School of Architecture Collaborates with Columbus House

1. CONTRIBUTING REPORTER
At the open house for the 2019 Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, Yale
School of Architecture students unveiled their recently constructed three-unit
house in New Haven’s Hill neighborhood. The home was built in collaboration
with Columbus House, an organization geared towards providing solutions for
homelessness.
The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project is a required course in the spring
semester for first years at the Yale School of Architecture. The class spent this
past spring formulating possible designs for the house, and a jury of faculty
members, clients and members of the community selected the final design.
The entire class spent the first six weeks of the summer working at the job
site, and 14 students chose to stay through August. The open house on
Monday, Sept. 23 was a congratulatory night, and many focused on the
positive impact the project would have on Columbus House’s clients.
The theme of the night was “gratitude,” according to Cynthia Fox, interim
CEO of Columbus House.
“This is a collaboration of so many people who have come together and
they’re all thinking about how to build and create affordable, safe housing for
people who don’t have homes,” Fox told the News. “And at the end of the
School of Architecture
collaborates with Columbus
House
| 12:10 AM, SEP 30, 2019SERENA LIN
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2. day here, there’s three people who wouldn’t have a home, who now have a
home.”
The Jim Vlock First Year Building Project began in 1967 as an annual
opportunity for architecture students to participate in the design and
construction of a project that has social impact. Recent years have been in
partnership with Columbus House and tackle issues of affordable housing and
urban infill in New Haven.
Columbus House selected the site of the house and will conduct a search for
the future tenants of the house, which has three one-bedroom units,
according to Chief Development Officer for Columbus House John Brooks.
The tenants are selected through a housing list from the Coordinated Access
Network, a Connecticut coalition of homelessness service providers.
Students in the class said that working on the Building Project was a unique
learning experience. Through the project, they were able to see the physical
outcome of their design plans. Scott Simpson ARC ’21, one of two student
project managers, said that a benefit of the project was the “feedback loop
that [allows] you [to] understand that your designs have consequences.”
Students conducted group interviews with some of Columbus House’s clients
to ask what they look for in a potential home. It produced interesting and
unexpected feedback, Simpson said. He spoke about the assumption that
many architects have, that clients will want spaces that are “open, bright,
airy,” but that Columbus House clients were looking for something “a little bit
cozier, a little bit darker.”
Interacting with people who have experienced homelessness “creates a level
of empathy,” according to Adam Hopfner, a professor at the School of
Architecture and the director of the Jim Vlock Building Project.
“A key to a door is an incredibly potent item to someone who has been
sleeping under a bridge,” Hopfner told the News. “The capacity to control
one’s own space is incredibly powerful.”
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3. Specific design considerations were made to suit the house’s future tenants. In
particular, this year’s design tried “to balance both a sense of privacy with a
connection to the street,” Hopfner said.
Changes were also made to the final design to better accommodate the
project’s neighborhood. The initial plan for the house didn’t have a front
porch, but one was added after discussion of the “porch culture in New
Haven,” according to Simpson.
“As you drive down the street, you see a lot of families gathered on the porch
in the evening,” Simpson said. “It’s a big part of the social identity of the
street.”
The Building Project was warmly received by neighbors on Plymouth Street.
Leonard Moret, a resident of an adjacent house, said the house was an
excellent addition to the community.
The Yale School of Architecture was established in 1916.
serena.lin@yale.eduSerena Lin |
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