In the winter of 2017, ACA partnered with Studio ENEE on the Garrison Trotter Housing Innovation Competition, whose stated goal was “…to identify ways to address rising housing prices and create more middle-income and elderly affordable housing by exploring creative design solutions that reduce development cost. Well-designed units with smaller footprints can offer residents an affordable option to renting or owning closer to the city center and transit-oriented areas. Teams of architects, developers, and contractors will be asked to submit entries that utilize creative design solutions that meet the community’s aspirational goals in compact units.”
ACA and Studio ENEE responded to this challenge with a scheme entitled “A Common Landscape”. The design process began with the observation that, traditionally, many Boston multi-family housing projects added density at the expense of common social space. From this observation, ACA and Studio ENEE developed a scheme which broke up the volume of the housing into an assembly of three masses that instead oriented itself around a common landscape. This space, defined by a common courtyard, a vertical garden, and an indoor common space, augmented the limited private space provided by the compact units and allowed for a common social space for the diverse residents of the project.
Perspective View From Courtyard
Aerial Axonometric View
Interior Perspective of a Typical Unit
Site Plan in Context