The American Institute of Architects in Seattle recently held an opening reception for its newest exhibit, the 99K House Competition Gallery. Local Seattle firms HyBrid and Owen Richards Architects pooled their talents to win this innovative competition hosted in Houston last year. The competition challenged architects to design a sustainable home suitable for a low-income family that would price for—you guessed it—$99,000. The winners are already starting to apply the ideas and successes of their award-winning prototype, which was built in Houston, to the Northwest.
The thrust of their design sought to combine what architect Robert Humble of HyBrid calls the three legs of the stool of sustainability—social, environmental and economic. “The strength of the project,” Humble said, “is in the incorporation of all three.” Architect Owen Richards said that low-income housing too often falls outside of the scope of green building strategies, but the integration of the architects’ broader vision of sustainability creates a mutually reinforcing relationship that enhances overall affordability.
Social Sustainability
The “social aspect of sustainability,” Richards said, is often overlooked. Their 99K house design seeks to help entire neighborhoods become “sustainable and viable over time.” The key to that, they say, is adaptability—the 99K house is the building that keeps on building. Demountable walls and movable cabinets allow occupants to reconfigure their home in a matter of hours, and the stacked floor plan makes it easy to convert the house into a duplex. “We live in a society where people outgrow their homes every five, six, seven years,” Humble said.
The 99K house can adapt to occupants’ changing family structure and allow families to establish roots in a neighborhood. This in turn enriches neighborhoods by combating the transience that so often characterizes lower income families. It also alleviates the stresses and costs associated with moving, which can amount to 7 percent or more of a home’s equity according to Humble.
Environmental Sustainability
Eco-friendly and energy-efficient considerations also played a major role in the 99K prototype’s design; great pains were taken to minimize waste and material use. Rainwater harvesting in cisterns reduces the water footprint of the home during the dry months by providing a ready source of water for landscape irrigation. Recycled paper insulation exceeds R-value code requirements by 30 percent, providing an eco-friendly alternative to traditional insulation materials. A solar-powered fan sits atop a central ventilation shaft that cools the house and optimizes natural ventilation. The geothermal mechanical system mitigates utility and maintenance costs and CO2 emissions. All of these features improve efficiency, lessen the environmental impact and reduce long-term costs for the homeowner.
Economic Sustainability
Both environmental and social elements of the house feed into its economic sustainability. The 99K house is a 1-4 bedroom stacked home contained within a compact cube shape, making it easy to reallocate space on an underutilized lot. Space is money, especially in the inner city. This design, the architects hope, will prompt developers to rethink how they approach inner city housing. A compact footprint, Richards said, allows developers to “densify without having to demolish or modify the existing housing stock.” The increased utility of space without extensive restructuring can reduce unnecessary community expenditures and costs to individual families. Their 99K house design also has the potential to reduce costs to both the homeowner and the community through a compact footprint that makes room for two houses to fit on a single lot.
Applications to the Northwest
Owen Richards Architects and HyBrid have already begun applying the principles of the 99K house design in the Northwest. HyBrid is working on what they call the “Flex Home,” a modular, 100 percent factory-built home with a 99K design that would be craned onto a site in one day and ready for occupancy a few weeks later. In the meantime, both firms are involved in a 10-year project with Habitat for Humanity to build net-zero homes, and six versions of the 99K house design are being built at the Highlands at Langley, the first low-impact development on Whidbey Island.
For more information about the project, visit the American Institute of Architects in downtown Seattle to view the 99K House exhibit, which runs through Sept. 4. The exhibit provides detailed information about the winners’ and finalists’ designs and is a good reminder that innovation creates valuable solutions to the complex issues facing urban communities today. Thanks to ingenuity, some healthy competition, and a lot of commitment to the needs of lower-income families, Owen Richards and Hybrid have shown us that sustainable and affordable belong in the same sentence.
