Affordable "green" homes touted for urban in-fill locations With the cost
of new homes in Chicago going through the roof, the time has come
to use some “good old-fashioned common sense” to design
and build affordable, energy-efficient houses for urban in-fill lots. That’s the
opinion of urban architect Hanno Weber, who along with architects
Kathleen Hess and Christopher Michaud has designed the “Court
House,” an innovative 21st-century home planned for the kind
of vacant in-fill lots that dot the South and West sides of the city.
Weber, adjunct
professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a principal of Chicago-based
Hanno Weber & Associates Architecture / Urban Design, created
the Court House for the recent “Green Homes for Chicago”
design competition sponsored by the city’s Department of Housing
and Department of Environment. Ideally designed
to be developed in groups of four on two side-by-side 25-by-125-foot
city lots, Weber said the Court Homes could be built at a cost of
$100,000 each, not including land costs, and marketed to home buyers
for $120,000. Each three-bedroom,
2.5-bath Court Home has 1,200 square feet of living area configured
two rooms deep on three levels. Designed as slab-on-grade construction,
the garden level of the home features a foyer with a closet, kitchen,
dining room, powder room, laundry and mechanical room. French doors
open from the dining room to a spacious private terrace walled with
recycled brick. A central stairway
leads to the second level of the home, which has the living room,
the master bedroom, a linen closet and two full baths. The baths are
built in a separate module back-to-back on the rear of the lot. Two
additional bedrooms are on the attic level of the home. View a site plan
for a cluster of Court Homes, and you’ll see four attached single-family
homes with steeply pitched roofs each built on an outside corner of
the two lots, like Medieval carriage houses grouped around a protected
30-by-30-foot courtyard. “The central
courtyard is key to the design of the Court Homes,” Weber said.
“It’s all about control of your castle’s inner world,
and the protected courtyard gives these homes daylight and security.” Access to the
traditional-styled stucco homes is through a six-foot wide gated court
way that is shared by four homeowners. Parking for four cars is provided
at the rear. What makes the Court Home “green,” or
energy efficient and environmentally safe? “The basic
house is a compact, well insulated (R-21 walls and R-38 roofs) space
that is configured to provide daylight to all spaces and natural ventilation
and convection, supplemented by attic exhaust fans,” Weber said. Each house benefits
from sharing an existing urban infrastructure and utilities, concentrated
plumbing services and the utilization of “energy-star rated”
windows and doors and appliances, as well as non-toxic, recycled and
ecologically sustainable building materials, Weber said. Energy efficiency
also is achieved through a heat pump system for heating and cooling
the houses, with supplemental gas heating in winter. “In addition,
solar panels on the south side of the steeply sloping roof, unshaded
by adjacent houses, are capable of generating 6,000 Kilowatts per
year,” he said. “The basic
house print of two rooms on three levels separated by a straight-run
stair, offers a dwelling envelope that can be rotated to face the
sun,” Weber said. “Rooms on the sides of the open stairwell
create a dwelling section that engenders convection and gives form
to a central utility core housing ductwork, flues and vents,”
he said. Perhaps the most
important concept of urban in-fill housing is to utilize every inch
of existing land and infrastructure. “Habitation,”
an exhibit showcasing a scale model of the Court Homes, including
site plans, renderings and specifications for this innovative in-fill
housing design will be on display from June 11 through July 11 at
the I Space Gallery, 230 W. Superior St. For more information, call
312-922-5589, or log on at info@hannoweber.com. |