Housing and Community Development

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Perry Cofield AIA
Design Ways & Means Architects
Arlington VA
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If you put one and one together, it adds up to fool. As long architects are far down the food chain of the US, true environmental progress will be difficult. The AIA can't politicize architecture to the extent that it deserves, and some of its members are on the right anyway.  We have reached a point in this country where "money doesn't talk, it swears", as our national poet put it years ago. In a blog about residential design recently, it was pointed out that architects are too often brought in after all the major ducks have been lined up by others.

 

Doubtless architects contribute to environmental progress being made in the commercial sector, but our just-past episode in single family housing as mass commodity is a fiasco of far reach that designers had little say in- in fact many contributed.  Is there even one subdivision in the US that was built on passive principles?  Builders have ignored the orientation of houses on their sites at least since 1947, when Libby Owens Ford published a book of designs about same. It's usually too much trouble to plan sensitively.

 

Builders have been able to build new subdivisions without providing supporting services, or transportation alternates (other than cars).  With no value beyond a home's square footage, is it any wonder that value of many new neighborhoods crashed, with no return in sight?  This is another sad-assed aspect of Wall Street mentality, and the corporate mentality pervading the production of single homes.  Not only that, the profit margins of multi-family developers are no less egregious than those of the mortgage skunks- if you know the investment crowd, you know this. BIG $ WUZ MADE IN THA HEYDAY- BUT NOT BY DESIGN FIRMS.

 

So what is the value of reviving business as usual anyway, other than to those that wanna bring back more of the same? The AIA tiptoes around all this, tastefully but ever-so-deferentially advocating its minor role- as Rome continues on its merry way. 

The corporate builder box machine requires lots of gas to run. Without mass quantities of customers, this model doesn't work. We're experiencing an ice age and all the large animals that used to be a top the food chain can't keep their massive appetites fed. It's the little rodents that will emerge as the likely survivor.

In my area, the quantity over quality types came out of the gate with 4-5 spec house projects as soon as they could get the lending and after a year or two, these guys are already running into problems keeping up with all the overhead. My favorite builder, she had some self control. She looked like she was finished because her bank died and getting lending was tough at first, but like the tortoise, she remained steady and wasn't arrogant enough to take a nap. Now she's not only running 5 jobs right now, but 3 of them are end user clients. Rather than sticking to the model that got us all in trouble in the first place, she has diversified. The builder box guys are all offering multiple copies of the same house, while she does a unique house each time, even at spec. I have other spec builders doing the same thing. These guys/ gals have realized that the mass quantity game is over and they need another edge over the competition. In my area, they are competing with design.

Every end user client I had up to 2008 asked the same request first, "I want you to design this so I can flip it in 3-5 years." After that they'd begin to describe how many beds and baths, etc. Today, people are coming to me saying they want me to design the last house they live in. They care far more about what it looks like now for personal reasons. No longer are they asking for bland, boring, and what everyone else thinks they want according to their real estate agent. This disaster is a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of creating the next new housing model. Without quantity, the last one makes no sense and can't sustain itself no matter how much you try to force it.

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Eric Rawlings AIA
Owner
Rawlings Design, Inc.
Decatur GA
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