KTGY’s Post

Thank you to the Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design for hosting this interesting event last week. Sheetza McGarry, a former Hines NYC intern (one of the best) currently seeking her masters in architecture and a research assistant at the Healthy Materials Lab, invited me to speak alongside my great friend Charlotte Bell (she/her) with Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County, Drew Vanderburg with RiseBoro Community Partnership and Brandon Pietras with Bernheimer Architecture about design techniques for affordable housing to create spaces people want to live, feel safe and feel healthy. My career has not been in affordable housing and I am certainly not an expert in affordable housing design, but I do have extensive experience having worked with Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County through ASHRAE NYC Chapter along with deep experience in seniors housing design and how designing spaces purposely built for those that are going to use them with extremely thoughtful design can turn a project from ok into exceptional. The Healthy Materials Lab at Parsons School of Design has built quite a data base of different materials and techniques that is available for everyone to utilize. Sheetza McGarry and the co-founder of the Healthy Materials Lab Alison Mears have also started and built an impressive database of ACTUAL healthy, affordable projects all around the United States as part of the Building Healthy Homes initiative. They already have about 8000 units of housing in the data base and are looking for more! Check it out and see if adding your building would make sense.(https://lnkd.in/eqjPhpjt) I enjoyed hearing from and learning from the other speakers. Some takeaways 👉 Exceptional design does not have to be expensive or use the highest ends materials. It needs to be thoughtful to ensure the end user, regardless of wealth or class, is able to efficiently, effectively and comfortably use and live in their space. 💰 Keeping utility costs low for those that can least afford it is critical (especially for Habitat for Humanity New York City and Westchester County). A constant balance between construction costs and energy saving/zero carbon/healthy material design techniques and systems is key. 🚃 Many factors including supply chain disruption, manufacturing source, performance, aesthetics and cost can impact the materials chosen for a project. When selecting materials, find levers you can pull for the 'biggest bang for your buck' with cost, impact on the tenant (directly and indirectly), embodied carbon, durability and energy performance. A few home runs can make up for a lot of strikeouts. 🙍♂️ 🙍♀️ Stakeholder and community engagement is critical. Make sure what you're choosing to build and the materials utilized are something the potential or current tenants WANT rather than what you THINK they want

2023 Year In Review As the global social and environmental landscape continues to change, so too has our approach to designing the built space. In continuing to create architecture that enriches and elevates the human condition, we have been focused on shaping spaces to be even more accessible, equitable, and inclusive to better meet the needs of the communities we are designing for – from extensive Indigenous consultation at the Atlantic Science Enterprise Centre to engaging young Black architects in the renewal and expansion of Black Artists’ Network in Dialogue’s (BAND) Toronto gallery and cultural centre. Environmental considerations on our projects continue to be a priority. Even the most challenging of typologies that have specific temperature, humidity and storage requirements, can be ambitiously envisioned as sustainable buildings. The Art Gallery of Ontario’s Dani Reiss Modern and Contemporary Gallery is being designed to net-zero carbon operating standards; and the new Scarborough Academy of Medicine and Integrated Health is being clad in Building Integrated Photovoltaics that will not only positively influence its appearance, but contribute a significant amount of renewable energy towards the building’s operation. As architects and planners, our role in guiding and facilitating a future vision for urban living involves designing mixed-use developments and social infrastructure that responds to the contemporary needs of our growing communities, like the transit-focused Pickering City Centre. The masterplan development takes advantage of existing commercial, retail, and institutional sites, integrating them with residential living, abundant verdant spaces and active pedestrian walkways to create a thriving new urban centre. As we say farewell to 2023, we reflect back on some of Diamond Schmitt’s highlights from the past year, and look ahead to what is in-store for 2024.   #DiamondSchmitt #designtotranscend https://lnkd.in/eneMwyX4

Quality input = quality output 👏👏👏

The question raised in the attached article are of primary importance to how we as architects practice our craft. Do we want a civil society that respects the community or just focuses on the individual. Do we want to live in cities with projects like Rockefeller Center or Hudson Yards?

Our latest issue is out! I hope you find some insight – into housing for the elderly and for intentional communities, the state of architectural education, the creation of culturally significant gathering places and more. https://lnkd.in/gGmT8-6N

Biophilia is not exclusive from Brutalism. Brutalism, as an architectural movement, has a social impetus at its core. The very same motivations which engender connected, healthy environments in the biophilic strain, are present in the sociocultural philosophy of brutalism and modernism. To characterize both modernism and brutalism as inherently "sterile and unsociable" is ahistorical. If your understanding of brutalism is "grey building made of concrete" you don't have an accurate definition of the movement or the style. Frustrating to see these kinds of false comparisons. For an expert perspective on brutalism, please see the work of Owen Hatherley: https://lnkd.in/gRGmXy8t

Strengthening unity and social cohesion in a healing nation. transforming spaces, enriching lives. #16th #architecturedesign #propertyflipping #claimyourtimeback #architecture #earlyretirement #16thdec2023

Looking forward to this discussion forum tomorrow! We need all minds from all sectors - political, policymaking, finance, procurement, built environment design professionals and local communities - to engage & work together to holistically address what is an endemic, global issue. Housing that enhances quality of life for all is the outcome of all these minds & agents working toward a common goal. I will speak about specific UK strategies to speed high quality affordable housing and how our work has emerged within this context. Still much to be done!

Alfonso Femia has been invited to participate in The International Architectural Roundtable that will be hosted on November 29th as part of TheBuildingsShow, North America’s largest exposition, networking and educational event for the design, construction, and real estate industries. Architectural writer and curator Adele Weder, will be moderating this year’s Roundtable, which will focus on the housing crisis. This year’s confirmed panelists also include Alison Brooks (UK), and Canadian architects Janna Levitt and Ouri Scott. The housing crisis is an ongoing issue that will affect an estimated 1.6 billion people by 2025. Fueled by a shortage of land, lending, labour and materials, this crisis was further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which resulted in increased housing insecurity and decreased housing affordability. While political capital is crucial in expanding access to affordable housing, architects are well-positioned to advocate for and implement innovative solutions for affordable housing. The panelists will discuss the current state of housing in different parts of the world, the challenges presented by the housing crisis, and innovative strategies for combating this crisis. #ateliersalfonsofemia #AF517 Alfonso Femia Simonetta Cenci #internationalroundtable #internationalarchitecture #architectureconference #housingcrisis #architettura #tavolarotonda #residenziale #housing #TheBuildingsShow Buildings Canada

Fantastic graphic from Conrad Kickert and Stipo’s Hans Karssenberg excellent book Street Level Architecture. Following in the theme of The City At Eye Level, this book explores the role of Architecture in creating human scaled, diverse experiences in urban environments. This graph focuses on the reduction in active facades, i.e. the concentration of public-facing activities and segregation of single use residential quarters in 4 cities, between 1911 and 2018. Note the dramatic decline in Detroit. The bars are for percentage of ground floor activity, not accounting population changes. In Birmingham it has doubled steadily, and in Detroit has gone from 465k to 640k, but with a peak of almost 1.9 million. The other cities, Vancouver and Den Haag have seen different fate. Vancouver has increased public facing ground floors, and Den Haag has declined less steeply, mostly due to… wait for it… “early 20th-century Dutch policies to outlaw small independent retailers.” I’m gonna have to email Conrad and Hans to inquire about that delicious nugget of information. Behind almost every anomaly in the way a normal human scale habitat operates, there is a clueless policy causing unnecessary consequences. We owe it to our citizens and the local economies where they operate, own businesses and work, to dig into the causality of urban issues and the link between policy responses and further exacerbation of those issues.