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In April 1998, sixteen architecture firms were brought together to design single-family houses for the Fifth Ward in Houston, Texas, one of the country's lowest-income neighborhoods. Studio Works from Los Angeles, Lindy Roy from New York, Carlos Jimenez from Houston, and Stanley Saitowitz from San Francisco, among others, worked with the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation to produce affordable housing notable not only for innovative design but also for creative production and financing techniques. An exhibition of the architects' work was shown at galleries in Houston and Austin, Texas. 16 Houses documents these proposals with striking renderings and photographs, offering a fresh perspective on the issue of affordable housing. The model of collaborative design it outlines is genuinely new and also unusually pragmatic for a highly politicized field that has traditionally been mired in bureaucracy. By bringing together architects, developers, academics, community organizations, and public agencies in a grassroots effort, 16 Houses demonstrates a way to transcend politics, providing a blueprint for a new approach that may well represent the future of low-income housing in the United States.

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Publishers Weekly Review

The federal government's 1990s effort to decentralize public housing and encourage ownership through down-payment vouchers for low-income home buyers prompted this artful, innovative answer to the post-war, cookie-cutter suburbs that encircle American cities. Initiated by architect and professor Bell, the project engaged 16 architectural firms (including Studio Works from Los Angeles, Lindy Roy from New York and Carlos Jimenez Studio from Houston) and the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, to create low-cost housing deigned for Houston's Fifth Ward, a five-square-mile, predominantly African American neighborhood. The result is 16 inventive plans-pictured here with explanations by the architects and, in some cases, accompanying poems or stories-that "literally or symbolically expand the boundaries of the single family house, transcending the limitations of its relative insignificance in the urban landscape." The architects considered market constraints, local economy, race and income in their proposals, and many emphasize fluid, efficient and variable spaces, such as Keith Krumwiede's "Domestic Topographic Package," a compact, three-story home that can be customized to fit the owner's needs. Several designs capitalize on locally manufactured materials and alternative construction methods to cut costs; Stanley Saitowitz's corrugated aluminum and glass house with a flat, tarred roof is original, but may prove a challenge to cool in Houston's intense summers. Bell sometimes uses architectural jargon (e.g., "volumetric and tectonic responses"), but his study offers a lucid and promising vision for imagining future low-income housing. 100 color illustrations, 50 b&w (Apr.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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Michael Bell is an architect practicing in New York and an associate professor of architecture at Columbia University. He has also taught and lectured at Rice University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He is the author of a monograph on Stanley Saitowitz and the coeditor of Slow Space , and his work is collected in the monograph Michael Bell: Space Replaces Us; Essays and Projects on the City.