7 Lessons from New York's New Affordable Housing Design Guide

Excerpts from Arch Daily:

Released earlier this month, “Designing New York: Quality Affordable Housing” discusses general best practices in planning affordable housing and provides case studies of successful affordable housing projects already completed in New York, many of which were designed by high-profile firms like Ennead and SHoP Architects. While the document serves as “a reference for New York City agencies and their applicants seeking guidance on affordable housing design,” it’s written in language accessible to people outside of design professions and has been publicly released with the goal of empowering “citizens and community organizations to demand design excellence in affordable housing projects in their neighborhoods.”

The report comes six months after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced in November 2017 that he would build and preserve 300,000 affordable housing units by 2026. His plan—which is an updated version of a 2014 plan set to be finished ahead of schedule—will “preserve the affordability of 180,000 units of existing apartments and build 120,000 new ones.”

Architects designing those new units over the next few years will take cues from the design guide. But architects worldwide can learn from the document, too. Here are some key takeaways from Designing New York:

1. Be creative with massing and respectful with scale
2. Design with the neighborhood in mind by integrating absent services
3. Don’t make affordable housing “look” like affordable housing
4. Structural innovation can overcome a difficult site for the benefit of residents
5. Green building is about more than just sustainability
6. Design won’t solve everything
7. Different cities (and countries) need their own design solutions