Breaking the Fourth Wall: Week of May 1

"Breaking the Fourth Wall" is our weekly series that directs the blog's spotlight toward a particularly innovate or promising affordable housing project, luminary, or organization. 

Image Credit: Design Philadelphia 

Today we highlight a Philadelphia micro-house initiative that promises to combine the elusive goals of substantiality, affordability, and bold design. The New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC) has already undertaken a Neighborhood Stabilization Program throughout the Kensington, Fishtown, and Port Richmond neighborhoods and plans to turn the area's proliferation of vacant lots into an opportunity for affordable housing that prizes efficiency and cost effectiveness. The "weeHouse" proposal involves placing affordable, attractive, and environmentally-friendly modular homes whose "stick built construction are efficient in quantity" on these empty parcels in an attempt to make more affordable housing available in Philadelphia. Unlike many other proposals, weeHouse grew in part out of challenges posed to architects to expand the scope of modular home design to include stylish and green construction while making good use of vacant urban land and meeting government affordable housing objectives. The plans for the modular homes, still in the theoretical phase, run contrary to the notions that affordable housing must be unattractive and unwieldy- in contrast, they are beautifully conceptualized by teams at Alchemy Architects, leave a green footprint, and can be constructed for an estimated 20% less than comparable projects, plus reduced financing and long-term energy costs. While the plans to build clusters of these affordable are not yet funded, their potential application in vacant lots throughout Philadelphia, innovative design features, cost saving possibilities, and NKCD's impressive track record of forming successful partnerships with public and private organizations including the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, design and architecture firms, and affordable housing development agencies like Diamond & Associates suggest a big future for these small and inventive affordable dwellings.