‘Model in the middle’ to solve homelessness
A few dozen Houston architects, engineers and contractors sat down at large conference tables, pulled out their laptops, rulers and sketch pads, and got to work — on a Saturday.
The coalition of professionals and students arrived at the bright and open Love Dance Studio just outside of downtown at 2206 Edwards St. early ready to design a modular, movable structure to replace homeless encampments.
With a deadline of 3 p.m. to present their designs to a panel of judges, five teams comprised of members of the American Institute of Architects Houston and the American Institute of Steel Construction competed against each other to design a structure that could help transition people living in the encampments to a more stable environment. Their goal was to develop a “model in the middle,” said Alex Morales, who works in market development for AISC, a trade association, and one of the key organizers behind the event.
“How do we get people from the streets to affordable housing? Something happens in the middle,” Morales said.
Ahead of designing, participants attended a panel discussion Friday night with nonprofit and city leaders to learn what causes homelessness and what challenges those who experience homelessness face.
“You can’t design anything if you don’t understand what you’re designing for,” Morales said. “We needed to understand what causes homelessness, and on a typical day, what a homeless person goes through in these encampments.”
With that foundation, participants considered designing spaces to address the needs of those living in encampments. For example, one team proposed as part of its design, a hub of portable offices where mental health professionals could work with their clients privately. Another module part of their design might be used a pop-up grocer to help address the lack of access to food.
Several of those working said their goal was to address the housing problem in a holistic way – a major theme of the designs presented were to create solutions that create a fully-functional community with access not just to housing, but also to healthcare, job opportunity, education and food.
Danny Rigg, an architect of Rigg Studio in Houston, said his team envisions a hub of modular structures that can grow and change with the needs of the neighborhood to become a community center that provides various resources, including housing. The modules — which the team says could be built at scale and offsite to cut costs and would require minimal site development — could be put together to form a community center and utilized as anything from a grocer to a headquarters for relief during disaster situations.
“We want this to be a community asset,” he said. “There’s no architecture that will solve all the problems. So we’re looking at an approach for an architectural solution that can change depending on the site parameters and what's needed.”
The architects participating in the competition were keenly focused on designing structures that will be of aid during a catastrophic flooding event, said Rusty Bienvenue, the executive director of AIA Houston.
“Our world changed with Hurricane Harvey,” Bienvenue said. “We want housing that can be deployed from one place to another, rather than relying on FEMA housing. Projects in Houston need to be more resilient.”
The winning design, “Beehive,” by teammates Travis Williams, Andres Araiza, Hung Tran, Destiny Gamble and Morgan Young, was a concept of building portable shelters in hexagon shapes with flexible panels so that the units could fit together as large groups or be pulled apart for smaller groups. The design incorporated considerations for daily problems faced by people experiencing homelessness, such as locked storage for belongings.
Members of the organization said this competition is just a first step to what they hope will become a thoughtful solution to homelessness in Houston. The next step is to take the winning design, incorporating some of the other ideas raised during the competition, and raise the funds to build it, with the help of the city and other partnering groups.
“The answer to homelessness is housing,” said Joy HorakBrown, president and CEO of New Hope Housing, a nonprofit that develops and operates affordable housing for people who were formerly homeless. “It’s real simple. But it’s really hard to do.”