• Montgomery Sisam Architects designs Chelsea Gardens as a model for high-quality, sustainable affordable housing.
• The cost of living many places in North America is on the rise, while demand exceeds development.
• The team had to be very efficient in terms of gross floor area and layout to deliver 200 units, including many larger family units.

In Canada the challenge of providing sufficient affordable housing is pressing. As the costs of living have increased, demand has outpaced development, and cities are seeing the fallout in their shelter systems. To redress this deficit, governments are pouring billions of dollars into new, multi-year housing programs. These programs, responding to climate action goals and incentives, are set to herald a new generation of high-performance affordable housing projects.

Montgomery Sisam Architects was enlisted by the Region of Peel in Toronto in 2019 to deliver Chelsea Gardens, one such project. As a practice we are passionate about positive city-building and have had the privilege of working with many agencies and organizations to create housing opportunities for the communities they serve. This new 20-story residence will bring 200 new affordable housing units to Brampton. It is one of more than three dozen projects aiming to advance the 10-year Peel Housing and Homelessness Plan. In addition to its social mandate, Chelsea Gardens is set to become a benchmark for sustainable affordable housing design.

The Region of Peel, like many municipalities today, has adopted aggressive climate change policies. These policies have become key drivers in the administration of all municipal assets, including housing. Chelsea Gardens had as its targets the Zero Carbon Design under the CAGBC’s Zero Carbon Building Standard Version 3, Net Zero Emissions pursuant to the Region’s Net Zero Emission Standard as well as the CMHC’s energy efficiency standards.

In addition to meeting these sustainability goals, this new multi-unit residential building needed to be affordable to build, affordable to operate, and provide high-quality living spaces for families.
Our challenge was delivering this high-quality, high-performance building with an economy of means.

How We Did It

Multipurpose room at Chelsea Gardens. Rendering courtesy of Montgomery Sisam Architects

An important first step was adapting our workflow and schedule to accommodate an in-depth pre-design study of the various pathways to achieve the given targets. Naturally each pathway would require a different design approach, from wall assemblies to energy systems, and each design approach had its own capital and operational cost implications. Some pathways were deconstructed, reconstructed, and re-costed and short-term investments were weighed over long-term gains. Once a viable balance was found between sustainability and affordability, we proceeded with the design.

Chelsea Gardens infills a small parcel of vacant land north of two existing 13-story towers.

To deliver 200 units, including many larger family units, on a constrained site meant that our team had to be very efficient in terms of gross floor area and by extension layout. We developed a plan with three structural bay sizes—a 25-foot bay suited to one-bedroom unit, a 31-foot central bay suited to two-bedroom units and core elements (three elevators and a scissor stair), and 36-foot bay suited to three-bedroom units. This produced, in turn, three slender bars for a more compelling building profile.

In addition to these slender bars, the building was staggered at levels 1, 2, and then again at levels 6 and 7 to create variation in its vertical expression. The pedestrian scale was particularly important in making connections between the new residence and the existing fabric, including a children’s play area and adjoining parkland.

Reinforcing these connections is an outdoor patio space that extends out from the community room towards the park creating a new social space for residents from across the complex. The patio space is part of a larger site design strategy that strives to enhance the existing pedestrian network and create stronger relationships between the building and neighboring amenities, including a community center, grocer, and local trail system.

Sustainable Goals

The building orientation was predetermined by the small undeveloped plot connected to the overall complex by an existing ring road that will also serve as the building’s main access route. To achieve the ambitious net zero goal, the effectiveness of the building envelope was paramount. An airtight, thermally resistant assembly was designed to help manage heating and cooling loads. Meeting these high thermal resistance values, however, imposed certain constraints in terms of massing, materials, and the amount of glazing. The different volumes were clad in a combination of aluminum standing seam and architectural masonry block with wood-look metal soffits visible from grade for added warmth and character.

Generosity of light and views was achieved in each unit despite the building’s conservative 18% window-to-wall ratio, thanks to oversized windows in each family room. Bedrooms were fitted with smaller windows that offer more privacy without restricting access to light. The variation also gives visual interest in the facade.

Finally, to heed the Region’s energy policies, Chelsea Gardens is served by a geothermal loop with distributed geothermal heat pump system. The geo-thermal system eliminates almost all of the building’s natural gas consumption and offers some cost certainty to the operator when it comes to heating and cooling.

Our work on Chelsea Garden reinforces our belief that good design isn’t just for those who can afford it. In the context of affordable housing, high-quality, high-performance living spaces can be achieved with an economy of means. The challenges and opportunities lie in negotiating these different priorities. This starts with setting clear targets and finding the right design approach. And it evolves through creative interpretation and careful design moves that prioritize the occupant experience.

Outside Chelsea Gardens. Rendering courtesy of Montgomery Sisam Architects

Sustainable Housing: Examples & Trends in 2023

Casa Adelante is Changing the Way We Think About Affordable Housing in San Francisco

The post Chelsea Gardens is High-Quality, High-Performing Affordable Housing appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Architect Aaron Schiller reimagined a dilapidated 1870s carriage house in Brooklyn as his new home to test mass timber construction methods.
• Piggybacking onto a larger project for materials and partnering with local providers, Schiller Projects was able to streamline construction while minimizing its carbon footprint.
• Designed for longevity, the converted Brooklyn Mass Timber House has been nominated for an American Architects 2023 Building of the Year Award.

Aaron Schiller—founder and lead designer of the New York City-based architectural design firm Schiller Projects and a former carpenter—was looking for a residential project that would allow him to try his hand at mass timber construction.

“We were looking for clients who were interested in pushing the envelope on sustainability,” Schiller says. “We identified a need for a better quality of housing in terms of carbon footprint. It’s critical to the future of the country.”

Engineered for high strength, mass timber is lighter than steel or concrete and can replace both in load-bearing floors and walls. It’s also much lower in environmental impact than such carbon-intensive materials when constructed of sustainable lumber from managed forests.

Schiller eventually found the perfect project—an 1870s carriage house in Clinton Hill badly in need of renovation and primed for residential conversion—and the perfect clients: himself and his partner. “We bought it ourselves to design as a tentpole of what’s possible,” he says.

Gutted and Rebuilt

The living room of the Brooklyn Mass Timber House features floors recycled from the original timbers and integrated lighting from Stickbulb. Photo by Frank Frances

The building had seen better days. Formerly a limousine garage, the property’s front and rear facades were marred by previous renovations that bricked up windows and installed rollup doors. “It could have been mistaken for a meth lab,” Schiller says.

But the building didn’t share its sturdy, load-bearing masonry walls with any adjacent buildings—a rarity in the high-density, historic neighborhood. A gut rehab would present “a unique opportunity to add to an older structure,” Schiller says.

Long-range sustainability was central to the project. While commercial clients like to see LEED and other certifications, “that really is only half the point,” Schiller says. “You aren’t talking about the carbon footprint of the building and its construction. What drove us was the capacity to minimize the carbon footprint of the materials we were putting into the building.”

Sourced for Sustainability

Since mass timber construction is relatively new to the United States, Schiller scoured the East Coast to find a larger project his future home might piggyback onto. A New England university was set to start construction on a mass timber dorm building, and he convinced the supplier to load a few extra engineered panels on its trucks.

“We called the manufacturer and said, ‘Hey, you’re already shipping all this timber to the Northeast. What if you added 5,000 more feet?’ Schiller says. “We showed up with a U-Haul truck, turned around, and delivered the raw material to our fabricator.”

Schiller added a rooftop master suite and terrace to the carriage house in converting it to a single-family residence. Photo by Frank Frances

Brooklyn-based Tri-Lox milled the lightweight, fire-resistant panels to specifications, fabricating them to within a sixteenth of an inch tolerance and transferring them from the factory floor to the job site. Material costs were a fraction of what Schiller would have paid for a standalone order.

Much of the home’s lighting was integrated into the mass timbers in manufacturing, creating the world’s first electrified laminated timber (ELT) installation. Schiller partnered with Stickbulb, a New York City-based sustainable lighting company, on the patent-pending system.

“When you make lighting integrated at the building level, you lose the pounds of aluminum in the fixture,” Schiller says. “It’s just LEDs and wire, so you’re able to get more control on the materials that come in and out of your site and limit its carbon footprint.”

An Intricate Installation

Glue-laminated Douglas fir forms the central stairwell that connects the three floors of the Brooklyn Mass Timber House. Photo by Frank Frances

Structural mass timbers were installed from flatbed trucks in just six days, marrying the new construction to walls that had settled and bowed since the 1870s. “We had to put something completely perfect coming out of a modern factory on top of this built structure from 150 years ago,” Schiller says. “There were some challenges.”

