The winners of the 14th Architizer A+Awards are live! Discover a global cohort of architects shaping the future of design, and subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.
In the late 1970s, The Clash were frequently billed as “The Only Band That Matters.” While this phrase may have begun as a bit of brash self-promotion, it wasn’t inaccurate. No other group with The Clash’s visibility was calling attention to issues of war, poverty, and imperialism. As the sun set on the rock ‘n’ roll counterculture of the Vietnam era, The Clash were devoted to making sure that rock music retained some bite and did not devolve into just another form of commercial entertainment.
In the 2020s, it is tempting to claim that affordable housing is the only architectural typology that matters. The statement is, like The Clash’s, an intentional exaggeration, but beneath the hyperbole lies a serious point. In the US, housing is in extraordinarily short supply, leading to an explosion in cost that is already leading young people to embrace a mood of despair, and even in cases political extremism. Most troublingly, the rate of homelessness has spiked, as hundreds of thousands of Americans find themselves unable to access shelter altogether. Despite widespread recognition of the problem, construction projects are hard to get off the ground, due in part to NIMBYism, or the tendency for communities to resist projects that might change the demographics of their area or lower local property values.
Fortunately, there are some rays of hope in the form of rising politicians who are placing housing affordability at the center of their platform. There was also a bipartisan housing bill that recently became law which aims to increase the supply and affordability of housing by streamlining regulations, modernizing federal programs, and limiting large institutional investors’ purchases of single-family homes. Is it enough? No, but it is a signal that things might be inching in the right direction.
Architecture, of course, is not the art of policy implementation. It is the art of designing buildings and spaces that shape the way people live. Architects cannot themselves secure funding for all the major building projects that are needed. What they can do, though, is combat NIMBYism by creating appealing visions of affordable housing, communities that people would be happy to see built in their own proverbial backyards.
There is a stigma to subsidized housing, and for this architects are partly to blame. Throughout the twentieth century, public housing became synonymous with monotonous superblocks, isolated towers, and environments that failed to meet the social and psychological needs of their residents. While these failures were also the product of political decisions, chronic underfunding, segregation, and poor management, their physical form left a lasting impression on the public imagination. If architecture helped create that association, it can also help undo it by proving that affordable housing can be beautiful, humane — even inspiring.
This year’s A+ Awards featured a number of projects in the affordable housing category that did just that. For my own part, these projects are much more interesting than any luxury building. Because, really, who cares about architecture that is only accessible to a minority of the population? Such buildings might look nice — but they don’t matter.
26 Point 2 Apartments
By Michael Maltzan Architects, Long Beach, California
Jury Winner, Affordable Housing, 14th Architizer A+Awards
The stigma of affordable housing is wrapped up with the image of Brutalist architecture: large, imposing structures made from reinforced concrete. While I see charm in Brutalism, the public largely does not, especially after a century in which large public housing projects often became magnets for crime and other social problems. It is notable that none of the winners or finalists in this year’s Affordable Housing category sought to resurrect the old concrete monster aesthetic. Indeed, there is a sense of lightness that permeates all of these designs, and none of the buildings is especially large in scale compared to their neighbors. They resolutely look like homes, not machines for living in.
A great example of this theme of lightness can be seen in this year’s Jury Winner in Affordable Housing. With 76 low-income units, 26 Point 2 Apartments is not a small development, but at street level, it does not make an overbearing impression. The massing is modulated by an interior courtyard, and loggias on the upper floors provide a small example of what Alison Smithson dubbed “streets in the sky,” passively encouraging interaction among tenants. The most striking aspect of the design, however, is its color palette, a blend of pinks, whites, and greens that is “giving Memphis,” to put it in terms young people might appreciate. Located in Long Beach, California, 26 Point 2 Apartments is sunny West Coast postmodernism at its absolute best. It’s kind of giving Clueless, too.
Valckensteyn
By Powerhouse Company, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Popular Winner, Affordable Housing, 14th Architizer A+Awards
The history of public housing stretches back to the Industrial Revolution. Its postwar incarnation in Britain and the US was rooted in a political ethic that held that, as the modernist architect Berhold Lubetkin put it, “nothing is too good for ordinary people.” The Brutalist high-rise towers that people have come to regard as drab and oppressive were, at the time they were built, state-of-the-art emblems of an optimistic industrial future, beacons of social democracy. A working family that was once crowded in a 19th-century tenement could now breathe clean air in a spacious high-rise. This was the idea at least.
If the visual language of Brutalism is something that contemporary architects are leaving behind in their affordable housing projects, the democratic principles of this movement are still very much in play. And this year’s A+ project that embodies this best is the Popular Choice Winner, Valkensteyn by Powerhouse Architects, a magnificent complex of 82 affordable units in the heart of historic Rotterdam. Residents in this building will occupy an important piece of Rotterdam’s architectural history, as this is the city’s first residential mass timber building.
