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IS YOUR AFFORDABLE HOUSING ORGANIZATION CONSIDERING CREATING DESIGN GUIDELINES? If you know you want them, but you’re not exactly sure what to include or where to begin, here are five questions to ask.
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WHY DO YOU WANT DESIGN GUIDELINES? Creating design guidelines for your organization can be a daunting task, and not all organizations have the same goals. Narrowing down your ‘why’ will help guide you to the information and resources that will best suit your particular needs.
PROCESS EFFICIENCY:
The process of developing guidelines can be used to build consensus around specific design questions and get your full development team on the same page before project development even begins. With a set of standard recommendations, many decisions have already been made, streamlining the design process and allowing the team to focus on more project-specific issues.
MEMORIALIZE INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE: There is likely vast internal knowledge about what works and doesn’t work for your specific resident population and staff. Gathering this knowledge into one place means that you’re taking full advantage of staff’s expertise, enabling you to replicate successes and avoid repeating mistakes.
OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY: Design guidelines don’t inherently result in cost savings.
However, clear documentation of preferences or a set of standard materials and products can help streamline replacement, repair, and unit turnovers.
ADVANCE MISSION-BASED GOALS: Many organizations have goals beyond simply the
creation of affordable housing, such as improving health impacts through sustainable building materials, pioneering green building techniques, or enabling residents to age comfortably in their apartments. Articulating these goals, and how those goals are translated into building design, helps define project parameters and gives designers a clearer picture of what you’re ultimately trying to accomplish.
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WHO IS YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE? Your design guidelines should be tailored to your specific audience: a real estate development team will have different needs than an architect or construction manager. The document’s target audience will help determine what sort of information should be included, and what format is most useful.
REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT: Staff turnover is a reality for any project organization, and
this can include key members of your development team. Design guidelines can quickly orient your team to your organization’s project standards and ensure consistency across projects.
PROPERTY & ASSET MANAGEMENT: While property management team members are deeply involved in a building’s operations, they may not be directly involved in the design and construction process and may be unfamiliar with how or why design decisions are made. Design guidelines can ensure this information is available throughout the life of the building, and can help the operations team make decisions regarding maintenance, rehabilitation, and unit turnover.
ARCHITECTS & GENERAL CONTRACTORS: Perhaps you find yourself having the same
conversations over and over again with each new architect or general contractor you bring on board. Using design guidelines can clarify design goals and expectations, and provide a first stop for questions your design and construction team may have.
OTHER DEVELOPERS: You may decide to make your guidelines publicly available, so that other developers can learn from and be inspired by your organization’s best practices.
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WHAT SHOULD YOU INCLUDE?
What you include will depend on your project goals. Keep in mind that not all suggestions or ideas listed here will be necessary to achieve your goals; designing your guidelines specifically to fit your needs will ensure they are useful to your intended audience.
ORGANIZATIONAL INFORMATION: If your audience is changing, you may want to include a robust ‘about us’ section in your guidelines. Give your reader a sense of what your organization does, describe your mission, and set the tone for what is important to you.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES OR PRIORITIES: Articulate how your organization’s mission should
be reflected in your buildings. Do you care about sustainability? Are tenant health and wellness a priority? Not all of your programming and specification guidelines will be incorporated into every building, so let these principles drive your decision making, and inspire your team. Tip: Limit this section to a few key priorities.
STANDARDIZED PLANS: Do you have a unit layout that works well for your residents’ needs?
While every project will have slightly different constraints, unit layouts are often standardized. While standard layouts will likely not fit in every new building, it may still be instructional to provide a unit plan and point out the aspects that work for you.
SPECIFICATIONS: Standard specifications describe the type and quality of materials and products that should be used in your buildings. Keep in mind that not every item should be called out in this document, only the items that are important to you. Specifications can either be performancebased (toilets should be 1.2 gpf) or can identify specific products as a basis for design (a specific brand and model number). Tip: Ask your architect to help you out, especially if you have a built project you really like that could be used as a base. REFERENCE DOCUMENTS: You won’t be able to include everything you want to in your
guidelines, and some requirements might only be applicable to certain types of projects. Reference other standards or requirements that are relevant to your organization’s goals.
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WHOM SHOULD YOU TALK TO?