The studio also recycled components of the original structure, including the massive structural beams of old-growth North American timber that had sustained smoke and water damage over the years. “The old structure of the building is now the flooring of the completed building,” Schiller says. “We recycled the building inside the building.”

We recycled the building inside the building.

New components are designed to last 100 years or more without degradation. “We approached the project with the lifetime of the home in mind,” Schiller says. “Should the house need to be replaced at some point, the materials used can be repurposed without producing waste.”

The building’s facades now satisfy Landmarks Preservation Commission guidelines, showcasing redbrick construction, arched windows, and dark accents. The windows were fabricated a few blocks away, reducing the environmental impact of elements like a 15-foot wall of glass on the new third-floor master suite and terrace.

Bringing the Outside in

The carriage house’s former coal-ash pit was repurposed as an indoor garden with a Japanese maple. Photo by Frank Frances

A striking three-story staircase made of glue-laminated Douglas fir ascends through the center of the house, illuminated by large skylight. At the bottom, the building’s former coal ash pit has been repurposed as an indoor garden. “There’s a Japanese maple growing in the middle of the house, which has the additional benefit of cleaning the air,” Schiller says.

The home’s HVAC maximizes energy efficiency and adds to air quality. Schiller estimates that 45% of the square footage would have required drywall if he hadn’t used mass timber. “You’re creating a more organic and health-conscious environment,” he says. “If there are less VOCs in the atmosphere, the whole house is healthier—and the wood smells really good.

“The thing with this project is that it’s so constrained,” Schiller adds. “You’re in the middle of Brooklyn. You have a very well-defined lot. And then you have the opportunity to do something on the interior that defines it. The big moves we made—bringing in the timber, doing the stair, introducing the skylight—have all been richly rewarding.”

Permitting caused a few delays because the house was only the third mass timber structure in New York City and the first residential property. “We had to educate people in the planning and fire departments about mass timber’s capacities versus its risks,” Schiller says. “A lot of people in this city aren’t used to working with this material.”

But the community “showed up” for the project to keep its construction impacts and carbon emissions low, he says. “The challenge of doing something new is that you have to bring a lot of folks with you. Fortunately the mission around climate impact gets a lot of people to the table, so people’s ears perk up and they say, ‘OK, this is different. We want to participate in this.’”

Project Details

Project: Brooklyn Mass Timber House
Location: Brooklyn, New York
Completion: 2023
Size: 3,050 square feet
Architects: Schiller Projects, Acheson Doyle Architects
Builder: Schiller Projects
Structural Engineer: Silman Associates
MEP/FP Engineer: PA Collins
Timber Fabricator: Bensonwood
Lighting Designer: Stickbulb/Schiller Projects/Loop Lighting
Landscape Architect: Brook Landscape
Interior Designer: Schiller Projects
Flooring: Tri-Lox

Drawing courtesy of Schiller Projects

Drawing courtesy of Schiller Projects

Drawing courtesy of Schiller Projects

CLT Brings the Aveiro Park House in Portugal to Life

Inside the Growing Market for Thermally Modified Wood

The post The Building Inside the Building: A Mass Timber Home in NYC appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Using concrete for your home design can reduce heating and cooling costs.
• One architect turns to exposed concrete for its integrity as an “honest” material.
• Building with insulated concrete forms can improve occupant comfort and safety.

Concrete homes are nothing new; they’re loved for their durability and longevity as well as cost-effectiveness in design. But while concrete has long had a place in residential construction, some architects are using concrete in surprising ways—playing with color and adding texture, for example.

We’ve detailed some of our favorite ways concrete is being used in design, from unexpected concrete homes to incredibly energy-efficient homes.

What is a Concrete Home?

Concrete homes often look just like stick-built homes—or those houses built with a wood frame that supports plywood and other building materials. But then they also incorporate insulated concrete forms (ICFs)—stacked and braced before concrete is poured inside the forms, according to the Concrete Network.

Concrete homes can help to reduce heating and cooling costs and also stand up to strong storms or even hurricanes and tornadoes.

Adequate housing is in dire need, too, according to Thomas Guillott, chief executive at the Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA).

“Three-quarters of the infrastructure that the world needs by 2050 has yet to be built. And concrete will play an essential role in creating the homes and infrastructure of the future,” he said in a previous gb&d article.

Read more about ICFs below.

The Advantages and Disadvantages of Concrete Homes

Designing and building a concrete home comes with its own advantages and disadvantages, of course, and can vary widely depending on the look architects are after and the materials they have available.

Advantages

The advantages of concrete homes are many—from saving dollars to having better control of sound. These are some of the top advantages of concrete homes.

Lower Energy Bills

Thanks in large part to the insulating power of ICFs, homeowners can expect to save 20 to 25% in annual heating and cooling costs versus standard stick-built homes, according to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Concrete Network reports that those savings depend in part on the energy efficiency of a project’s windows and doors as well as the area’s climate.

Acoustic Benefits

Living in a concrete home typically means living with less noise seeping in from outside.

Concrete masonry is an ideal noise control material, according to the National Concrete Masonry Association (NCMA). The NCMA points to how concrete acts as a barrier by diffusing incident noise over a wide range of frequencies. It can also be an effective sound absorption material for absorbing noise generated within a room.

Occupant Comfort

Concrete homes are also typically less drafty than other types of construction, as they block out the wind. The foam-and-concrete barrier cuts air infiltration by as much as 75% when compared with a typical frame house. The high thermal mass of the concrete also buffers the home’s interior from extreme outdoor temperatures, while the continuous layer of foam insulation minimizes temperature fluctuations inside the home by eliminating the cold spots that can occur in frame walls along the studs or at gaps in the insulation, according to the Concrete Network.

Resiliency

Houses built using concrete masonry can withstand extreme events, whether that’s an earthquake, hurricane, tornado, fire, or other extreme event, the NCMA says.

Concrete homes keep occupants safe from high winds, as an ICF wall at a minimum can withstand 150 mile per hour winds. The steel reinforced concrete inside that wall provides structural stability, even from large debris. The foam on the outside delivers a large cushioning effect, too.

Disadvantages

Of course designing and building a concrete home has its cons, too, from extra dollars upfront to finding the right team to build the house. These are some of the disadvantages of concrete homes.

Initial Cost

The price of concrete fluctuates, but often architects and builders will have to deal with a higher initial cost when choosing concrete over some other building materials. The cost of using concrete blocks instead of wood framing and drywall can be up to three times higher in some regions, according to Green Garage Blog. That said, you typically make up for those costs with energy savings.

Aesthetics

Let’s face it. Not everyone loves the look of concrete. Some may consider it a bit too cold or a bit too Brutalist. Though there are many options for dressing up concrete these days with innovative facades or mixing and matching materials like warm woods.

Skill

Concrete homes can take more time and skill to build than perhaps some other alternatives. For concrete houses, builders need to be familiar with working with ICFs, for example.

The Average Costs of Concrete Homes

Your average 2,200-square-foot concrete houses is between $240,000 and $445,000, according to Home Advisor. Currently, due to rising lumber prices, that’s about 5 to 10% more to build an ICF home over a stick-built house. Still, you can expect to recover those costs in energy savings.

According to a study by the National Association of Home Builders the average new home in 2019 was around 2,600 square feet and cost about $300,000 to build. At that time building a concrete home with ICFs would add 3 to 5% to the price.

Concrete Block vs. Insulated Concrete Forms

What exactly is the different between concrete block and ICFs? A concrete block is quite literally a building block made entirely of concrete that is then mortared together for long-lasting construction.

Concrete blocks can be hollow or solid and formed using ordinary or lightweight concrete in various specified sizes, depending on the requirements. They are made from cement, aggregate, and water. The cement-aggregate ratio is 1 to 6.

Pros of Concrete Block

• Cost
• Access to Labor

Cons of Concrete Block

• Aesthetics
• May be subject to water seepage over time

ICF walls are large concrete walls without joints. They’re said to be much stronger than those built with concrete blocks. BuildBlock ICF technology combines strong and long-lasting concrete and steel reinforcement with the superior insulation of expanded polystyrene (EPS) foam.

Pros of ICFs

• Energy-efficient
• Allow for more occupant comfort
• Resilient

Cons of ICFs

• Cost
• Energy to produce
• Skilled labor

Concrete Home Designs & Inspiration

Today’s concrete home designs run the gamut from exposed concrete and Neo-Brutalist to concrete houses that incorporate other materials like brick, stone, or even wood. Architects and designers continue to turn to concrete for its incredible strength. Here are just some examples of inspiring concrete home design.

