation and walkability. Another critical objective is demographic diversity within housing developments and, by extension, within neighborhoods. The intermingling of people in different phases of life and in alternate modes of living adds richness to our daily lives. Economic diversity also is an objective – avoiding the creation of ghettos for singular economic categories helps soften economic castes. Although as a discipline, architecture has at times overstepped its boundaries regarding social engineering in the modern era, it is an inevitable component of social change, and it is our obligation as architects to inspire communities to move housing development in a positive direction. As designers, we have a leadership responsibility to work with developers and municipalities to locate development sites and create housing that achieves these goals. The most-effective way of implementing change is through example, so I have included the recently completed Freight Residences project on the Taxi campus in River North to illustrate the following points: • Effective site planning should connect housing to the broader community as well as create collective and private amenity spaces within, such as private gardens. Although the amenities of the Taxi campus are extensive, a pedestrian bridge over the Platte River will provide access to The Source, The Source Hotel and Market Hall, and other business along the Brighton Boulevard corridor. • Environmental considerations, such as sun and prevailing weather, inform a project configuration and enhance livability. Each unit features an operable glass garage door that opens the living spaces to the gardens on the first floor, generous private balconies on the fourth floor and to mountain views to the west from the third floor. In addition, the utilization of day lighting and natural ventilation has positive health benefits while reducing energy costs. • Amenity spaces and programming play a key role in the social environment of a housing project. These spaces should go beyond the standard communal gym to include educational spaces with programs for and by the residents, community gardens with advisers to promote healthy eating, communal kitchens and outdoor cinemas. Unique to Freight Residences is a community recreation room, designed as a learning and play space. • Innovative building design considers circulation strategies that go beyond the standard double-loaded corridors to create entry conditions with individuality and a sense of privacy, which can make an apartment unit feel like a private home. At Freight Residences, stacked, repeating modules of 18-foot sections are accessed through private gardens, creating a sense of a townhouse configuration. Innovation should extend to unit design to create flexibility. The unit designs are flexible, including spaces such as crib rooms that can alternatively be used as home offices. Only one hallway, the length of the four-story building, exists to access the one-bedroom apartments and top-floor units. In most parts of the country, we are in the middle of a housing boom that hopefully will be used as an opportunity to repair community fabric and mend social ills. In concert with our development partners, we are committed to designing quality housing projects. We strive to enhance communities and promote social connectivity, while at the same time delivering timeless and innovative work.