What is Affordable Housing? 

— What is Affordable Housing? Beebreeders Competition



Chicago, Illinois
Beebreeders Competition 
w/ Brian Hammersely of Hammersley Architecture
2018

As architects, we would never claim to be experts in any aspect of the project other than architecture. We can talk to the creation of built form, though, and how it should reflect our best hopes for the future and our values as a society. Public housing in any of its forms should reflect values of equality, inclusion, community and environment. As an overarching idea, this basic building type exists to enrich the human spirit of both the individual and also the larger community. The resultant architecture must be unique, interesting, imaginative. It must inspire its inhabitants in some way. Projects must be integrated into the city fabric and not pushed out to the edges. These buildings should foster social interaction and will have hybrid programs to add other integrated uses. 

Our entry for the competition starts with a look at the spaces immediately outside of the affordable housing units. In this fantastical rendering, possible programming from performance spaces, athletic rooms, gardens, and public areas comes to the forefront contrasting with the historical modernist examples of urban and affordable housing in the rear. The project proposes how housing can start to create new opportunities for more whimsical uses of urban space. 



© 2023 Robert Svaia