Public Futures

Last Monday, the AIA’s Right-to-Housing group convened its third iteration of an ongoing panel series that asks architects (and architecture) to respond to the premise that housing is a fundamental right. Group lead Karen Kubey moderated the latest conversation, between Nathan Rich, principal of Peterson Rich Office (PRO), and Felicia Gordon, president of the Hernandez Houses Resident Association.

PRO began working with NYCHA eight years ago, notably authoring a 2020 report outlining scalable, replicable strategies for the restoration of the agency’s aging properties. Deferred maintenance currently sits at $32 billion, and Rich cited leaking roofs, poor thermal performance, and failing plumbing systems as common problems among the city’s 326 public housing blocks. “Some estimates say that within the next four years or so, the cost to repair these buildings will exceed the cost to rebuild them, and so we are coming up to a critical point in that process,” he said. (PRO’s visioning for NYCHA, plus earlier, related work conducted during a fellowship from the Institute for Public Architecture, is currently on view at Architecture Now: New York, New Publics at the Museum of Modern Art.)

“It needs to be sustainable,” added Gordon. “There are billions of dollars to be invested into the conversion, but if the materials are subpar and cheaper on purpose, then how sustainable will it be moving forward? Isn’t that the whole purpose of sustainability? We need to make sure that whatever we do today is going to be there far into the future.”

The next phase of PRO’s work with NYCHA comprises extensive community engagement consultation, made possible through the organization’s PACT program. “Architects can do more than just build,” Rich told NYRA after the event, “we can also galvanize people around good ideas, mediate, and help visualize concepts to build momentum.”