Building Tradition Episode 16: Designing Affordable Housing with Donald Powers

Don Powers, founder of Union Studio has a vision to eliminate sprawl. His firm plans and designs traditional neighborhood developments which are walkable and affordable. Union Studio's affordable housing projects: Capital Square and Trinity Place in Providence R.I.; and Cottages on the Green in East Greenwich R.I. were recently featured in TRADITIONAL BUILDING as the winner of the Gindroz Award for affordable housing. "We didn't set out to design affordable housing, Powers explains, we wanted to design the houses that are most needed." Powers talks about the "missing middle," housing in between suburban single family and downtown multi-family high-rise apartments; house types which have been "zoned out of existence. "

"Affordable housing has always been the issue, but disregarded in the architectural lexicon, says Powers. "Let other architects be the genius. We want to design what works." What works is a house-design based on precedent, dignified, with a front door, in a walkable neighborhood where people feel part of their community. Union Studio's Cottages on the Green are sixteen single-family, zero- lot line houses clustered around a grassy courtyard on just under an acre of urban infill. "With affordable housing we don't experiment, we refine. We study what has worked before."

Powers advises the young designers in his office that excellent and fair place makers study the past to find solutions for the present. And he adds, "draw, draw, draw;" to draw is to see, to see is to understand the context of place.