The Architectural Team Sponsors Affordable Housing Design Competition for Students
To stimulate creativity among the minds of the next generation of architects, and to help address the shortage of quality affordable housing, the nationally regarded, award-winning architecture and master-planning firm The Architectural Team, Inc., has sponsored "Soft Living," a studio course and student design competition at the Boston Architectural College (BAC). This is the second year The Architectural Team has served as sponsor.
Soft Living invites undergraduate and graduate architecture students to envision the future of Boston through an “open ideas design competition” focused on approaches to enhance the vitality and impact of social, affordable, and adaptable housing prototypes needed for the future in downtown Boston. The coursework investigates modernist concepts of housing superblocks proposed by notables such as Archigram and Buckminster Fuller, with a design competition developed by The Architectural Team (TAT) in collaboration with BAC faculty. This year's program sets the stage for the course and competition to become an annual tradition. TAT sponsored the first such competition last year, in recognition of the firm’s 40-plus years since its founding.
The sponsoring firm's cofounder and managing principal, Robert J. Verrier, FAIA, also former president of the BAC’s Alumni Board, remarks, “Through competitions like Soft Living, we're building on our belief that engaging students in creative and collaborative reallife problem solving efforts can help generate innovative, sustainable and affordable living environments for all people. We're challenging student architects to transform Boston's dense urban landscape into a supportive environment that also demonstrates a sensitivity to Boston's architectural heritage, and the importance of that heritage to people in the region."
The Challenge: Affordable Green Housing
Among the parameters set forth by the BAC and TAT for this fall's course and competition is the use of prefabricated architectural solutions for the creation of affordable living environments. Instructors, sponsors and organizers hope the challenge will encourage students to develop new problem solving skills, and a greater understanding of the social behaviors that result from architectural decisions.