Exposed Cast-in-Place Concrete

Sharp House was designed with an eye on materials and geometry. The Neo-Brutalist approach to space is reflected as a byproduct in the building’s appearance. Courtesy of Marc Thorpe Design

Marc Thorpe designed The Sharp House to be as economical as possible in construction. Concrete is the star of this design, but it also provides natural insulation to keep the house warm at night and cool during the day.

The minimalist house just north of Santa Fe is a study of space, light, and shadow, and the design takes into serious consideration its ecological impact.

The Pros and Cons of Aluminum Vs. Fiberglass Windows

Check Your Ductwork: Improving Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation

Thorpe says the design could have easily been wood or another material, but the homeowners insisted on concrete. “They wanted concrete,” he says. “I personally thought concrete would be a nice material because of its tactility. And it’s an honest material, to communicate exactly what the building is.”

The design is reminiscent of tropical building tradition, with sweeping overhangs covering entryways and recessed ribbon windows cutting into the building’s monolithic concrete facade.

The use of every surface of the house is an intentional move on Thorpe’s part. “There isn’t really a front or a back,” he says. “In the tradition of Frank Lloyd Wright, he designed his houses with no real entry. It was more a work of art where you’re forced to engage with the house on all sides and explore it like you would explore a piece of sculpture.

Concrete, Stone, and Corten Steel

The courtyard pool and integrated spa create a focal point for the house. Berms, low-maintenance bamboo plantings, and a 48-inch wall screen the pool area from neighbors and help fulfill a request for hassle-free landscaping.

Designed by Lake|Flato, the Courtyard House in El Paso juxtaposes concrete, stone, and Corten steel with interior walls of quarter-sawn walnut and slatted wood ceilings.

The home’s materiality connects the project to the existing home through a large courtyard. The courtyard acts as storm water retention and is defined by gabion walls, which are seen throughout the project to define indoor/outdoor courtyard spaces.

This updated design is the result of an add-on to the family’s original cast-in-place concrete house. The sleek concrete building, adorned with Corten overhangs and punctuated by gabion walls, hides an expansive courtyard that both offers refuge from and a celebration of the elements.

Exposed Concrete

Photo by Joan Guillamat

A mix of materials works together to balance the minimalist aesthetic in this Mexico City house.

Exterior walls are primarily white, and exposed concrete elements create a neutral palette. Textured tiles embellish the rooftop terrace, and a black steel staircase runs through the center of the house. Accent walls, skylights, and wooden louvers bring warmth.

Cachai House was originally built in the 1960s before being reimagined by architects Taller Paralelo in 2018. “Taking advantage of an existing structure makes it a little more interesting,” Mikel Merodio, founding partner and director of architecture firm Taller Paralelo, previously told gb&d. Using what they already had also meant producing a lot less waste.

What are [ps2id id=’icfs’ target=”/]Insulated Concrete Forms?

Photo courtesy of ICFMA

Many architects and builders are turning to concrete in another way for their projects.

Insulated concrete forms, or ICFs, have many benefits that lead to improved building performance, from resiliency to improved air quality. They’re incredibly strong, proven to stand up to extreme weather conditions and the test of time.

Brian Corder, marketing chair of the ICFMA (Insulating Concrete Forms Manufacturers Association) and president of BuildBlock, says ICFs deliver five core benefits—energy efficiency, comfort, quietness, improved air quality, and disaster resiliency.

An ICF is literally what it stands for—an insulated concrete form, or EPS foam insulation filled with reinforced concrete. ICFs are suited for many built environments, whether in cold weather or warm. And because the EPS insulation in ICFs is protected and stable, it won’t fail when needed most. The EPS insulation lasts for centuries, and the concrete stands up to tornadoes and hurricanes.

At a minimum, an ICF wall can withstand 150 mile per hour winds. The steel reinforced concrete inside that wall provides structural stability, even from large debris. The foam on the outside delivers a large cushioning effect, too.

Concrete House Lifespan

Structural engineers say the lifespan of any concrete structure ranges from 75 to 100 years, according to housing.com. This all depends, of course, on the type of building and its design. Elements like extreme weather can also deteriorate concrete over time. The concrete may develop cracks, and water seepage may damage the internal walls.

Stand-alone concrete houses have a higher lifespan than, say, an apartment. That said, houses that are maintained properly can increase their lifespan even more.

Some maintenance tips for a concrete home include:

• Seal your concrete to minimize water intrusion.
• Clean concrete to remove normal dirt and grime at least once a year.
• Avoid the wrong chemicals when cleaning.

The post Inside the Inspiring Design of Concrete Homes in 2024 appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Sustainable housing projects are designed to be socially equitable, affordable, accessible, and to have a reduced or positive environmental impact.
• Casa Adelante, the DADA Distrikt, and the Urban Frontier House are all examples of recent housing projects that address both environmental and social sustainability.

Housing may be a human right, but affordable housing—and perhaps even moreso sustainable affordable housing—has become increasingly difficult for the average person to access. This is true both in terms of the private residence as well as public housing, as house prices and rent are currently at some of the highest recorded rates nationwide.

Now more than ever it is important for architects, engineers, developers, and urban planners to design and provide housing that is sustainable in every way—environmentally, economically, socially, and culturally.

What is Sustainable Housing?

Photo by Bruce Damonte

Sustainable housing refers to the subcategory of sustainable architecture concerned with the development of housing projects—be they private single-family residences, high-rise apartment complexes, or anything in between. These are intentionally designed, built, and operated in an effort to reduce the structure’s environmental impact and overall carbon footprint.

Historically sustainable housing has focused largely on achieving environmental sustainability, but architects, engineers, and their clients have begun placing equal importance on designing housing that is socially sustainable as well. For that reason it is perhaps more accurate to define sustainable housing as housing that both minimizes its environmental impact while also serving to promote social equity.

Benefits of Sustainable Housing

Thermally modified wood is mixed and matched at this sustainable apartment building in Norway. Photo courtesy of Thermory USA

While we’ve alluded to the importance and some of the overarching advantages of sustainable housing, let’s take a more detailed look at a few of the direct benefits.

Lower Environmental Footprint

The main benefit of sustainable housing is its overall reduced impact on the natural world. Designing sustainable housing projects helps keep our air, water, and soil cleaner while also conserving our planet’s renewable and non-renewable resources for future generations. This reduced environmental footprint typically comes as a result of the following:

• Renewable Energy. The adoption of renewable energy sources and energy-efficient design strategies reduces dependency on fossil fuels, resulting in fewer GHG emissions and a cleaner carbon footprint.
• Sustainable Materials. Housing built from ethically sourced, nontoxic, and/or recycled building materials helps prevent resource over-extraction, reduces waste production, and minimizes manufacturing- and transportation-related emissions.

Reduced Operating Costs

Sustainable housing projects that incorporate energy-saving measures and passive design elements possess the added benefit of having reduced operating costs, allowing homeowners and renters to save on their utility bills. A LEED-certified home, for example, typically uses 20 to 30% less energy than a non-sustainable home, resulting in energy savings of up to 60%.

Improved Indoor Air Quality

Because of their use of green building materials, sustainable housing possesses a higher quality of breathable air and is healthier to live in.

Many conventional building materials and products contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that have a tendency to off-gas over time and pollute indoor air quality. Prolonged exposure to these compounds can cause or worsen respiratory conditions and even lead to the development of certain cancers.

Strengthens Communities & Builds Resilience

Creating affordable, sustainable housing opportunities—especially when it comes to public housing projects—can also help strengthen and reinvigorate historically impoverished communities. Housing that utilizes renewable energy and energy-saving measures helps reduce renters’ utility bills and decreases reliance on potentially unreliable or overtaxed local energy grids, which in turn decreases residents’ energy burdens and improves community resilience.

Sustainable housing projects that incorporate gardens and food production strategies—such as Casa Adelante (read more below)—can also help improve resilience against food scarcity.

Sustainable Housing Challenges

EPDs provide information about building products such that designers, specifiers, buyers, code officials, and the general public can better understand its environmental impact. Photo courtesy of ICC-ES

In a perfect world sustainable housing would be the norm, but several challenges impede the widespread development of sustainable housing projects. These include:

Codes & Regulations

While they have begun to change in recent years, zoning/building regulations and codes still pose a challenge to the development of sustainable housing projects, particularly those offering non-conventional missing-middle or mixed-use housing options. This is especially true of those projects seeking to adapt existing structures not originally meant for residential use into residential complexes, as many zoning offices practice function-based zoning as opposed to form-based zoning.

