The building at 456 Orchard Street in New Haven, Conn., doesn’t look all that different from the other houses in the neighborhood, but behind the seams lie some answers for how builders can provide well-designed homes for an affordable price.
Part of the 44-year-old Vlock Building Project at Yale School of Architecture, 456 Orchard Street is a student-designed and student-built project for theNeighborhood Housing Services of New Haven (NHS), a local non-profit affordable housing development agency that commissioned the house. The group’s mission is to provide housing for qualified low- to middle-income buyers, but it also hopes the home will serve as a catalyst for neighborhood renewal. “A guiding principle of the project is that one new house sets off a chain reaction of home improvement in the neighborhood,” the school says.
This year, Neighborhood Housing’s project brief called for an owner-occupied, two-family house measuring 2,500 square feet, with 1,600 square feet for the owner and a 900-square-foot two-bedroom rental on the second floor. “The design for the two-family house takes seriously the notion of affordability to create spaces that are both intimate and luxurious within a small building footprint and tight envelope,” says the school.
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