Sixteen Houses

In April 1998, sixteen architects—Studio Works in Los Angeles, Lindy Roy in New York, Carlos Jimenez in Houston, and Stanley Saitowitz in San Francisco, among others—were invited to assemble teams to design a series of single-family houses for the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation in Houston, Texas. The goal of the Fifth Ward CRC is to provide high-quality affordable housing, and the architects selected responded with designs innovative in both aesthetic and financial issues. "16 Houses" documents the house proposals in striking renderings and photographs, and also addresses the question of affordable housing locally and nationally. Thus the volume provides a new model of collaborative design between institutions that can respond with innovation and vigor to federal initiatives in housing policy.