The Photo Above is From Palette Architecture
Space is a hot, and expensive, commodity in New York City and housing is in short supply. Mayor Bill de Blasio wants to address affordable housing shortages by utilizing smart architectural design. Thus, the Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC design competition was born. The challenge was organized by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the American Institute of Architects in New York. The design competition tasks architects with imagining spaces that maximize space on small, city-owned lots.
Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city government aims to preserve or build 300,000 affordable homes by 2026. They’re trying to take advantage of property already in their domain to utilize for these kinds of projects. They want to use the space they have as efficiently as possible.
The city had these goals for the design:
- Promote excellence in urban infill design
- Explore design and construction strategies to inform quality, affordable, small-home development
- Demonstrate feasible, replicable housing solutions across various site and neighborhood conditions
- Engage and build capacity of architects to act as critical partners in the development of City-owned, vacant sites
Five entries were selected as finalists on May 14th.
The designs are remarkably different and focus on sustainable living, community engagement, versatility, natural lighting and community participation, respectively. The finalists will work on their designs in phase II of the competition by further expanding upon their idea iterations and developing them into more detailed models. Final winners will be awarded contracts in November 2019.
To learn more about the competition click here.
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