Ignorance & Unwillingness to Change

One of the largest challenges hindering the approval and adoption of sustainable housing projects is the housing market and investors’ and the construction industry’s unwillingness to change when it comes to the types of projects that are supported and ultimately built. This is sometimes a result of a misconception that sustainable housing is more expensive than it is. But because the cost of sustainable materials has decreased over the last decade, improving a housing project’s sustainability can be achieved with little or no additional costs.

Gentrification

Sustainable housing sometimes goes hand in hand with gentrification. When sustainable housing is established in existing urban areas, the very qualities that make those areas desirable often lead to increased property values, which may price out the area’s low-income residents. As a result these residents are forced to find affordable housing elsewhere, often in areas with poor sustainability scores; in short, inequitable design of sustainable housing projects effectively excludes a large demographic from actually enjoying their benefits.

To avoid facilitating gentrification sustainable projects should vnclude a variety of affordable housing options beyond the single-family home or high-rise apartment. Multi-family homes, duplexes, townhomes, and other missing-middle housing types are a few examples of how sustainable housing can be made more inclusive of low-income, multi-generational, and non-traditional families.

Principles of Sustainable Housing

Initiated and developed by the residents themselves, Schoonschip Amsterdam includes 46 self-sustaining floating homes and creates a new model for sustainable living. Photo by Isabel Nabuurs

While there is no set blueprint for designing sustainable housing, a few key principles serve as general guidelines regardless of the project’s location and scale.

Site Optimization

The site and context of a planned structure determines the environmental conditions it must be made to withstand as well as those natural phenomena that may be taken advantage of upon completion. Site and context are the primary factors influencing everything from the building’s orientation, window placement, and feasibility of certain passive design systems to the materials that may be used and which energy sources are going to be the most efficient.

Conducting a site analysis is crucial to optimizing site potential and can greatly aid in the planning and design process as it provides the necessary data to develop in collaboration with existing environmental and geographic conditions rather than against them. This ultimately helps optimize building performance and can greatly reduce the emissions and waste generated during both the construction and operational phases.

Passive Design & Energy Efficiency

Sustainably designed housing is meant to be as energy-efficient as possible—a feat partially achieved through the implementation of passive design strategies, or intentional design elements that harness natural phenomena as a means of fulfilling certain building functions without the aid of mechanical systems. Two of the most common passive design strategies are passive solar design and passive ventilation.

• Passive Solar Design. Design in which a building’s walls, floors, and windows are made to reject solar heat during the summer and collect, store, reflect, and redistribute solar heat during the winter; informs everything from building orientation and window placement to the materials used in construction.
• Passive Ventilation. Refers to the process of supplying air to and removing air from an indoor space via the pressure/density differences arising from either wind or buoyancy; informs window placement and building layout.

Implementation of passive design strategies helps regulate indoor temperatures and airflow without the need for excessive HVAC use, resulting in lower energy loads.

Energy-efficient windows, doors, and appliances, as well as high-performance insulation and the installation of a green or cool roof can also help to reduce a building’s energy needs, resulting in lower operating costs.

Renewable Energy

Most modern sustainable housing also incorporates some form of renewable energy production—usually solar. This further aids in lowering operating costs, reducing carbon emissions, and improving energy efficiency while also allowing homeowners and renters to divest from predatory fossil-fuel energy companies.

Sustainable neighborhoods can even use renewable energy to form their own energy cooperatives, which can help foster economic development and community outreach opportunities. The Schoonschip Amsterdam floating community in Denmark, for example, utilizes an interconnected grid of solar panels and blockchain technology to exchange energy between households, functioning similarly to an energy co-op.

Use of Green Building Materials

Sustainable building materials are generally either made from natural renewable resources, recycled materials, or a combination of the two. These green materials and resources should be sourced and managed ethically, and their manufacturing processes should be low in GHG emissions. Once these building materials have reached the end of their operation lifespan, they will either biodegrade and return to the earth or be recycled and reused to create new products.

Any products used to construct sustainable housing projects should not include any chemicals, elements, or materials that appear on the International Living Future Institute’s Red List, the Cradle to Cradle Banned Chemicals List, the Perkins and Will Transparency List, or any other building industry toxic chemical list.

This ensures residents will not be exposed to harmful or toxic compounds as a result of living in their home or residential unit and prevents dangerous toxins from polluting the environment once the housing project is eventually demolished.

Adaptive Reuse

Constructing new housing—even environmentally friendly housing—from the ground up will never be as sustainable as repurposing and adapting existing buildings into apartment complexes or other shared-living structures, a practice otherwise known as adaptive reuse.

Adaptive reuse housing projects prolong the lifespan of existing buildings in an attempt to limit further resource and energy consumption, which in turn helps reduce the amount of waste and harmful emissions produced by the world’s built environment. Housing projects that are adapted from existing buildings also help foster cultural and social sustainability in that they preserve the historic value of structures while also upgrading them to meet the current needs of a community.

Sustainable Housing Examples

Now that we’ve a better understanding of what makes housing sustainable, let’s take a look at a few real-world examples.

DADA Distrikt

DADA Distrikt, designed by KOGAA Architects. Photo by Kubicek Studio

Completed in 2020 the KOGAA-designed DADA Distrikt in the Czech Republic is an inspiring example of both sustainable housing and adaptive reuse in action. Originally built to serve as an industrial storage facility, the DADA Distrikt now functions as a mixed-use residential complex, created in response to the country’s affordable housing crisis.

“The local market lacks affordable housing and therefore calls for alternative development solutions that would also be able to strengthen the quality of public spaces,” Alexandra Georgescu, a co-founder of KOGAA, previously told gb&d. “Its relatively economical reconstruction was made possible through shared funding and direct sales, therefore avoiding additional investment returns to developers and fees to real estate agencies.”

What is Real-Time Rendering?

10 Green Plumbing Solutions in 2024

Because the DADA Distrikt is located alongside the river Svitava and bordered by brownfields, KOGAA installed a green roof to help manage stormwater runoff and reduce the risk of flooding. This rooftop garden also helps provide cooling in the summer and encourages the reintroduction of biodiversity into an environment otherwise damaged by industrial pollution. Greywater is collected and reused throughout the building for its internal and external functions, including in washrooms and for irrigation purposes.

Urban Frontier House

The LEED Platinum Urban Frontier House is a customized solution built by integrating existing systems in a new way to create a home that is scalable, replicable, and affordable. Photo by Clark Marten

Designed by High Plains Architects (HPA), the LEED Platinum-certified Urban Frontier House in Billings, Montana was conceptualized from the ground up as an experiment in attainable sustainability, one that, upon completion, would serve as an educational, replicable and scalable prototype for a new kind of low-impact housing.

Built for Randy and Janna Hafer—founders of HPA—using nontoxic, sustainably sourced materials, the Urban Frontier House was constructed on the site of an old parking lot. “The primary goal of the Urban Frontier House was to demonstrate that it is possible to build a self-contained, self-sustaining single-family residence on a small urban lot, so the first order of business was to remove and recycle the old asphalt,” Alex Tyler, marketing manager and project designer at HPA, previously wrote for gb&d.

The Urban Frontier House achieved LEED Platinum. Photo by Nathan Satran

In order to reduce the Urban Frontier House’s carbon emissions a 1 kW vertical axis wind turbine and 6.03 kW net-metered photovoltaic array were installed. A partial DC microgrid helps minimize conversion losses from the two systems, allowing the home to produce more energy than it uses. Overlapping structural insulated panels, strategically-placed daylighting solutions, a passive ventilation system, and circulated sun-warmed air help the home stay cool in summer and warm in winter without the aid of a mechanical HVAC system.

The Urban Frontier House is also completely water independent—virtually 100% of the home’s water arrives in the form of rain or snow. All of the collected water is stored in underground tanks with a combined capacity of 7,500 gallons, after which point it is filtered, treated, and pumped to the residence’s potable water sources. Greywater that drains from these systems is then collected, filtered through a biological primary filtration system, disinfected, and reused for the dishwasher, washing machine, toilets, and irrigation.

Casa Adelante at 2828 16th Street

Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects worked with Mission Economic Development Agency and the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation to foster and celebrate an interconnected and vibrant community as part of the Casa Adelante 2828 16th Street project. The colorful tiles seen on the exterior are from Daltile’s Natural Hues Collection. Photo by Bruce Damonte

Designed by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (LMSA), the Casa Adelante 2828 16th Street housing project in San Francisco’s Mission District—an area populated largely by families of Latin American descent—proves cultural and environmental sustainability need not be sacrificed in the name of affordable housing.

Designed with cultural resilience in mind, Casa Adelante encompasses 143 total residential units, a childcare center, art gallery, community room, and a youth organization. Residents of Casa Adelante also have the opportunity to grow their own food as both the 7th floor and roof are dedicated to urban agricultural and food production, strengthening food security and encouraging the teaching of traditional food-ways.

