Making Room: Housing for a Changing America
CHPC’s decade-long research initiative (2009-) explores how demographic change is affecting ‘the household,’ and how different housing typologies can be used as a tool to satisfy emerging housing needs. The initiative has had a large impact on housing and zoning policy in NYC.
ROLE: RESEARCHER/designer
FORMAT: RESEARCH REPORT, INFOGRAPHICS, physical exhibition
MAKING ROOM
Making Room began when CHPC created a unique data model that revealed the diversity of household configurations in 21st-century America. CHPC found that single people living alone, and adults sharing their homes with other adults, comprise the majority of households in each New York City and the United States. Despite this, the housing stock is designed primarily to accommodate nuclear family households, largely due to regulatory requirements in zoning and building code that prevent different housing typologies from being created.
Over ten years, CHPCs research and education initiative have built off of these concepts to create a new approach for policymaking and planning that can be applied anywhere. CHPC has promoted Making Room at educational events and venues nationwide, including symposia, housing design competitions, and exhibitions at the Museum of the City of New York and the National Building Museum. Making Room has made substantial impacts on housing policy in New York City, inspiring an innovative City pilot to develop a building of micro-studios, now known as Carmel Place, and leading to significant changes in the regulation of housing development by New York City zoning.
The Making Room approach to policymaking and planning asks:
1) How is the population grouping itself into households?
2) What are potential options for housing typologies that can support new household arrangements and lifestyles?
3) How can zoning, planning, subsidy, and building code controls change so that the development of new housing typologies is allowed and even encouraged?
MAKING ROOM NATIONAL EXHIBITION 2017
In 2017, CHPC was asked to curate an exhibition at the National Building Museum in Washington DC in partnership with Resource Furniture and AARP. The exhibit set out CHPC's unique demographic analysis, explored socio-economic trends for the demographic changes, presented a number of innovations from around the country for small, shared, and accessory dwelling units. Finally, CHPC and Resource Furniture designed and built a full-scale flexible three-bedroom home that could be converted for a variety of households!
Excerpt from publication
The post–World War II suburbanization of America was driven by the housing needs of nuclear families, the nation’s leading demographic. In 1950, these families represented 43% of our households; in 1970, it was 40%.
Since then, unprecedented shifts in demographics and lifestyle have redefined who we are—and how we want to live.
Today, nuclear families account for 20% of America’s households, while nearly 30% are single adults living alone, a growing phenomenon across all ages and incomes. Supply, however, has been slow to meet the demands of this burgeoning market—or to respond to the needs of our increasingly varied mix of living arrangements: from roommates to single-parent, extended, and fluid families. Innovation has been constrained, often by deeply-rooted zoning regulations.
A groundswell of action by housing entrepreneurs, however, is beginning to expand our options—making room for new models and design solutions. Looking beyond typical choices and layouts, they are offering alternatives at all levels of the market, from micro-units, tiny houses, and accessory apartments to cohousing, co-living, and beyond.
Making Room: Housing for a Changing America explores these cutting-edge typologies through case studies and the presentation of The Open House—a flexible, 1,000-square-foot home designed for the exhibition by architect Pierluigi Colombo. The Open House features a hyper-efficient layout, movable walls, and multifunctional furniture, allowing the space to meet the needs of a variety of today’s growing but underserved households.
