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.
