Housing Innovation
At the heart of housing innovation work is designing, conducting, and evaluating pilot projects with the potential to significantly improve the quality and quantity of affordable housing in Boston. Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab (iLab) and Boston Society for Architecture (BSA) are working together to unlock the power of design and policy to address housing issues.
These collaborations have taken a wide variety of forms including developing zoning that allows homeowners to add an additional dwelling unit (ADU), encouraging new residential designs via innovation contests, and a traveling 375 sq.ft. urban housing unit (UHU) whose aim was to change the public’s view of compact living. The latter resulted in a two-year compact unit zoning pilot which is based, in part, on public commentary created during the UHU’s tour around six Boston neighborhoods.
In 2020, through a co-hosted Housing Innovation Design Fellowship, the BSA and iLab led a collaborative exploration with residents, students, architects, artists, and many others to learn about the role that triple-deckers have played in the lives of Boston residents.
Through community conversations and workshops, we learned about what part of this iconic New England housing type most resonated with residents, like using shared spaces for community building or using their decks to engage with their streets at a distance. During the pandemic, people’s relationships to their homes naturally changed. We took this research and created Past, Present, and Future-Decker, a virtual exhibition that ran through the fall of 2020. Through exhibition programs we were able to hold more conversations about how housing and the process of building housing can be more affordable, more sustainable, and more focused on racial equity.
The Request for Ideas (RFI), Co-Creating Boston's Future-Decker, was released in the summer 2021, inviting teams and individuals to imagine and propose new housing for small sites (3,000-8,000 square feet) in Boston. The call closed on Friday, July 30, with a total of 20 submissions. Participants were invited to share ideas for multifamily housing in Boston’s neighborhoods with a focus on affordability, sustainability and community. The ideas are being showcased virtually and in-person, inviting responses and feedback on shared themes from the RFI submissions. The RFI responses will inform the second phase of the competition, which will include a request for innovative proposals for a yet-to-be-selected city-owned lot.
We invite you to learn more about this work and how to get involved below.
Imaginations of Home: A collaborative exhibition exploring the future of affordable housing in Boston and beyond
Through storytelling and design, this exhibition aims to explore the ways we imagine home and how housing can be a tool to build long lasting, sustainable communities. The 20 Co-Creating Boston's Future-Decker RFI submissions are featured in Imaginations of Home as the exhibition explores the future of affordable housing through a variety of perspectives.
Imaginations of Home opens at BSA Space on November 1, 2021.
Request for Ideas: Co-Creating Boston's Future-Decker
Envisioning the future of multifamily housing in Boston’s neighborhoods.
The RFI closed on Friday, July 30, with a total of 20 submissions. Participants were invited to share ideas for multifamily housing in Boston’s neighborhoods with a focus on affordability, sustainability and community. During the fall and winter of 2021, the BSA and Housing iLab will continue to engage with community members, sharing RFI ideas and soliciting more ideas. The RFI responses will inform the second phase of the competition, which will include a request for innovative proposals for a yet-to-be-selected city-owned lot.
Future-Decker Exhibition: Past, Present, and Future-Decker
The triple decker is an important physical manifestation of the generations of residents who have called Boston home. As we explore its history, the project itself looks to the future for the next iteration of the triple-decker. We aim to unlock ideas and visions to help tackle our housing crisis.
The exhibition explores people's experiences with triple-deckers in the city from the perspective of environmental, financial, and social values of the triple-deckers.
Future-Decker Conversation Series
This virtual conversation series was a part of the exhibition, Future-Decker. The series featured discussions with residents, architects, designers, and other practitioners as they shared and learned from one other about the past, present, and future of the iconic building type: the three-decker.
Speakers and participants will build upon the architectural, economic, and ultimately social value of triple and future-deckers in the city of Boston and the region.
Housing Innovation Workshop
A team from the City of Boston iLab, BSA, and MIT came together to workshop solutions to housing affordability. The previous two workshops, Developing Differently (2017) and Innovative Materials and Methods (2018) had proved to be invaluable in providing a space to innovatively address the challenges of housing affordability in the City of Boston. Thus, we knew that we wanted to once again bring together a group of dedicated participants to explore new housing ideas, this time on ways to facilitate the production of middle-scale multifamily housing in the city.
Community Conversations
The BSA and iLab held workshops to bring together the community around the stories and future of triple deckers in Boston. Findings from the community conversations built the foundation of the Future-Decker exhibition.
Meeting Recordings
If you missed a recent session related to the Future-Decker Request for Ideas (RFI), you can view all past sessions here.
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