Dec 4
2011
Assisted living communities are no picnic! They are designed with a "last stop" mentality, instead of creative, elegant communities in which to thrive and look forward to new experiences. As the population gets older, and now, rapidly poorer, we need new models urgently.
We are seeing how exciting new design solutions can be with the work that Bjarke Ingels is doing here in New York with the new pyramid apartment complex on 57th St and Steven Holl's Linked Hybrid in Bejing, for instance, but we need this kind of initiative to take hold in affordable housing and, let's also add, new senior housing.
What are the steps we can take to initiate change in the design of new affordable and senior housing?
Justin gave the final word
Hi, Wendy! Great topic. We’ve seen some good ideas right here in NY recently, and some of them are quite technical:
-change the zoning code to allow for smaller and more flexible living spaces, especially for communal living (i.e. don’t require every apartment to have a kitchen)
-expand techniques of modular construction to apartment buildings, which can potentially lower costs without diminishing quality of construction or design. (SHoP is doing this at Atlantic Yards).
-cultivate and encourage the altruistic instincts of many architects with challenges like Via Verde in the Bronx (Grmishaw/Dattner) or Schermerhorn House in Brooklyn (Polshek…I mean Ennead) or Nehemiah Houses in East New York by Alex Gorlin.
-make it easier for developers and non-profit organizations to navigate the complexities of subsidies and tax incentives, rather than asking them to be time-consumingly creative about financing.
-move towards inclusive housing in which all new residential buildings are required to include some affordable units, rather than just offering tax incentives.
-focus on urban living facilities for seniors, where they can be far more independent in walkable neighborhoods than in car-dependent suburbs.
These suggestions improve conditions but don’t address actual design. I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel here, actually. Many architects are quite expert at building good, creatively-designed residential buildings and containing costs at the same time. The obstacles, I think, lie mostly in the financing, but I’ll give some more thought to the design side, too.
Sunday, December 4 at 9:53pm
These are all great thoughts Justin!
Is it totally nuts to imagine an initiative by a developer to enlist world class architects and designers, the way say fashion companies like Target or H&M or Uniglo do? sort of like affordable Houses at Sagaponack?
David Adjaye and Michael Maltzan have really made inroads in dynamic affordable living designs.
It is interesting that Philippe Stark hasn’t taken up the cause as you would think from what he has preached over the years that he could revolutionize it the way he did with boutique hotels?
Monday, December 5 at 6:18pm
Wendy, I think following the fashion model of big name collaborations is such a fantastic idea! I would love to see everything, from interiors and landscape down to the the kitchen gadgets and devices like canes and wheelchairs get the designer attention they deserve – it could be like Leisurama houses for a new generation.
Sunday, December 11 at 6:14pm
It occurs to me that rethinking senior housing requires a cultural, communal and compassionate shift in our thinking away from youth adulation to age adulation. It requires the obvious realization that if luck and health are on our side we will all eventually grow old. Coming to terms and being at one with that fact is surely the starting point for heart felt and hopefully innovative assisted living?
Monday, December 5 at 10:07pm
I would like to second Justin’s recommendation about focusing attention on creating walkable (and also wheelchair-able) neighborhoods for seniors.
My 85-year-old mother lives in a small town in the Midwest. Doing errands or visiting friends means a trip across town for her. While there are buses and also an agency that specifically focuses on providing transportation for seniors, neither of these options really allows for any meaningful level of effective mobility. So getting around pretty much requires a car.
It turns out that my mother is still fine behind the wheel. But she recently broke her wrist, and due to her cast she was unable to drive for several months. During that time her options for transportation around town were the two above—in addition to prevailing on friends and family to drive her (which she was reluctant to do).
While it wouldn’t be accurate to say that my mother ended up being completely house-bound while she had her cast on, it certainly felt that way to her. And the instant she was able to, she was back driving again, and it wasn’t until that point that it seemed to her that she was living her life again.
In the complicated web that bedevils the creation of effective senior housing (or for that matter that complicates addressing quality of life issues for seniors generally), this issue may not necessarily be the most pressing problem to solve. However, as I spend more time around elderly people, it does seem to me that loss of independence is a particularly challenging blow to absorb. So to the extent that design and urban planning can help create walkable neighborhoods that (as Justin suggests) then foster independence and that in turn encourage social interaction and a sense of community—there will be many seniors, and their middle age children, who will be very grateful.
Tuesday, December 6 at 8:40am
Thank you for starting this conversation!
Prefessionally I provide interior design services to affluent individuals in the NYC metropolitan area, while personally your question and others about the inequites of our world are more presonal concerns.
I don’t have a sweeping concept about how to apporach or solve thsi problem, however I just watched a streaming movie on Netflix called “The Tree” that provided simple some food for thought.
The film starts with one of the charachters trucking a house accross the Australian (?) planes to install it on a simple foundation. It was not a small house, and not a large house – but once it was in place it was a house soon to become a home.
I initially thougth about the still shocking lack of replacement housing in post-Katrina New Orleans, but was also wondering what is so complicated about applying this to other locales as well.
While Bradd Pitt’s passionate and ernest project to develop innovative housing in New Orleans is admirable, it however strikes me as somewhat beside the point. It is more theoretical than practical. People need affordable housing. In order to provide housing we I do not think it necessary to reinvent architecture, or vernacualr styles, unless they provide a more efficient and econimical solution.
There are some exccting and stylish modualr projects being done in modular housing – but they seem to mostly geared towards readers of DWELL – and not really geared to providing afforable housing per.
Why can’t simple homes be built in a production? Is the question too simplistic? I am not sure.
Didn’t I read something just the other day about a “modular” or pre-fab hotel? Ian Schrager? Or was it an apartment building? I don’t remember.
I look forward to reading more the thoughts and ideas here.
