Business
& Labor
The Yale Housing Project Turns 40
(archrecord.construction.com - 10/18/2006)
By Jude
Stewart
The Rural Studio, Brian Mackay-Lyons's
Ghost Project, the UVA “Shure Studio,” Dan Rockhill's
Studio 804 at University of Kansas—the number of design-build
projects for students continues to expand, but they weren't
nearly as commonplace in 1967, when Charles W. Moore and Kent
Bloomer founded the Yale Building Project. Yale University
Press will commemorate the fortieth anniversary in spring
2007 with a volume written by Richard W. Hayes and edited
by Nina Rappaport.
Moore and Bloomer decided to get students
out of airless studios and to teach architecture’s social
value by building for the poor. From its first year, when
Moore and the students lived in rural Appalachia, the project
has focused on affordable houses. Working with Neighborhood
Housing Services (NHS), today each crop of first-year Master’s
students design and build a new, affordable home in New Haven
in less than six months.
“People ask me, Why do you do this
to your first-years?” Robert A.M. Stern, dean of Yale’s
School of Architecture, said during the open house for the
2006 Project. “I say, let them rub up against these realities
right away: tight budgets, demanding clients, difficult sites.
You’ll end up with better buildings.” Paul Brouard,
the project’s 35-year director, concurs: “Some students
are skeptical. But [as they work] they realize this is an
intellectual and a physical activity.”
Student Leo Stevens shows off his class’
handiwork. With a $90,000 budget plus donated materials, the
1,500-square-foot, 3-bedroom, 1.5-bath house slopes handsomely
through a double-lot graced with old maple trees: “This
lot was vacant before, just trash and this old van with a
Chihuahua inside, going crazy.” Hand-built kitchen cabinets
echo built-in shelving in the living room. The house fills
easily with light from long horizontal windows; clever site
orientation plus 1.6-kW solar panels on the roof boost the
house’s energy efficiency. An outdoor patio is paved
with retaining-wall stones salvaged from Yale’s library
construction.
James Paley, executive director
of NHS, advises students about homebuyer’s wants and
needs. He steered one group away from casement windows because
they precluded window air-conditioners. He also nixed a raw
concrete kitchen countertop; “It may be chic, but it’s
perceived as a cheaper material than Formica,” he says.
Paley sees a deep reserve of education still left in affordable
housing for students: “We’ve done this so many times
before, but the students always come in fresh. After all,
this is the only time they’ll do a Yale Housing Project.”
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