(1888PressRelease)
December 03, 2007 - Portland, OR - Santa Barbra architect Keith Rivera has won first place honors in the Portland Courtyard Housing Design Competition. Along with recieving a $5,000.00 prize, the architect’s wining design will be featured in a series of related exhibitions and published in a competition monograph intended to serve as a housing idea source book.
The competition, sponsored by the City of Portland, is part of the city’s efforts to foster design excellence and the creation of new family-friendly housing in Portland's neighborhoods. Like many communites, Portland , has experienced an exodus of families due to the lack of affordable housing of appropriate size and quality. Participants were invited to submit innovative designs demonstrating how higher-density courtyard housing can serve as an attractive option for families with children, while also being environmentally friendly, affordable, and fitting into existing neighborhoods. The competition attracted over 250 submittals from around the country and the world.
The winning submission achieved a density of some 26 dwelling units per acre with individual, two story, modernist homes, while still providing traditional single-family amenities such as private yards and garages. The architect’s plan proposed six design principles as the basis for family-friendly infill housing: Fee Simple Ownership, Neighborhood Compatability, Open Space Hiearchy, Security / Privacy, Affordability by Design and Sustainability.
The winning design along with all the competition entries may be viewed on line at www.courtyardhousing.org/entries.html. The City of Portland intends to follow the recent competition with a Design-Build program to provide an opportunity for the implementation of the innovative ideas and principles developed in the initial contest.
For further information, contact Keith Rivera at 805.886.9834
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