Housing Contest Integrates Sustainability and Affordability

Organized around a multi-functional garden, the development is aiming for LEEd Gold status.

Meaghan O'Neill -- Interior Design, 1/24/2007

This past June, the New Housing New York Legacy Project made a call for entries for its first juried design competition for affordable and sustainable housing. Created in joint collaboration between the NHNY Steering Committee, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), AIA New York chapter, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and Enterprise Community Partners, the contest was developed to encourage the integration of sustainability and design excellence with affordable housing.

Earlier this month, a winner was chosen from among the 32 architect-development teams that made submissions. The winner, PRDG—comprised of the Phipps Houses, Dattner Architects, and Jonathan Rose Companies, and Nicholas Grimshaw & Partners —presented a proposal called Via Verde, which will consist of 202 mixed-income residential units, retail and community spaces, and parking. The development, which is aiming for LEED Gold status, is cleverly organized around a multi-functional garden that begins as a street-level courtyard and plaza then spirals upwards as a series roof gardens before culminating in a sky terrace. Enhanced ventilation, individual control of heating and cooling, and sun screens are just some of the energy-efficient features that will help to reduce utility bills and improve indoor air quality.

“We became a community so that we could design a community,” explains PRDG, which also notes that it considered the environmental, social, affordable, and community aspects of the project with equal weight.

Located in the South Bronx, the competition site is a 60,000-square-foot vacant lot valued at $4 million, which will be sold by the City to PRDG for a nominal fee in exchange for the design and construction of the mixed-use development. The development is part of Mayor Bloomberg's $7.5 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan to build or preserve 165,000 units of affordable housing over ten years—the largest such municipal plan in the nation's history, according to the AIANY.

“This unprecedented competition will raise the level of design sustainability and serve as a beacon for affordable housing across the city," says Shaun Donovan, HPD Commissioner. "We hope that PRDG's proposal will serve as a prototype for future affordable housing developments built nationally and internationally."

An exhibition of the winning team's proposal will be on view March 22–June 16 at the Center for Architecture in New York.