“Food insecurity is a very big and valid concern for the populations the building serves,” Ryan Jang, principal at LMSA, told gb&d in a previous article. “This idea of combining food and housing security together helps with these huge housing issues that are present in San Francisco and elsewhere.”

GLS Landscape | Architecture out of San Francisco designed the project’s landscaping, including a large inner court with greenery that connects to additional open space on the podium level. Photo by Bruce Damonte

Given California’s propensity for natural disasters, Casa Adelante also features a range of precautionary and preparedness measures. The building’s ground floor is raised above the floodplain and any water that is not retained by the roof’s agricultural beds is routed to large stormwater planters in the building’s inner court/adjoining residential open space—both of which help reduce flood risk. A centralized ventilation and air filtration system ensures that residential units will receive clean air even when the skies are filled with smoke from wildfires.

Casa Adelante’s interior receives plentiful natural light and primarily features concrete, metal, fabric, FSC-certified wood, and other sustainable materials. All of the rooms on the building’s ground floor are open and interconnected to facilitate interaction and engagement amongst families and community members.

“It’s really about fighting displacement within another predominantly Latin American community,” says Jang. “It’s about what we with MEDA (Mission Economic Development Agency), our client, call cultural resilience and cultural preservation, fighting against gentrification and displacement so families can find a way to live affordably within the neighborhoods and community they’ve been a part of for a long time.”

The post Sustainable Housing: Examples & Trends in 2023 appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• The Park House project in Aveiro, Portugal needed to be constructed on a single city lot and reuse a facade built in a traditional style.
• While close to the neighboring buildings, the resulting multilevel modern structure affords its occupants with privacy, outdoor living, and views of the city.
• Architect Paulo Martins specified sustainable cross-laminated timber to reduce waste and streamline construction.

A veteran of residential and commercial projects of varying sizes, architect Paolo Martins, the principal of Paulo Martins Arquitectura & Design in Aveiro, Portugal, approaches each project to meet the demands of its environmental context and client expectations, incorporating new design solutions as needed.

Completed in 2022, the Casa do Parque (Park House) project required careful planning and innovative construction methods to meet a strict timeline and the constraints of a congested neighborhood in Aveiro—a prosperous seaside town known as “the Venice of Portugal.” In addition, the existing building had “historical and emotional” significance in the area, so its facade needed to be preserved even as the firm gutted the rest of the structure.

The client came to Martins because they had seen examples of the firm’s past work and trusted his vision for the project. “It was conceived to meet various demands—those of the client, the climate, and the terrain,” he says. “It gave us some difficulties. We couldn’t demolish the building completely. In construction there are many problems with that.”

How They Did It

Integrating sustainable design and construction practices required planning and coordination, but the firm was able to select sustainable materials, manage waste, and implement energy-efficient systems effectively. From the poured concrete floor up, all structural elements were constructed using cross-laminated timber (CLT). It was a sustainable choice “that would allow us to build cleanly and quickly without the need for a large construction site,” Martins says.

CLT is an engineered wood product that includes multiple layers of solid-sawn lumber, each layer glued perpendicular to the others to enhance structural rigidity. It’s a popular choice for housing construction in the Scandinavian countries for its strength and sustainability, since the wood is typically grown in managed forests.

Imported from Austria, the CLT arrived at the site pre-cut to reduce the quantity of materials needing storage, construction waste, and environmental impact while streamlining assembly. “You design all of the house from the beginning,” Martins says. “The company produces the CLT and sends it to you in the perfect dimensions; you just have to put it together like Legos.

“With normal construction you have tons of waste,” he adds. “It’s a much cleaner way of making houses. It uses less space because as the wood arrives at the building you mount it immediately. You don’t have to store the materials. You can reduce the number of trucks going out and coming in [and their] carbon emissions.” Using CLT also sped the time to completion and helped prevent avert traffic bottlenecks on the busy street outside.

The design of the single-family residence is split into multiple levels, affording occupants what Martins calls “a gradient of privacy” from bottom to top. The ground floor features large panes of glass and doors that open onto a concrete terrace, while balconies on the upper floors overlook the public park just beyond the site’s back wall.

Living spaces are open and bright, often spanning the entire width of the structure. Photo by Ivo Tavares

Inside whitewashed wood lends the house a bright, spacious feel in spite of its narrow city lot. An open floor plan creates effortless flow between spaces. Sustainable design elements include energy-efficient appliances and ecofriendly materials. The house has solar panels to heat water, and automated systems monitor and optimize energy usage.

The Park House was the first in which Martins specified CLT, but he says it won’t be the last; several of his current projects are using the material. “It’s not a new way of building, but in Portugal it’s very innovative,” he says. “The Park House was an experiment—not the first, but maybe one of the first—experiments with CLT in Portugal.”

The Building Inside the Building: A Mass Timber Home in NYC

Inside the Growing Market for Thermally Modified Wood

Project Details

Project: Park House
Location: Aveiro, Portugal
Completion: 2022
Size: 5,575 square feet
Architect: Paulo Martins Arquitectura & Design
Engineer: R5e Consulting Engineers
Lighting Design: Paulo Martins Arquitectura & Design
Builder: Cimave
Acoustic Design: R5e Consulting Engineers
Fluids Engineer: R5e Consulting Engineers
Thermal Engineer: R5e Consulting Engineers

Section plan. Image courtesy of Paulo Martins Arquitectura & Design

Rooftop solar panels heat water, while skylights bring natural light to the upper floors. Photo by Ivo Tavares

The post CLT Brings the Aveiro Park House in Portugal to Life appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• The Acton Passive House was designed by ZeroEnergy Design (ZED), a green architecture firm based in Boston, for a client looking for respite from city life.
• The vision was unwavering: The client wanted a modest primary residence with two bedrooms and two bathrooms that felt like a retreat in nature.
• The project meets rigorous standards for energy efficiency and includes solar panels that produce more energy than the home needs throughout the year.

Set in a clearing of evergreens is a sleek, modest home. A low profile, strong horizontal lines, and modern style put the Acton Passive House in stark contrast to its natural surroundings. As a passive house it meets rigorous standards for energy efficiency. It’s incredibly well insulated, has high-performance windows, and includes solar panels that produce more energy than the home needs.

The project was designed by Boston-based architecture firm ZeroEnergy Design (ZED) for a client who wanted respite from hectic city life. “It’s a simple object placed within the landscape,” says Stephanie Horowitz, lead architect and managing director of ZED.

The firm’s design philosophy embodies the idea that buildings must have a positive impact on the built environment. The client wanted minimal energy consumption, efficient appliances and lighting, water-saving strategies, and more. From the first conversation about Acton Passive House Horowitz knew it would be a project well aligned with her firm’s mission.

The Design

Image courtesy of ZeroEnergy Design

The design process was methodical; the client was an engineer with an unwavering vision. “The direction was clear. It didn’t evolve too much throughout the design process, which is somewhat atypical,” Horowitz says.

A modest primary residence with two bedrooms and two bathrooms was the goal. It had to be simple and modern, it had to operate efficiently, and it needed to feel like a true retreat into nature. The result is a beautiful house with a simple shed roof. Its rectangular footprint includes an open living/kitchen/dining space, office, and a mechanical/laundry room. The interior is functional but modern, with polished concrete floors, minimalist fixtures, and plentiful natural light.

While the design itself was straightforward, the client provided more input in some more technical areas. The interior glass doors used in the project are office doors with much better acoustical properties than the kind typically used in homes. The client also took particular care in researching the driveway, landing on a gravel grid system that avoids asphalt and allows for easy upkeep.

The Build

The exterior walls are mostly made of colored fiber cement by Cement Board Manufacturers. The roof is by Drexel Metals and features wood accents along with eaves. At night sconces on either side of the front door light up for wayfinding. Photo by Nat Rea

ZED moved through the design process smoothly, but when it came time for construction they faced a couple of challenges. The project started during the pandemic, for one, so delays were a concern.

“We knew lead times on materials we were ordering would be a problem, so the client secured a shipping container we put onsite to store materials ordered well in advance of when we’d need them,” Horowitz says. “We were able to design the container into a permanent shed that mimics the design of the house. It was a necessity turned into a fun feature.”

The team also struggled to get power to the site during the build. The utility company had a huge backlog as well as a labor shortage. Instead of waiting, the contractor brought in a generator and battery-powered tools to get everything moving.