“Valckensteyn plays a key role in the sustainable redevelopment of the post-war Pendrecht neighborhood on the southern edge of Rotterdam,” explains Powerhouse Architects. “It is built on the site of the former Valckensteyn building, which shaped Pendrecht’s streetscape from 1971 to 2012. At the time, this high-rise by architect Kranendonk was a novelty for the area, with two staggered wings rising 10 and 14 stories high, significantly contributing to alleviating the severe post-war housing shortage.”
The new Valckensteyn exists in dialogue with the entire history of public housing, aiming to redeem the best features of this, “the only typology that matters,” while at the same time overcoming its limitations. Its muted autumnal palette and understated elegance are emblematic of the sense of dignity that the great modernist architects once aimed to bring to their residential projects. And yet, there is nothing retro or passe about it. The building belongs entirely to the present.
Maple House at Canary-Landing
By architects–Alliance, Toronto, Canada
Finalist, Affordable Housing, 14th Architizer A+Awards
The American sketch comedy show Portlandia premiered in January 2011, over fifteen years ago. The inaugural sketch parodies the “hipsters” of Portland, Oregon, specifically their romanticization of the past. “The dream of the 90s is alive in Portland,” a chorus of artsy misfits sings, meaning that in Portland one can pursue cultural hobbies and embrace a Linklateresque “slacker” ethic, escaping the rat race of corporate America. The next season opened with a sequel to this song: “The Dream of the 1890s.” This, too, we learn, is alive in Portland, as hipsters brew their own beer, can their own pickles, and sport bushy beards and itchy overalls that make them look like dock workers during the Gilded Age.
This sketch hit on something more profound than I think its writers realized. (Stick with me here.) In the 2010s, in the shadow of the financial crisis, there really was a push, among American young people, to embrace handmade, artisanal products and a slower pace of life. It wasn’t just an ethic but an aesthetic. Almost every bar I went to in this era featured Edison light bulbs, exposed rafters, and other features that weren’t just industrial, but positively Dickensian. I even remember sea shanties having a moment.
Looking back, I see the industrial chic of the 2010s as part of a generational reaction against the alienation of digital life. There was a nostalgia for forms of urban life, work, and community that were rooted in the physical world.
In any event, Architects’-alliance captures this spirit of utopianism in their development of an industrial area of downtown Toronto that includes over 231 affordable rental units. The design celebrates the labyrinthine complexity that characterized large cities in the industrial age. “Maple House’s milieu distills Toronto’s most attractive features: vibrant street life, wild ravines, picturesque vestiges of 19th-century industry, and intimate Victorian side streets,” the architects explain. “To capture this genius loci, the architects buried parking and services below grade, allowing a fine-grained fabric of streets, walkways, plazas, and community amenities to blanket the site. Interweaving public and private space, private townhouse yards open onto tree-lined semiprivate mews between buildings and onto vibrant public boulevards along Mill Street and Tank House Lane.”
Maple House aims to bring the best of urban life to a wide range of people to support Toronto’s growing population. While it embraces the historic character of the neighborhood, its aspirations are ultimately oriented to the future.
FHCSD El Cerrito Permanent Supportive Housing
By LPA, San Diego, California
Special Mention, Affordable Housing, 14th Architizer A+Awards
The most dire aspect of the current housing crisis is the associated spike in homelessness. The final project in this rundown, FHCSD EL Cerrito Permanent Supportive Housing, is the only one that aims to take this problem head-on, integrating high-quality shelter for the unhoused with a medical center and other facilities.
“The design for this single-family development, which includes 172 residential units over a parking structure that has two levels of below-grade parking along with two levels of above-grade parking and a ground-floor behavioral health clinic,” explains LPA. “The development provides a mix of affordable housing units for medical interns working in the health clinic and permanent supportive housing units with on-site services. The design embraces the use of single-use recycled shipping containers as a rigorous module in its five levels of housing on the upper floors, which will be fully prefabricated modular units constructed off-site.”
Like 26 Point 2 Apartments, this project features modulated massing, ample windows and an interior courtyard. Exterior balconies connect residents to the outside community, and the use of recycled materials and other conscientious building practices helps the project achieve a low carbon footprint. The most important aspect of this project, however, is how at home it feels within the neighborhood. Rather than push social problems to the periphery, FHCSD El Cerrito is a project that brings their solution right into the heart of city life. This is one of the most important things that must be done if affordable housing is to thrive in the 21st century.
The winners of the 14th Architizer A+Awards are live! Discover a global cohort of architects shaping the future of design, and subscribe to our Awards Newsletter for future program updates.
Cover Image: Valckensteyn by Powerhouse Company
The post The Only Typology That Matters: Affordable Housing in 2026 appeared first on Journal.