Wendy – thank you for raising the issue!
Wednesday, December 7 at 2:25pm
Hi,
The Hamptons has a crisis in affordable housing, as one might imagine. About a year ago I was approached by a non-profit Church organization to explore low-income and sustainable housing for seniors in Amagansett. We had many challenges, financing being only one of the surmountable ones.
This is the first and possibly more radical of the three proposals.
http://www.mbarchitecture.com/2×21-housing/
Our goal was to minimize the footprint of the development, in hopes of preserving as much open space as possible. And the obvious solution was to condense and focus the buildings in a small portion of the site. As a result, we offered to do away with road access to every unit. This seemed like a blasphemous proposition to the committee. Demands about easy access from the car to the individual units, and shortened pedestrian paths came flying at us, but not from the future residents of the place, rather more from those who were making decisions for them.
We hope to pick the project up for another organization and see it through as the demand is overwhelming and critical.
During my post-graduate job experience in Vienna, years ago, I recall visiting great buildings by leading architects that were solely for lower income residents. They were marvels. The public and the government stood behind these projects. And perhaps it takes both to make a dent in this much needed space in the US.
Thank you for opening this discussion.
Thursday, December 8 at 5:57pm
Aging is a part of life that we all inevitably experience, but it is not until we have direct contact with our parents (as in Steve’s case) or our loved ones, or even ourselves that we realize the extent to which devices and places for those who are less able or aging, have really been developed with the “last stop mentality” that Wendy points out.
Perhaps there is a barrier set up by the financial constraints of the health care industry, but surely there must be innovative developers out there, and great architects and designers, willing to take on this challenge of both affordable and accessible housing that is well designed.
Spaces that are well designed for people of all abilities are not only advantageous for the aging, but for people of all ages, including parents pushing strollers, children, or even someone with a temporary disability – we can all benefit from thoughtfully designed accessible places.
On my first visit to Tokyo last year I was really impressed by how much of the housing and urban environment embodies concepts of universal design, making nearly every public place easy to navigate for people of all ages and abilities. As Justin mentioned recently in an article in New York Magazine, I had city envy, and wished New York could embody even a small amount of the great design thinking that makes Tokyo so easy to live in.
Saturday, December 10 at 10:25am
Great comment from @MetropolisMag via Twitter:
“@GlassHouseConvo + Larry Scarpa in LA does some really good looking housing projects, using the LA sunlight & cross breezes to heat & cool”
Great images of Scarpa’s work @ http://www.pugh-scarpa.com/
Saturday, December 10 at 11:26am
Great topic and lots of issues raised. First the US does not have the tradition of social affordable housing that the Netherlands for example has. During the 1920s some of the best architects designed social housing not only because they believed in, it but because it was being built en masse and there were many opportunities for architects to be employed in this great cause. To this day, every new apartment building in the Netherlands has to have about 30% of its units affordable, with the very same finishes and features as the rest. Imagine if all of Donald Trump’s pretentious towers were required to have affordable units! Its not simply a matter of brand name talent coming up with new ideas, it doesn’t mean anything if no one is building it! Justin is right, there needs to be changes in tax laws and incentives to encourage construction of affordable housing.
Nevertheless there are many developers, both for profit and non profit that build affordable as well as “supportive housing” with social services, mostly studios (formerly SRO’s). There are even large conferences devoted to this a number of times a year. But there is virtually no press covering these events and for the organizations that push for affordable housing! There is a start recently in the NY Times but even there its covered without in depth research into these groups and what they are doing (NYSAFAH) http://www.nysafah.org/New York State Association for Affordable Housing Association or SHNNY (Supportive Housing Network of New York) http://shnny.org/. Yes, they are clunky names and they are not “cool” organizations like the Storefront for Architecture but they are doing great work in exactly what Wendy is talking about. And yes, most of the developers who do this work are not as “design conscious” as the high end residential types. But one of the reasons is that in order to be truly affordable to build they have to be absolutely efficient and not full of frills. In this case I’m not a big fan of “starchitects” doing this as they have been ruined by egomanical clients who feed off the worse impulses of architects, to design without constraint with immense budgets. These .01% projects have captured the imagination of architecture to the detriment of the other 99.9%, sound familiar? Architecture is simply the reflection of society and its priorities and values, nothing will significantly change as long as social inequality is the current trajectory of this country.
Sunday, December 11 at 5:26pm
Keywords
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Justin Davidson
Classical music and architecture critic at New York magazine
0
Justin gave the Final Word
Hi, Wendy! Great topic. We’ve seen some good ideas right here in NY recently, and some of them are quite technical:
-change the zoning code to allow for smaller and more flexible living spaces, especially for communal living (i.e. don’t require every apartment to have a kitchen)
-expand techniques of modular construction to apartment buildings, which can potentially lower costs without diminishing quality of construction or design. (SHoP is doing this at Atlantic Yards).
-cultivate and encourage the altruistic instincts of many architects with challenges like Via Verde in the Bronx (Grmishaw/Dattner) or Schermerhorn House in Brooklyn (Polshek…I mean Ennead) or Nehemiah Houses in East New York by Alex Gorlin.
-make it easier for developers and non-profit organizations to navigate the complexities of subsidies and tax incentives, rather than asking them to be time-consumingly creative about financing.
-move towards inclusive housing in which all new residential buildings are required to include some affordable units, rather than just offering tax incentives.
-focus on urban living facilities for seniors, where they can be far more independent in walkable neighborhoods than in car-dependent suburbs.
These suggestions improve conditions but don’t address actual design. I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel here, actually. Many architects are quite expert at building good, creatively-designed residential buildings and containing costs at the same time. The obstacles, I think, lie mostly in the financing, but I’ll give some more thought to the design side, too.
Sunday, December 4 at 9:53pm