Green Features

The light fixture in the kitchen was custom-designed by the client, along with the stainless steel kitchen countertop. It and the shelving and baseboards are sleek, durable, and easy to clean. Photo by Nat Rea

The project is designed and certified to the Passive House standard and is also Source Zero-certified—meaning the home can produce all the energy it needs. Air leakage is common in traditional buildings—hot and cool air go out the window literally. But this house has essentially no draft, no leakage. Horowitz says it’s an extremely comfortable and healthy living environment because of that. The insulation allows the house to passively heat itself and retain the temperature at night.

There are plenty of sustainable tools and tactics designed into the house, too. On the energy side you’ll find a rooftop solar array, a right-sized heat pump, and a backup battery that allows the house to operate without any carbon emissions. The walls and roof are filled with dense packed cellulose, containing very low embodied carbon, then wrapped with wood fiberboard insulation, eliminating the need for petroleum-based, high embodied carbon foam insulation. Not only is wood fiberboard 100% compostable or recyclable at the end of its life, but it also has negative embodied carbon, meaning the trees it was derived from sequestered more carbon than the product consumed from its manufacturing.

“What we were able to do on this project was rely on a wood structure and minimize the concrete, which typically has the highest carbon impact. Through the process we wanted to make sure we weren’t just looking at operational carbon but also considering the embodied carbon—the carbon that goes into the construction,” Horowitz says.

A Designer’s Guide to Digital Wallcoverings

Hive Architects on Designing Every House as If It’s Your Own

Project Details

Project: The Acton Passive House
Location: Acton, MA
Completion: September 2021
Size: 1,473 square feet
Architect: ZeroEnergy Design
Mechanical Design: ZeroEnergy Design
Contractor: Adams + Beasley Associates

Photo by Nat Rea

The post Inside Acton Passive House Retreat in the New England Woods appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Macías Peredo Architecture Studio and Studio Habitación 116 collaborated for in Tulum.
• The residential community pays homage to the Mayans in architectural style and color palette.

In Tulum, Casa Candela takes inspiration from the area’s towering Mayan ruins and the dense jungle around it. Mexico-based architecture firm Macías Peredo Architecture Studio and interior designer Studio Habitación 116 partnered with Coba Capital on the project to embody the distinct culture of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and preserve the land indigenous peoples have inhabited for eons.

Paying homage characterizes the entire Candela project, which will ultimately include villas in both Tulum and Valladolid. The first villa in the Tulum community was built in 2021, and construction continues. The final Tulum project will include 12 private, luxury villas near the beach.

Candela has been designed to be at home in its surroundings. “Candela aims to create an architecture that feels like it belongs in its setting,” says Salvador Macías, cofounder of Macías Peredo Architecture Studio. “It doesn’t attempt to imitate anything; it attempts to recall what has existed there since ancient times.”

Celebrated as an integral architectural feature, the surrounding nature filters light through its lush foliage to alter the environment within Candela as the sun moves across the sky each day. This connection—both indoors and out—creates a meaningful conversation between nature and structure.

Sustainability

Protecting the natural area was a major goal of the Candela design team. In Tulum lead architect Diego Quirarte says they achieved this by preserving the soil as well as the flora and fauna on the peninsula—the villas coexist with a botanical garden-style arboretum.

The community stretches across 2.5 acres of land, with more than 70% of it is preserved. More than 1,000 trees have been preserved and 500 have been replanted. Water treatment facilities and firm waste management regulations were also implemented, with the goal to improve the water pumped and returned to the ground so that it’s cleaner than its original condition.

Candela partnered with Watch Water Mexico to ensure water treatment plants and biodigestors are at each development. Candela also utilizes a circular waste system that composts organic waste through a local farm that uses the fertilizer for fresh produce.

Inspired by the Ancients

The villa rises up in a pyramidal formation to minimize the jungle footprint and follow strict building and construction practices. The project also follows set limits for the distance of freighted materials. Water treatment facilities and strict waste management protocols are also in place. Photo by César Bejar

Enclosed in the jungle, the completed villa rivals a pyramid with its terraced design and neutral color palette. “We like to visit historical vestiges where so many years have passed that nature has done its thing, and where buildings have slowly been eroded and taken over by it,” says Magui Peredo, the firm’s other cofounder.

Large windows carved throughout the exterior give the home an open-air feel, reminiscent of the mysterious structures found on an archaeological site. The building’s warm and glowing nighttime light is a nod to candela, or candle in Spanish. “Even the land is in a shape that is almost like a candle,” says Jana Miháliková, who represents the property for Candela, on behalf of Nest Seekers International, of the circular positioning of the villas around a courtyard.

A Net-Positive Energy Public School in Nature

Inside the Evolving Landscape of Health Care Design

A private pool and rooftop terraces with 360-degree jungle views bring modern luxury to the Mayan-inspired structures and help architects limit their footprint, Quirarte says. Rooftop sunbeds double as an observatory at night—another tribute to the Mayans, known for their love of astronomy. Architects utilized chukum, an ancient stucco material with roots in the Yucatán, both for its notability in Mayan architecture and its water-resistant properties, as it’s composed of resin from native chukum trees and limestone. “It’s matching the environment where it is built,” Miháliková says.

Interior Design Choices

A calming neutral color palette dominates the design inside the Casa Candela villas. Photo by César Bejar

Inside Candela residences feature eco-friendly materials, energy-efficient walls and windows, and a structured layout to maintain a light carbon footprint. Photo by César Bejar

Inside, the commitment to sustainability and honoring indigenous culture continues. While the terraced architecture is aesthetically pleasing, it also creates more opportunities for natural light, Quirarte says. Indirect light, along with the neutral coloring of the walls and decor, plays into the candle motif. “It gives you the soft, calming atmosphere as a candlelight does,” Miháliková says.

Wood, in abundance on the Yucatán Peninsula, features throughout the inside of the villa, which is decorated with interiors and furniture custom-made for Candela—including what Miháliková calls the Candela couch.

To combat the Yucatán’s hot and humid weather, the property is well ventilated. Thick walls support heat isolation. Three-layered windows improve energy efficiency. Tree coverage provides plentiful, natural shade. All of these elements limit the need for air conditioning and cater to the sustainability goal to further supporting wellness.

Project Details

Project: Casa Candela Villas
Location: Tulum and Valladolid, Mexico
Completion: Ongoing
Size: 7,300 square feet
Architect: Macías Peredo Architecture Studio
Size: 5,587 square feet
Developer: Coba Capital
Interior Designer: Studio Habitación 116

The post Casa Candela Residential Villas Designed with Cultural Integrity and Sustainability appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Inside new affordable family apartments and creative spaces designed by Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects
• The design includes residential spaces, a childcare facility, and dedicated ground floor space for the arts.
• Casa Adelante 2828 16th Street in San Francisco was designed to be a vibrant, happy, helpful place.

A light playfulness fills the Casa Adelante at 2828 16th Street project. From splashes of color on the facade to inviting outdoor areas at ground level and on the roof, the project is a positive response to a community need for family-centered homes, affordable arts space, and cultural preservation.

Casa Adelante 2828 16th Street is one of several Casa Adelante projects that are part of efforts to provide more affordable housing in San Francisco. This project in the Mission District is one of several in the area that were recently completed, with more in the works, according to Ryan Jang, principal at Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects (LMSA), who designed the project.

“It’s really about fighting displacement within another predominantly Latin American community,” Jang says. “It’s about what we with MEDA (Mission Economic Development Agency), our client, call cultural resilience and cultural preservation, fighting against gentrification and displacement so families can find a way to live affordably within the neighborhoods and community they’ve been a part of for a long time.”

The 143-unit development provides ground floor services for families—an art gallery, childcare center, and an organization to empower youth—while affordable family apartments surround colorful spaces. The seventh story and roof space above are dedicated to urban agriculture and food production for residents. The project also features a rooftop photovoltaic array and solar hot water array, targeting LEED Gold.

Designing for Resilience

Landscape Forms MultipliCITY collection is at home on the rooftop deck alongside
stone counters from Absolute Black Granite. Photo by Bruce Damonte

The community and commercial spaces on the ground floor serve to emphasize the mission of cultural preservation, Jang says. Environmental sustainability was also important, as people from disenfranchised backgrounds might be more at risk should a natural disaster occur, he says.

Jang says LMSA wanted to emphasize resilience from the beginning. That meant including things one might traditionally think of with regard to a highly sustainable building, but also going beyond things like solar hot water panels to look at other areas of risk. They wanted to design for everything from an earthquake to flooding to civil unrest, as San Francisco faces all of these hazards. The architects worked with the owner and engineers to determine what they could do about each hazard to make the building more resilient.

