ARROYO, PERKINS&WILL
RESPONDING TO THE CITY-CENTRE HOUSING CRISIS Designers at the London studio of Perkins&Will have created an innovative, co-living community concept that responds to the housing crisis affecting major cities worldwide, placing the London team’s submission as the winner of an international, firm-wide competition held each year. PERKINS&WILL
HALA ELKHORAZATY IS SENIOR INTERIOR DESIGNER AT P E R K I N S & W I L L
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he concept, ‘arroyo’, is a communityled, sustainable co-living development which reimagines an industrial site in one of New York City’s most expensive neighbourhoods, the West Village of Manhattan. Housing affordability is a critical challenge in many global cities, making this competition particularly timely. In London, for example, people earning a median salary would, on average, spend nearly half of their pre-tax pay on a typical one-bedroom house or flat. This design exercise allowed the London-based team to think about housing affordability issues as a universal human right, rather than a localised, cityspecific one. Here, FC&A’s Editor, Rebecca Kemp, talks to Hala Elkhorazaty, Senior Interior Designer at Perkins&Will and winner of the in-house competition, to find out more about the concept.
Can you please let us know a bit more about the brief for this project? The brief for this project was to design a co-living concept which addresses issues in the American housing market. These factors include: Rising rents Falling subsidies Shifting homeownership More than half of monthly income to pay rent in NY/LA. FC&A – NOVEMBER – 2020
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And, how do you feel that you fulfilled this brief? My colleague, Vangel Kukov – also from Perkins&Will’s London studio – and I fulfilled the brief by creating a co-living model, where renters have the opportunity to live in a high-quality development, with an actively involved community and options for reduced rent. The project reimagines an industrial site in one of New York City’s most expensive neighbourhoods, the West Village of the NYC borough of Manhattan. We also designed a model for an app which helps organise bills and allows residents to earn points through involving themselves in the community to subsidise rent payments.
Talk us through the inspiration behind the concept. The project was inspired by the concept of ‘arroyo’ – a place that was once dry, which then transforms to a stream of life after rain – to create a community-led, sustainable co-living development. To truly emphasise the sustainability of the project, we based the entire piece around the concept of ‘living design’, to create an almost circular carbon footprint within the building. As well as using the existing foundation to minimise their carbon footprint, the London team designed a structural system using cross-laminated timber (CLT) and glued laminated wood (glulam) in a diagonal pattern, to form a unique, lightweight and environmentally-friendly structure for the building. The architecture purposely maximises the amount of natural light entering the space and creates a valley for cross ventilation between the buildings and gardens to enhance the communal spaces. The building follows the living design concepts developed by Perkins&Will and thrives on the heartfelt concepts of civic architecture.
