The low-income single-family house and the effectiveness of architects in affecting affordability

• Main Author: Ron Dulaney Jr.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Architectural Research Centers Consortium 2012-12-01
• Series: Enquiry: The ARCC Journal of Architectural Research
• Online Access: https://www.arcc-journal.org/arcc-new/index.php/arccjournal/article/view/64

Architects are increasingly engaged in efforts to provide affordable, owner-occupied housing in the United States. Yet architects’ roles in broadly addressing affordable housing remain marginal as was anecdotally evident by the absence of architects at a recent university-sponsored affordable housing workshop. Apparently, the potential contributions of architects in “the development of innovative approaches and best practices” related to affordable, owner-occupied housing is not always valued to housing policymakers and planners such as those who organized this workshop. This paper speculatively explores the gap between the potential value of architects and their actual effectiveness at realizing widespread relevancy, innovation, and change in improving the quality and attainability of affordable, owner occupied housing and how this gap may contribute to the undervaluation and marginalization of architects’ efforts to address affordable housing needs in the United States. Case studies of several recent U.S. house design competitions exemplify these gaps. Potential strategies for closing these gaps and thus appreciating the value of architects’ efforts in this endeavor are identified.To become central in providing much-needed affordable, owner-occupied housing, architects must make the value of their potential contributions evident. This requires a clear definition of design goals, a rigorous assessment of built projects, and the thorough dissemination of findings and methodologies. Architects must engage those fields to which they have, in the U.S., long relinquished affordable, single-family housing. Architects must demonstrate that qualitative design improvements are not just possible within the frameworks and agendas of those other fields but that good design will better enable the achievement of those extra-disciplinary goals.