As a result the team raised the building on the ground floor to come up above the floodplain. This was especially important considering the flooding California has experienced recently. “This winter the flood waters came up 18 inches or so—nearly to the front door,” Jang says. They raised the building a few inches above the 100-year floodplain.

The Pros and Cons of Aluminum Vs. Fiberglass Windows

Check Your Ductwork: Improving Indoor Air Quality and Ventilation

Then they looked at HVAC and how that might work in the event of wildfires. “A lot of multifamily housing developments, particularly affordable housing in San Francisco, are going to a more localized solution with ventilation louvers on the side of the facade of the exterior wall, which provides fresh air to the units. In our case we decided to bring air in centrally through larger air handling units at the roof, such that they’re filtered at a pretty high filtration rate so clean, tempered air can always be delivered down into the units, and those filters can be easily changed by maintenance personnel instead of changing filters at each unit. To have filtered air flow down from the roof through the corridors and into each of the units is important in Northern California with fire danger becoming more prevalent every year.”

The ventilation system was paired with a small electric heater that helps to heat the building in the winter. Air is tempered at the roof air handling units and each resident has an individual heater to give them a bit more control in their unit.

Exterior Choices

GLS Landscape | Architecture out of San Francisco designed the project’s landscaping, including a large inner court with greenery that connects to additional open space on the podium level. Photo by Bruce Damonte

The design team incorporated colorful tile to accent the exterior, pulling from colors in the Mission District. “One of its defining characteristics is this series of murals,” Jang says. “They bring a vibrancy and life to the neighborhood as a whole.”

Above the main 16th Street entry is a two-story portal, soon to be framed by a new, large mural later this year. “We really wanted to make the building an authentic representation of the folks who live within it.”

The colors of the exterior tile also frame the residential units. The windows that look out toward 16th Street have dynamically shaped sun shades. “The main long facade faces south, so we wanted to be sure to shade the windows as the sun moves throughout the day. They extend a little bit further both on top and toward the west on the vertical side to reduce heat gain into the windows and into the units.”

A lot of transit happens around the building, too, with buses running up and down the street and a lot of pedestrian, car, and bicycle traffic. The team wanted to bring some of that life inside the building while connecting people back to the community. “It’s a pretty active street within a neighborhood that is both residential and industrial at same time,” Jang says.

Bringing the Outside In

“We really did want to bring that life from the streets up in and through the building,” Jang says.

The two-story portal gives a glimpse of the residential open spaces beyond and above. Below the portal is the front lobby, which is characterized by an open transparent storefront, and behind that is a community room for residents to gather for meetings or even to watch cartoons, considering it’s a family building. “That leads to the inner court on the ground floor, from where the community room and some other offices get their light.”

The large inner court with tree is connected to additional open space on the podium level. There you’ll find residential open space and several large stormwater planters. “All of the water from the roof is routed through these lush planters that are relatively tall,” Jang says. “Since flooding is such a big concern in the area, they retain the water so that when the municipal system is overflowing like it does every year, the water from the impermeable surfaces on the roof do not contribute to that flooding. It slows the whole thing down.”

On the seventh story and roof space above, a large roof deck is filled with specially irrigated bed planters where seasonal vegetables are grown and distributed for free to residents here and at similar buildings in the city. “Food insecurity is a very big and valid concern for the populations the building serves. This idea of combining food and housing security together helps with these huge housing issues that are present in San Francisco and elsewhere,” Jang says.

Interior Design Choices

Mojow Yomi Eko’s inflatable thermoplastic polyurethane armchairs bring lighthearted comfort to public spaces. Photo by Bruce Damonte

Beyond the outdoor areas and plentiful greenery around the building, the project features plentiful wood as a way to warm up the space and use durable materials inside. It’s also helpful acoustically, Jang says. They used FSC-certified wood throughout the project.

LMSA wanted to emphasize wellness throughout—including being careful of what went into different the products they chose. They wanted to avoid petroleum as much as possible, for example. “We tried to keep things as natural and durable as possible—from the concrete floors to the metal in the reception desk to the wood ceilings to the fabric wrapped acoustical panels. It just seemed like a simple and healthy thing to do.”

They also wanted to have fun with the furniture. In the community room area you’ll find inflatable chairs. “This is a building for families and children and all sorts of people,” Jang says. “We wanted the community room and the furniture to be a little bit more playful—like the color on the outside of the building, a little more fun and less serious.”

The community room opens to the outdoor courtyard with a large sliding door and also the lobby, so all of the spaces on the ground floor are interconnected and easily transition into event space. Kids and families can spill out into bright areas and run around and have fun. “We really wanted the life of the interior building to be as dynamic and vibrant as the neighborhood itself,” Jang says.

Second floor plan. Drawing courtesy of Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects

Drawing courtesy of Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects

Project Details

Project: Casa Adelante at 2828 16th Street
Location: San Francisco
Completion: 2021
Size: 155,000 square feet
Architect: Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects
Structural Engineer: Tipping Structural Engineers
MEP Engineer: EDesignC
Civil Engineer: LUK Associates
Contractor: Nibbi Brothers Construction
Furniture: Market Design Furniture
Interior Designer: Leddy Maytum Stacy Architects
Landscape Architect: GLS Landscape | Architecture
Awards: Targeting LEED Gold

The post Casa Adelante is Changing the Way We Think About Affordable Housing in San Francisco appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• The Perkins Eastman Collection 14 project incorporates historic structures and multiple uses while adding to the character of the community.
• More than 200 apartments are alongside plentiful retail, office and event space in this Washington, DC project.

Collection 14 is the sum of many parts—or at least that’s how it looks from the sidewalk. Initially conceived as two distinct buildings, the project grew to encompass a full city block, incorporating a handful of historic properties while maximizing space and livability for a 21st century clientele.

Two parcels on the block—14th St. between V and W streets—had belonged to Martha’s Table, a longtime D.C. social services provider. As the neighborhood upscaled over the last 15 years, the nonprofit found itself with fewer locals to serve but valuable real estate. It opted to sell and build a new headquarters in another area with the proceeds.

Part of the design process for that project, Perkins Eastman DC began looking for developers interested in redeveloping the 14th St. site, attracting family-owned Madison Investments to partner. “We were looking to take the character of the place and make sure that we added to it,” says Tim Bertschinger, associate principal and project manager for Collection 14. “The developers felt a sense of responsibility because they’ve been working in the city for a long time.”

Exteriors emulate the warehouse-industrial vernacular of the 14th Street corridor, incorporating the historic facades on the site. Photo by Andrew Rugge

Madison initially envisioned building two apartment towers, an arrangement that would have left both “with big, blank faces on the sides,” Bertschinger says. Perkins Eastman DC convinced the developers to acquire another narrow parcel and the gas station at the north end of the block, leaving a contiguous site with two historic facades and a protected building in the middle. It presented a design challenge but also an opportunity.

The purchases allowed Perkins Eastman DC to take advantage of the site’s slope to adjust the project’s official measuring point upward in keeping with D.C. height restrictions. “By acquiring the additional sites we were able to add some additional floors to the project, including a mezzanine that created 7,000 square feet of office space,” Bertschinger says.

Drawing courtesy of Perkins Eastman

The historic structure was an automobile showroom dating to 1918. Perkins Eastman DC surgically excavated the development’s parking garage beneath it, leaving the building intact on stilts and needle beams. Once the concrete set, the rest of the development went up around it.

The design reconceived the showroom as a retail space with rooftop terrace and event space. “We repurposed it in a way that you can experience the inside of the building from the retail side, but you can also take in the whole environment from the rooftop terrace,” Bertschinger says. EHT Traceries helped the firm restore the historic facades, and the leasing office occupies a reconstructed townhouse. Seven-story residence buildings frame the varying heights and setbacks of the project, which lend the block a walkable scale and give it the feel of “a collection of books on a bookshelf”—hence the name Collection 14.

Photo by Andrew Rugge

With 233 rental apartments, retail, office and event space, the flexible urban environment satisfies multiple goals for sustainability. “Sustainability is more than just environmental value; it’s also social and economic value,” says Heather Jauregui, Perkins Eastman’s director of sustainability. “We look at the wellness of the planet and the wellness of people at the same time.”
For planet, the building boasts optimized energy performance thanks to a vapor-permeable envelope with three inches of insulation, low-flow plumbing, and central hot water systems. Daylighting strategies make more than 55% of the space daylight-autonomous, meaning electric lights are unnecessary when the sun shines. “It’s a pretty high threshold for any building to reach,” Jauregui says. Collection 14 doesn’t have a repeating floorplan, instead stacking kitchens and bathrooms to create efficiencies.

