Monthly Archives: May 2015

more than housing

Posted on by

The Baptist Town Cottage Project has outcomes that are immediately apparent: families have decent, safe places to live. To expand the impact this project has further, our project team has folded in empathy, skills training and design thinking. This has included the Ladies in the Landscape storm-water demonstration garden, employing neighborhood residents throughout construction, and creating carpentry and landscaping details based on the preferences of each home owner. Now, as the closings are being completed for each home, Cottage buyers are finding allies in the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas (FHLB) and Planters Bank and Trust. To date, FHLB’s Home Equity Leverage Partnership (HELP) program has provided down-payment assistance grants to eight families. Read the article about this grant success on the PR Newswire.

My favorite part is this great picture of Brenda, and her story.

“She is finding her way back to something. She lived in Biloxi when Hurricane Katrina hit, and she was displaced from her home,” Ms. Roush-Elliott said. “The Baptist Town Cottages were designed for people in her situation, and despite many years and many miles traveled, she now owns a home designed to be a dignified place to live, affordable for her family, and resilient in the face of disaster.” (Excerpt from the article)

he who seeks truth… in apartment buildings

Posted on by

By far, one of the highlights of the American Institute of Architects 2015 National Convention was Moshe Safdie’s acceptance of the Gold Medal Award. Safdie’s work strikes the difficult balance between sensitivity and scale, between humane and replicable.

In this TED talk from 2014, Safdie shares design and planning lessons learned over nearly fifty years, beginning with Habitat ’67 and spanning to projects currently under construction in Singapore. Though he discusses low and middle income housing throughout this video, his focus is on nature and shared spaces, underlying the lack of ego with which Safdie approaches architecture.

He who seeks truth shall find beauty
He who seeks beauty shall find vanity

He who seeks order shall find gratification
He who seeks gratification shall be disappointed

He who considers himself a servant of his fellow beings shall find the joy of self expression
He who seeks self expression shall fall into the pit of arrogance

Arrogance is incompatible with nature
Through nature, the nature of the universe and the nature of man, we shall seek truth
If we seek truth we shall find beauty
-Moshe Safdie

linking housing to development at aia atlanta

Posted on by

It isn’t a coincidence that as even naysayers admit the economic recession is over in the US, conversations linking housing to a wide range of ramifications (especially health outcomes) are on the rise. Government funding priorities will be shifting quickly in coming years, and it is important that housing not be pigeon-holed as a single funding use, but an investment with long and wide ranging returns. In particular, economic development could lead the charge by rallying around housing as a priority that supports a capable work force, attracts new businesses, and could potentially stem the tide of declining populations in rural areas.

You can be a part of this conversation at the AIA National Convention in Atlanta next week by joining “The Role of Housing Design in Community and Economic Development” pre-convention workshop, or some of the other events shown on the postcard below.

AIAHKC-Workshop-041415