THE TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE AND DEVELOPER JONATHAN F. P. ROSE

51of6-tiz2l

New York based developer, Jonathan F. P. Rose, released his new book, The Well-Tempered City with a book signing and presentation at an Urban Land Institute event in DC. Known for his affordable housing work, Rose emphasizes the importance of balancing social, economic, and environmental factors in development.

He sees the city as complex network and urges those of us who work on the built environment to approach our work as a circle of engagements and adjustments rather than as a simplified linear path. In his talk as well as in his book, Rose links together public health and the built environment, discussing the effects of adverse childhood experiences on society and the financial toll it takes on our cities. He also explains the toll our societal trends are taking on the environment, “98 percent of stuff that comes into the city leaves the city as waste in just 6 months.” Our planet cannot handle that. This book is about the value of public interest design, from the developer’s point of view.

Public interest designers may also be familiar with the Rose family through Enterprise Community Partners’ Rose Architectural Fellowship, which partners early-career architectural designers with local community development organizations, where they facilitate an inclusive approach to development to create green, sustainable, and affordable communities.

MOSQUITOS, ALEJANDRO ARAVENA, & THE 2016 VENICE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE

Paul David’s “Inverted Ruins” (Italo Rondinella) courtesy of LA Times website.

Heading to Italy? Well this year you should check out the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale directed by Pritzker prize winning architect Alejandro Aravena. Aravena is a Chilean architect known for his affordable housing projects and activist architecture.

“The only animal that can defeat the rhinoceros is the mosquito, or a cloud of mosquitos, actually. Architects often think they are too small to make a change, but together they can smother the big animal,” says Alejandro Aravena.

The beast in question is the capitalist machine, responsible for the slew of “banality and mediocrity” in our built environment. It’s one of the battlegrounds Aravena’s biennale aims to tackle, along with migration, segregation, traffic, waste and pollution, and a host of other “urgent issues facing the whole of humanity”, as he puts it, “not just problems that only interest architects”.

Continue to read more here from Oliver Wainwright’s article from the Guardian.

HOMELESS FACILITY IN COLUMBIA HEIGHTS

Built on the site of a former halfway house across the street from the popular Columbia Heights Target, is a new prototype for homeless facilities by Studio Twenty Seven Architecture and Leo A Daly JV. The ground level is open and inviting with studio units on the upper floors.

LA CASA is a new prototype for homeless care in the Nation’s Capital. Rather than function as a shelter, where clients are housed at night and asked to leave during the day, La Casa provides round-the-clock permanent housing for forty men. Each living unit is designed as a single person efficiency. This permanent housing will provide stability and predictability for the men as they re-immerse themselves into day-to-day living. Permanent Supportive Housing is a significant step in the transition from full time care to independent living.