The design stacks kitchens and baths to create economies during construction. All units benefit from daylighting, operable windows, low-VOC materials, and energy-efficient appliances. Photo by Andrew Rugge

And with 100-year rain events now happening yearly on the Atlantic coast, the entire development features green roofs, plus a bioretention pond planted with marsh grasses to hold stormwater runoff back from the sewers. All paints and coatings, flooring, and wall coverings meet or exceed VOC content and emissions thresholds for six categories in the LEED system, and more than 50 products specified had health product declarations (HPDs). “We can be more assured that we’re not putting toxic materials into the spaces to begin with,” Jauregui says. “We paid a lot of attention early on to creating quality indoor environments for the residents.”

A VRV and dedicated outdoor air system provides fresh air with 100% return to rooftop units that recover conditioning energy; residential units also offer operable windows. While LEED certification was a permitting requirement, the firm achieved LEED Gold through its holistic design process.

The Building Inside the Building: A Mass Timber Home in NYC

CLT Brings the Aveiro Park House in Portugal to Life

The final product is almost a neighborhood unto itself. “The creation of a place that has places to live, places to work, and places to shop and visit takes advantage of the asset,” Bertschinger says. “That kind of urbanism is a big part of sustainability.

Photo by Andrew Rugge

The lobby’s green wall brings the outdoors in with shade plants, wood floors, and a sleek receiving counter. Photo by Andrew Rugge

Environmental, economic, and social benefits attract people to a place.” In the heart of a burgeoning cultural area, the building uses upscale finishes and includes areas for public artworks. Biophilic design incorporates natural materials to bring the outside in. It also offers excellent transit options—with 69 parking spots, EV chargers, and bicycle parking with showers and lockers.

“The location of this project is a big part of the sustainability story,” Jauregui says. “Collection 14 is a block from the Metro and has great bus lines. If you design a high-performance building, but it’s in the middle of nowhere and everyone has to drive there, is it really sustainable?” The firm’s holistic approach and attention to detail helped Collection 14 enhance the neighborhood, Bertschinger says. “Nothing about this project is groundbreaking or trendsetting,” he says. “It’s not about the 80% of making a new thing; it’s about the 20% of making it perfect. There’s no one solution; there’s only a process.”

Project Details

Project: Collection 14
Architect: Perkins Eastman
Location: Washington, DC
Completion: Spring 2022
Developer: Madison Investments
Size: 235,000 square feet
Structural Engineer: Ehlert Bryan
Civil Engineer: VIKA Capitol
MEP: Interface Engineering
Contractor: McCullough Construction
Lighting: Setty & Associates
Interior Designer: Perkins Eastman
Landscape Architect: VIKA Capitol
Preservation Specialists: EHT Traceries

The post Inside Perkins Eastman’s Creative Collection 14 Residential Complex in DC appeared first on gb&d magazine.

• Architect Jason McLennan shares his experience designing a deep green house on Bainbridge Island.
• All of the materials in the house were vetted for Red List compliance to ensure a healthy interior.
• The house also used FSC wood and rammed earth construction.

Nestled within a beautiful forest glade on Bainbridge Island, Washington (an island a short ferry ride from Seattle) sits Silver Rock—a modest, humble, poetically enchanting home dedicated to a family’s personal values of peace, serenity, and environmental stewardship.

I designed the house for a family of four—two working professionals and their two young children—who value their privacy and wanted a homesite that would connect them to nature and all that it provides. The three-bedroom home is simple in its conception, located in the far northeast corner of their property to have the best solar exposure and to preserve as many large, mature trees on the site. All of the major spaces look out to the south for warmth and views, and the home was designed to frame two courtyards—an entry courtyard for vehicles on the north side of the home and a garden courtyard on the south side of the home.

Inside the home an east-west corridor organizes all of the spaces and was affectionately nicknamed “the Hallway of Life” during the design process—so called because every major space enters off of this singular wide and gracious hall. On either side of the hallway spaces are organized into primary rooms that have double-height pitched roofs—notably the family great room and the master bedroom suite or secondary spaces that have flat roofs/green roofs like the children’s bedrooms, home office spaces, and garage. The house interior feels connected to the gardens and outdoors, as all primary spaces have windows and views on at least three sides. No matter where you stand inside there is at least one view out to nature. Biophilia was an important consideration to create a home that feels connected to place and life itself.

From Earth

The Silver Rock design invited its owners to live more simply. Photo by Emily Hagopian

The home was built with a palette of natural materials—in many cases literally from the site itself. A major organizing principle within the design—the hallway of life—features a massive two-foot thick rammed earth wall made from soil from the site and nearby quarries. The rammed earth wall utilized SIREWALL technology that features insulation in between two steel-reinforced wall sections, creating an energy-efficient and durable construction that is beautiful and creates a feeling of solidity and permanence.

Complementing the rammed earth construction was the use of extensive wood inside and out from responsibly sourced FSC forests or salvaged sources—including some giant salvaged columns that were repurposed. Even trees from the site that were cut down for the project were milled and used in a variety of ways, including for all of the exterior siding (cedar) and some interior wood (Douglas fir). The effort created a “localist construction” with considerably reduced embodied carbon and habitat impacts compared to most new homes.

The outside of the home features charred shou sugi ban cedar siding to ensure longevity without the use of chemicals, paints, and stains. The house feels natural and part of the landscape as a result of its materials and color palette.

Using plentiful natural materials, some from the site itself, made the construction process the most meaningful in construction lead Brant Moore’s career. “The home has a good soul,” he says.

Living Building Challenge

Trees from the site that were cut down for the project were milled and used in a variety of ways, including for all of the exterior siding (cedar) and some interior wood (Douglas fir). Photo by Emily Hagopian

The home was designed around the principles of the Living Building Challenge and, as such, all of the materials in the house were vetted for Red List compliance to ensure a healthy interior in addition to the use of FSC wood and rammed earth construction.

The home features energy-efficient windows, high levels of insulation, and airtight construction and utilized a heat pump and radiant heating in floors to provide internal comfort with a heat recovery ventilation system. As an all-electric home, no combustion means cooking with induction cooktops and avoiding the traditional family hearth. The project demonstrates that you can have a deep green outcome and prioritize beauty and functionality at the same time.

Solving a Major Site Challenge

Perhaps the most challenging part of the design process was figuring out where to site the home to meet the project’s many goals—including a balance between solar access for daylight, passive solar gain, energy production, and site preservation.

HKS Architects’ Allison Smith on Designing an Earth-Friendly Airport

Why More Architects are Choosing Rubber Flooring

The project site had an abundance of second growth trees (all of Bainbridge Island had been previously logged at the turn of the previous century), and the tall trees would make having a solar home impossible without proper consideration. As a result the team did extensive solar shading analysis to determine hours of solar exposure at various places on the site to understand year-round availability. The team also looked at the health and age of site trees as well as their suitability for possible reuse for construction materials. The following solutions emerged from the initial site challenges:

Preserve the majority of the site as a nature preserve by locating the house in the corner of the property and creating a future land trust designated area to protect habitat.

Create a small clearing to the south of the home site itself—size determined only by what is needed to ensure solar access or the removal of hazard trees—then use all of the suitable trees from this clearing for building material (reducing off-site habitat impacts).

Orient all major spaces internally and externally to the sun to help during the long, dark Pacific Northwest winters.

Put solar on the garage—the most northeastern portion of the property that gets the most hours of sun year-round.

A Place of Refuge

Photo by Emily Hagopian

Our goal was to design a place of deep beauty and environmental stewardship, but the best judge of that are the clients themselves: “Our house feels like it’s part of the woods around us. The big windows and natural light create a sense of connection to the meadow and the woods. Every time I look at our cabinets, floorboards, or baseboards I remember which trees were cut down to mill those boards … Everything feels deeply connected to the land and the woods here.”

They also told us, “The house has invited us to live more simply. Keeping our furnishings simple, relaxed, and relatable really bolsters that connection to the outdoors—for us and our visitors. It keeps the focus on the ecosystem we live in. Our visitors often say that they don’t want to leave when it’s time to go. ‘It feels so peaceful here’ is a typical refrain.”

As an architect nothing could make me more pleased by the places we strive to create than a testament like this.

Floor 1 of the Silver Rock residence. Drawing courtesy of McLennan Design

Solar shading section diagram. Drawing courtesy of McLennan Design

Project Details

Project: Silver Rock
Location: Bainbridge Island, WA
Size: 3,234 square feet
Architect: McLennan Design
Contractor: Brant Moore with B&L

Photo by Emily Hagopian

Photo by Emily Hagopian

The post Designing the Silver Rock Living Building Home in the Pacific Northwest Forest appeared first on gb&d magazine.