DESIGN | When Beauty and Budget Work Together
Trying to design an affordable house with an architect? Proceed with caution.
Written By Fernando Pagés Ruiz
Starting with Herbert and Katherine Jacobs’s $5,000 home built in 1937, designed to show he could create affordable housing, Frank Lloyd Wright initiated his Usonian design line. “Unimpeded by a foundation, front porch, protruding chimney, or distracting shrubbery,” Wright sought to create well-crafted houses for the everyday person. Yet not even Wright could hold off the impulse toward high design and lost his way with increasingly elaborate architectural flourishes. Soon, the moderate Usonian homes gave way to the pricier Prairie styles he became famous for.
Maybe architects should not be called to design in the simple, clean proportions and ordinary materials required for affordability any more than Michelin Star chefs should be asked to create cafeteria menus. Great poets don’t write greeting cards. And only builders keenly aware of construction costs can guide designs toward affordability. I am a big fan of several architects, including Wright. I worked with his student, Geoffrey Childs, designing a very affordable complex of twelve infill houses. However, most of my experience with academically trained architects is that they resist the compromises required to achieve low cost.
For example, an excellent architect and close friend and I got into an argument. He accused me of “evil” for insisting roof pitches between 4/12 and 6/12 were ideal for lowering costs and improving structural performance. I even had the wind tunnel tests to support the structural assertion and went to the trouble to have a truss manufacturer weigh in by pricing two similar roofs of varying pitch. But my friend’s love for steeper roofs ran deeper than logic. I have lived through the same type of argument enough times to know that design supersedes cost considerations for many architects and that they have deep insecurity about being associated with buildings that would not meet their peer group’s approval. Affordable housing is not always the prettiest, but it can be elegant in its efficiency.
Architects I know will characterize the most affordable housing with words like bleak, dismal, and deplorable, or the descriptor I hear most often: “hideous,” expressing absolute contempt. This is unfortunate, because architects should strive to provide unsubsidized design for every rung of the housing ladder, from homeless on up.
Throughout Lincoln, Nebraska, you find many simple, low-cost ranch homes built by Ervin Peterson, founder of Peterson Construction Company. His son, the late Bob Peterson, was my adviser in designing and building affordable homes—he always knew how to resolve a problem or do a pricey thing cheaply. His dad’s homes required just $25 down and an agreement to do some work, such as laying floor tile and painting. This made buying a house a snap, and many people did so. Peterson constructed about 2,500 of these homes across the city.
The homes included clever design elements, such as a sealed crawl space that served as a giant plenum for the heating system. The Petersons used two layers of drywall with wood spacers instead of framing studs to create room for electrical wiring between demising bedroom walls. They bought materials in bulk. And they knew how many studs and nails went into each model. They were masters of affordable housing. While designers regard these homes as “hideous,” I find them beautiful, and even today, 2,500 homeowners still love them dearly. A hideous house is better than no house, and when affordability is even more critical than global warming, architects will do well to remember this.
The acclaimed Miami architect and planner Andrés Duany is one of the few I have worked with who will submit to the stringent restraint required for the most affordable manufactured housing. Despite his openness to value engineering, we have argued about simplifying façades because “otherwise, everyone will hate it,” as he told me on one project. Everyone except, of course, the people who finally find a home within their means. They will love it. Fortunately, Duany is devoted to design solutions and talented enough to achieve the tenuous balance required for low-cost housing to succeed aesthetically.
You may not have the opportunity to work with a designer of the caliber of Duany or Wright, willing to spend a year resolving the challenges of a $500 commission—the sum Jacobs paid Wright for the design of his $5,000 house. So, you will have to get deeply involved in the design process, analyzing every ornament, window trim flourish, and aspect of the roof pitch to control the outcome. Architects can be imposing, but don’t back down. You must start with a budget; if the design exceeds your cost limitations, even if it’s a nice-looking house, don’t sign off. Insist on meeting your pricing criteria.
Fernando Pagés Ruiz builds non-subsidized affordable homes for a largely immigrant community. He collaborates with DPZ CoDesign on cost reduction, chairs CNU Latino, and writes for Fine Homebuilding and the Green Building Advisor. He is busy researching and writing the second edition of his bestseller Building an Affordable House with The Taunton Press.