The design process involves many stakeholders, and can have impacts beyond those working directly on the project. Seeking input from a variety of voices will make your guidelines more robust and appropriate for the work that you do.
DEVELOPMENT STAFF: Getting an understanding of your organization’s current standards, or lack thereof, is a great place to start.
CURRENT OR FUTURE TENANTS: These are the primary users of your buildings and have
direct, intimate knowledge of their needs and priorities when it comes to design. Even though you may not know exactly who the residents of future buildings will be, residents of current buildings are a good proxy. Tip: They may be less familiar with the language of design and development, so consider a variety of ways to engage and solicit information form this group.
OPERATIONS STAFF: Operations staff are the long-term managers of your projects. They will have insight into how design decisions impact a building’s day to day operations. They often provide a very practical perspective on the durability of materials and use of space. Tip: Don’t limit your discussions to property managers; also consider talking to staff working in maintenance, IT, facilities/capital projects, resident services, and programs.
BUILDING PROFESSIONALS: Architects, general contractors, sustainability consultants, and other building professionals have a broad range of experience beyond your organization’s buildings. They’ll know about developing trends and common industry practices. It’s also helpful to check in with designers to make sure that your guidelines are organized in a way that will be clear and useful to them throughout the design process.
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WHERE CAN YOU GET IDEAS?
If you haven’t already guessed, you’re not the first group to want to create design guidelines for your work. Many groups have already completed similar documents for similar reasons. Drawing from existing resources will make your work easier.
HOUSING RESOURCES: Many organizations create resources for targeted populations or goals,
such as aging in place or active design. You may not be able to incorporate all of these practices into your guidelines, but they could give you some ideas to include in your own design requirements. Examples include: • Enterprise Aging in Place Guidelines • New York City Active Design Guidelines
• EGC Universal Design Specifications • New York City Aging in Place Guidelines
SUSTAINABILITY GUIDELINES: Many people have already looked at how design can impact
the environmental sustainability of a project. Your projects may already be incorporating a green building standard. While some of the examples below are rating systems rather than guidelines, they can still serve as inspiration for elements that are important to you or ways to structure your guidelines: • Enterprise Green Communities Criteria • Healthy Building Network HomeFree Initiative • EGC Construction Specifications
• LEED • Living Building Challenge • WELL Building Standard
OTHER DEVELOPERS: Many developers have already created design guidelines and material
standards, and often make their work available online. Don’t reinvent the wheel! Look for resources from those in your field and reference what works for you. Some examples include: • POAH Basis of Design • NYCHA Rehabilitation Design Guidelines • DHCD Design Guidelines and Standards
• NYC HPD Design Guidelines • BC Housing Design Guidelines and Standards
CITY/COUNTY/FUNDER GUIDELINES: Guidelines written by local entities are often more responsive to specific regional conditions like climate, age of the building stock, geography, or stormwater management. Don’t forget to look at these resources as well.
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BONUS QUESTIONS
DO YOU EVEN NEED DESIGN GUIDELINES?
HOW WILL YOU ENSURE THAT YOUR GUIDELINES ARE A LIVING DOCUMENT?
Design guidelines may not be the answer to your development problems. Reflect back on question #1 – Why do you want them? Are there other documents or processes that are better suited to achieving your goals? Perhaps a simple standard specification will fit the bill, or a vision statement is all you need to guide your team to good design. Take a look at some of the examples in question #5 – a set of existing guidelines may sufficiently articulate your goals with a few small amendments.
Construction standards and best practices are constantly changing: products are discontinued, new technologies are developed, or your own preferences may change. Consider how to ensure that your document can respond to these changes, whether by formatting it as an easily editable spreadsheet, or by assigning a staff person to keep your recommendations up to date. At the very least, you should review the guidelines before every development project to make sure they reflect your current practices.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS: This guide was developed by three Enterprise Rose Architectural Fellows, each of whom is working on design guidelines as part of their fellowship.
Jess Blanch, a fellow with Capitol Hill Housing in Seattle, is strengthening resident health outcomes through the use of sustainable building materials.
Brita Carlson, a fellow with A Community of Friends in Los Angeles, is bringing deep sustainability and inclusive design practices to her organization’s development process.
Alexis Smith, a fellow with Jewish Community Housing for the Elderly in Boston, is devoted to creating environments where residents can age and thrive in community.