Affordable 
     Housing
  Development        Competition
    2003

The Students

Susana Williams was a member of the first-place Norfolk Corners team. She is a candidate for dual master's degrees in city planning and design and architecture studies in MIT's department of urban studies and planning. A member of the Student Coordinating Committee of the 2004 competition, she is originally from Lima, Peru, where she worked as an architect.

My main role on the team was as a designer. This included the design of the presentations as well as the design of the buildings and the area. I also met with neighborhood residents to better understand their needs and to apply them to the final designs of our Norfolk Corners proposal.

The main goal of the proposal was to complete a corner of the triangle. We wanted to provide the community with rental and ownership housing. Our goal was to maintain the area's current density and its mix of one-family, two-family, and three-family units. Green-building design was also a goal. We also wanted to consolidate light-industrial uses through the development of an auto mall.

We tried to place the auto mall on a site adjacent to the commuter rail line, and we tried to put the rental units along the main avenues. The ownership units are in a middle area, buffered from the commuter railroad by the rental units and the auto mall.

We tried to follow the typologies that existed already in the neighborhood by using triple-deckers for the three- and six-family units. We tried to provide big windows that emphasized safety.

For the duplex units, we designed porches to create safety and setbacks. We also thought porches would increase communication among neighbors and make it easier to keep an eye on the street. If the neighbors know each other better, they're more likely to become aware of what is happening on the street.

We knew that the community wanted to emphasize single residential units, but we also knew that cost constraints would make that difficult. As a compromise, we decided to propose duplexes that had a single-unit look.

Street in Dorchester's Norfolk Triangle section.

We tried to place most of the public spaces — dining areas and living rooms — at the front of the units. We thought people would be spending time in those areas during the day and be able to keep an eye on the street from them.

It was a bit of a challenge to design for affordable housing. We wanted the buildings to look like market-rate units because we wanted the community to be proud of what it had. But we had to keep in mind that it had to be affordable. There were certain features that could make that happen, such as stacking some of the service areas, bathrooms, and kitchens to minimize construction costs and energy consumption.

We also used the open-building design concept in the nine-unit building. In that type of building, the only permanent structures are the exterior shell and the stairs. The rest is made up of partitions that can be moved. This allows the building to be adapted based on market or family needs. You could change from a three-bedroom to a two-bedroom or a four-bedroom unit just by moving walls and closing doors. So it was an opportunity to make the building adaptable without adding expenses.

We also knew that the community wanted a residential look. Instead of placing a large building on a lot, we broke it into two buildings in order to provide the residential character the community wanted. We decided to go with a mansard roof to minimize the mass of the building and to give it a residential character rather than an apartment-complex look, which was what the residents did not want.

Most of our units are very spacious. We tried to minimize corridor areas in order to gain nicer spaces for the units. We tried to create nice open spaces for the dining and living areas and provide a maximum amount of light. We wanted to create a nice environment for the families who will be living in this neighborhood, given the limitations of the site and the budget.

The Norfolk Corners proposal calls for new housing on this vacant lot in the Dorchester section of Boston.

Most of the time, architects tend to dream. They often come up with designs that are not really cost effective. I've worked on housing prototypes and designs that are very imaginary. But just being able to work with people who have a very limited budget and real restrictions was very challenging. Another valuable experience was working with a community development corporation (CDC) that is very involved with the community and being able to go through the whole community process.

Working with the Residents
Many architects are not very involved with their clients. The competition gave me the opportunity to address the specific needs of the residents. We tried to accommodate their needs and dreams of how the buildings and the community should look. It gave us experience managing green-design alternatives and coming up with a building that could become real.

I also got to know how a CDC works and I had the opportunity to work with a community in the Boston area. I got to know these people and tour their neighborhood and see their aspirations and dreams. I know that we are contributing in a way to some of those dreams becoming a reality.

The competition was an exciting and challenging process. I very much enjoyed working with my team members from MIT and Harvard. Having a deadline made this feel like a real project. Although we knew we were in a competition, we got so involved with the process that we wanted to make the project the best one possible for the residents.

Now Codman Square NDC is holding community meetings on the first phase of the proposal, which will be the auto-mall piece. I really believe that this project can be done. We gave a presentation to the residents about three weeks ago, and they were very pleased with the results and the designs. We believe there may be some minor changes, but I'm sure these buildings can be built, and I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm very much interested in developing affordable housing in the developing world and in bringing green design alternatives to other countries where this hasn't really been looked at yet.

This has been one of the most rewarding experiences I've had in an academic setting because it was something that applied to real life. Now I feel I can apply some of this experience in a professional environment, either here or in Peru.

I joined this team because they were very committed to the competition. I was very impressed by the students' ability to divide into teams based on their skills, background, and experience. I was also impressed by their commitment to what needs to be done for each neighborhood. And I'm not only talking about my team; I found this also to be true for the other teams I met at the beginning of the competition. It was very exciting to know they were serious about what they were doing.