November 19, 2009 – 12:49 pm
Two proposals out of Mayor White’s office earlier this year — one to pay down the consumer debt of homebuyers, the other to give $5,000 bonuses to Realtors representing buyers in 8 revitalization areas — didn’t get very far. But City Council approved the latest version yesterday: $620,000 in construction subsidies from the TIRZ Affordable Housing Fund for 10 homes — 4 in Trinity Gardens and 6 in the Fourth Ward. The participating builders and CDCs are to be chosen by the city’s Housing and Community Development Director. “The developers may sell the homes after they are used for at least a year as models, but the net proceeds must be reinvested in the same community.” [Houston Chronicle, via Swamplot inbox; details on page 200 here (PDF)]
Read more about: 77016, 77019, 77026, 77028, Affordable Housing, Development Strategies, Fourth Ward, Trinity Gardens
November 17, 2009 – 1:33 pm
Steering his bike carefully to avoid the thousands of caterpillars covering Maury St., just off the Elysian Viaduct north of Downtown, 2-wheeled wanderer and lawn-art enthusiast Robert Boyd stumbles across the Fifth Ward workshop of Blumenthal Sheet Metal:
The official address is 1710 Burnett St., but it appears that their facility takes up a whole block–Leona on the south, Burnett on the north, Hardy on the west and Elysian on the east. Blumenthal is a sheet metal fabrication plant, which makes them on the face of it no different from hundreds of small industrial firms in Houston (the secret engines of our city’s economy). Blumenthal has been in business for over a 100 years, which definitely distinguishes them, but what also distinguishes them is that a lot of the fabrication they do is for artists.
Boyd snaps photos of a few Blumenthal constructions in the area:
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Read more about: 77026, Art, Construction Materials, Fifth Ward, Front Lawns, Home Decor, Public Art
Inspired by a visit to a South Florida demonstration farm that emphasizes resourcefulness — “they’ve built things like a well pump from simple bicycle parts, irrigation systems from cinder blocks, and terraces from old tires,” he notes — summer resident James M. Harrison begins “to notice similar ways that people in Houston’s Fifth Ward are harvesting their own backyard crops. Just up the block, one of my neighbors is growing banana trees on his driveway. He’s been able to do it by building a raised bed from cinder blocks against a fence, and using soil that he composts in his backyard. A couple of days ago, we collected basil leaves from the neighbors herb garden, and used them to make pesto. It went great with the tomatoes from our own back yard. And over the weekend, I snacked on figs, cucumbers, and citrus in a Community Garden on Houston’s south side with some friends.” [Neighborhood //#5]
Read more about: 77020, 77026, Fifth Ward, Gardening, Landscape
New Fifth Ward resident James M. Harrison follows the Astros’ “Race for the Pennant” 5K to the front steps of his own neighborhood:
After running the 3.1 mile race with a friend, I decided that 5K’s should be the next topic on [Christian] Lander’s blog, “Stuff White People Like.” Hundreds of people (many of whom were caucasian), rose with the sun for the big race at 7.00 AM. They came outfitted in their lightweight synthetic clothes and hot-to-trot running shoes– the perfect accessories for the meaningless number we all slapped on our chests to make us look like we were about to compete in the Boston Marathon (mine was 2757).
Nobody trains for a 5K. But if you’re up at daybreak, among the crowd of socially aware locals who are in good enough shape for 25 minutes of running, thanks to their motivated lifestyles (and the iPods strapped to their arms, cued to amp the jam for the blitz across town)– then you must be doing something right with your life. It’s so important to be a part of the healthy crowd, that you’ll even pay $25 to get in on the action for a morning. I am a victim of this system.
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Read more about: 77002, 77009, 77020, 77026, Crime, Downtown, Fifth Ward, Houston Astros
How’d that $99k house project turn out? One reader tells Swamplot he’s impressed that a custom-designed house that “may be LEED accredited” could be completed for that price:
The event was great, if very hot ( it was a Noon yesterday). The mayor and principals involved in the project all spoke briefly, and we toured the house.
More photos from yesterday’s official opening on Jewel St. in the Fifth Ward:
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design and Development, Home Design, New Construction: Residential
Denver’s JG Johnson Architects describes its entry in the $99K House Competition using 4 terms:
MODULAR: three modules, numerous configurations, structural insulated panels allow flexible opening installation, mass production
ADAPTABLE: responsive to different site orientations, ratios, topographies
INDIVIDUAL: different users, multifunctional spaces, architectural style variations, pride in ownership supports demographically diverse neighborhoods
ECOLOGICAL (AND ECONOMICAL): ductless climate control system, inclusion of surplus materials, highly insulated, well sealed envelope, minimal built space through inclusion of exterior spaces, glazing orientation, solar shading
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design
February 12, 2009 – 11:26 am
Next featured entry to the $99K House Competition: This design from Houston’s Glassman Shoemake Maldonado Architects. The firm calls its design the Core House:
Like many of the existing homes in the Houston neighborhood, the CORE house is a compact, single story structure that uses pier and beam construction. The CORE house is powered by a “core” module, defined as an unchanging, narrow mechanical/plumbing spine. The body can be built to suit a family’s needs, while the CORE remains the same.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design, Houston Architects
February 4, 2009 – 11:27 am
After a longish break, Swamplot returns with featured entries to the $99K House Competition. This design, from Houston’s Royse/Eagleton Architects, is called “A Simple House,” or ash:
ash is designed around three ideas.
