Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC: Housing Design Competition

Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC: Housing Design Competition now is over!

Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC: Housing Design Competition: Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC is a two-stage architecture competition for small-scale, urban infill housing, that seeks to address the challenges associated with the design and construction of affordable housing on underutilized City-owned land.

➜ Short description

The Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC is a two-stage architecture competition for small-scale, urban infill housing, recently announced for entries. This competition is organized by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the American Institute of Architects New York (AIANY), and seeks to address the challenges associated with the design and construction of affordable housing on underutilized City-owned land.

In November 2017, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the Housing New York 2.0 plan, which builds on the success of the original Housing New York plan and furthers the City’s bold commitment to increase the supply of affordable housing by building or preserving 300,000 affordable homes by 2026. In support of the plan, HPD has aggressively moved through its inventory of vacant and underutilized City-owned land to create more affordable housing. Much of the remaining inventory includes lots that are challenging to develop due to their small size. Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC is a design competition to find housing solutions for these lots, and to explore their potential to contribute to citywide affordable housing options. Guidelines:

All submissions must propose designs for the Subject Site and demonstrate how such design can be adapted to a variety of site typologies as exemplified by the additional twenty-two sites on the official website.

These typologies include:
1. interior lots that accommodate attached buildings (“Attached Interior”),
2. corner lots that accommodate attached buildings (“Attached Corner”),
3. interior lots, through lots, or corner lots that accommodate detached, semi-detached, or zero lot line buildings (“Detached”),
4. shallow interior lots that accommodate attached buildings(“Shallow”).

The Subject Site is an interior lot owned by the City and is located on the northern side of West 136th Street in Manhattan, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Malcolm X Boulevard.

The design competition seeks proposals with the goal of:

• Promoting excellence in urban infill design
• Exploring design and construction strategies to inform quality, affordable, small-home development
• Demonstrating feasible, replicable housing solutions across various site and neighborhood conditions
• Engaging and building capacity of architects to act as critical partners in the development of City-owned, vacant sites

Submission requirements:

Submissions must include a narrative (“Project Narrative”) consisting of text and images not to exceed 1,000 words, and limited to five 11” by 17” pages. The Project Narrative should describe the concept, core design vision, budget and key design features. In doing so, respondents must address:

• Design intention;
• Replicability across one or more sites from the Appendix that represent a different typology from the Subject Site;
• Materiality and construction;
• Budget, including total construction costs and construction costs per square foot;
• Building performance and sustainability measures;
• Construction methods, as applicable;
• Any other pertinent submission characteristics.

Required Drawings:

Required drawings for the Subject Site must be shown at a scale of 1/16” = 1’-0” with feet and inches as the standard measurement unit.

These drawings shall include:
• Floor plans for each level that show key dimensions, square footage, and illustrate apartment planning, circulation, and egress, including a ground floor plan that illustrates the site planning considerations, adjacent conditions, and relationship to the street;
• One building section along a line perpendicular to the front and rear lot lines, indicating building-to-grade relationship, floor-to-floor and floor-to-ceiling height, and key wall, floor, and roof section elements that illustrate envelope materials, fenestration, and approach to sustainable development;
• One front elevation, clearly indicating proposed fenestration and materials, ceiling heights, floor elevations, and total building height;
• One exterior perspective rendering of the proposal in context of the site;
• One axonometric illustrating the overall building;
• One table illustrating zoning conformance and compliance

Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC consist of two-stage:

STAGE I
A jury, composed of nine individuals from the fields of architecture, urban design, real estate development, and public policy, will review Stage I submissions entered by respondents and select up to 5 finalists based on three criteri: Excellence in Design, Replicability and Construction Feasibility. Submissions should address a site located on the northern side of West 136th Street in Manhattan and demonstrate how such design can be replicated across various site typologies. Finalists will be invited to enter Stage II, and awarded by AIA New York a monetary stipend in the amount of $3,000, given the opportunity to participate in capacity building workshops, and given the opportunity to be featured in an exhibition to be curated and hosted by AIA New York at the Center for Architecture.

STAGE II
Stage II will commence immediately after Finalists are announced. Finalists will be invited to further develop their Submissions into an affordable housing development proposal pursuant to requirements and criteria in a Stage II brief that will be provided by HPD at such date. HPD will assign one or more City-owned sites to each finalist according to their interest, capacity, and the appropriateness of their initial Submission.2
Subject to HPD review and approval, Finalists will be required to assemble a development team that is capable of performing duties carried out by developers and contractors as part of HPD’s development process. Such duties may include environ-mental and engineering review, construction management, and obtaining financing, as applicable. The Development Team must include a New York State registered architect or professional engineer. HPD, in conjunction with AIA New York, will organize a series of workshops and networking sessions for Finalists to facilitate the formation of Devel-opment Teams and aid Finalists in developing their Stage I Submissions into site-specific Proposals. Development Teams will have approximately three months to submit Proposals pursuant to the terms of the Stage II brief. Proposals will be evaluated based on project feasibility and substantial compliance with the design vision presented in the Stage I Submission. At the end of Stage II, HPD may designate one or more Development Teams to develop their Proposals into affordable housing project(s).

There is no entry fee to participate!

➜ Who may enter?

The Big Ideas for Small Lots NYC is open to all architects and designers.