1. To be as simple as possible in the building’s layout/function and construction in order to meet a construction budget of $75,000
At just over 1,200 square feet of conditioned space, ash is a small house. High volumes, an open layout, and connections to adjoining, exterior decks make the building feel much larger than its actual footprint. The layout of the house is two volumes under a single shed roof. The smaller of the two volumes that contains the master is located on the front of the house, and frames a path to the building’s entry. The second volume is split into a private space with bedrooms and a public space that opens to an exterior deck that runs along the entire length of the building’s east side.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design, Houston Architects
December 8, 2008 – 11:03 am
The latest in Swamplot’s roundup of entries to the $99K House Competition: This home from Steve Pribyl of dbaArchitects in Los Angeles:
This design is for a relatively modest 1400 s.f. house that utilizes innovative techniques to create an energy-efficient residence. An ecologically friendly house will use minimal natural resources over the life of the house.
A high surface-to-volume ratio is desirable in order to use a minimal amount of raw materials during construction. A sphere is the most efficient shape to meet this criteria, but it isn’t practical in terms of existing timber framing technology. An octagon is the closest reasonable approximation of a sphere using tried and true construction materials and methods.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Air Conditioning, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design
December 4, 2008 – 5:05 pm
Next up in our $99K House Competition review: An innovative entry from Nick Gillock and Emil Mertzel of Lookinglass Architecture + Design in L.A.:
This project for an affordable, sustainable and energy efficient new 1264 square-foot home combines some conventional home-building techniques - such as below-grade utilities, an insulated concrete floor slab, concrete curbs and framed wall assemblies with pre-engineered shear panels - with an entirely new building component known as the SoyBeam™.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Construction Materials, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design
December 3, 2008 – 11:11 am
Today’s featured entry to the $99K House Competition comes from Luca Donner and Francesca Sorcinelli of Donner & Sorcinelli Architetti in Silea — near Venice, Italy. It’s called the “Rippling House.”
The idea was to give people a home that could be built cheaply, using simple technologies, suitable for self-construction, and where they can have optimal comfort. These are the issues our studio focuses on: everyday problems. We believe that a good project should not necessarily cost more. You can give convincing answers even with limited budgets, and this project is an example.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Construction Materials, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design
December 1, 2008 – 3:55 pm
Digsau, an architecture firm out of Philly, worked with Oldcastle Precast to come up with this $99K house entry, which uses some concrete technology more commonly encountered in Houston area civil structures:
A concrete module serves as the building block for the system, and its combination with other modules allows the structure to respond to specificities of climate, site, and individual preference. The system thus proves highly adaptable as an infill structure on vacant properties in an urban context and allowing for a diversity of exterior space in new developments.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Construction Materials, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design, Precast Concrete
November 26, 2008 – 11:03 am
Houston architect Carl Brunsting calls his $99K House Competition entry “A Good House.” He says his
intent was to make an affordable house FOR HOUSTON, that emphasis meaning that the design was about having a sloped roof with overhangs to deal with our sun and 56 inches of rain, but without becoming something like a builder’s pastiche. It is built up off the ground like an old bungalow to keep it dry from flooding and up for privacy from the street and to avoid long-term problems with Houston’s expansive gumbo soil. It has a front porch for a lot of obvious reasons, and the overhangs all around mean that windows and doors won’t leak and you can open a window when it’s raining.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design
November 25, 2008 – 5:56 pm
An eco-minded Houston home for only $99K? Here’s a shot at it . . . all the way from Muncie, Indiana. Michael Gibson, who teaches at Ball State’s College of Architecture and Planning there and is also a research fellow at the university’s Institute for Digital Fabrication, sent in this design:
The ShotFrame House is an updated version of the traditional “shotgun” house that is frequently seen in Houston and other areas of the southern US. Shotgun houses are characterized by a series of simple rooms, lined up perfectly on a lot from front to back: providing the advantages of a small, inexpensive footprint which can be easily framed. The ShotFrame House uses a similarly aligned series of views, but improves the shotgun-style building by employing a prefabricated, computer-designed and manufactured framing system. This framing system allows the rooms . . . to expand at points along the length of the house, allowing daylight to penetrate the middle rooms.
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Read more about: 77026, 99K House Competition, Design Competitions, Fifth Ward, Green Design, Home Design
Comment of the Day: On the Case of the Demo Fires
“Chron.com reports “Unoccupied home [in 5100 block of Wipprecht] burns in NE Houston.” Wonder if that was the demo.” [GoogleMaster, commenting on Daily Demolition Report: Wipprecht Gammage]