| Wolff Waters Place is a wonderful neighborhood. It is an apartment complex for low income families, but it is a public realm that is safe, and supports the social network that weaves together all 218 apartments and their occupants. Because funding comes with a 55-year covenant to remain affordable, sustainability and livability are essential. The buildings are energy efficient (LEED Silver and Gold certified) which is a common measure of sustainability. But we believe that a broader measure is whether the complex is a desirable and memorable place to live. To that end, our design focuses on safety, scale and beauty within the public realm. Cars drive on tree-lined streets not through endless parking areas, the buildings are arranged to shape the street or create “toddler-safe” courtyards, and most units are designed with front doors and/or kitchen windows facing streets or courtyards providing “eyes on the street.”
To fit within the suburban context, the buildings within the complex needed to vary in mass and height; the perimeter buildings are lower with a long three-story “spine” building in the center of the project. Furthermore, because the project is on “view corridor” streets, and next to a high-end resort country club, the architecture had to be indistinguishable from market rate projects. In fact, due to the sensitivity of placing low-income housing near high-end resort housing, the City wanted the appearance to be especially handsome. The “Santa Barbara” style was selected because it is familiar, of an appropriate scale, and can be personalized with a range of “add-on” elements (e.g. balconies, awnings, shutters, roof extensions, etc.) without losing the basic proportions and elegance of the buildings themselves.
Our initial organizing principle – the curved spine road – took form much as we had hoped. Formally it is a delight; the road curves slightly so that the pedestrian’s view subtly changes along the street. It also serves the functional purpose of creating a linear thread that weaves the entire site together – the cluster neighborhoods open along the western side, and the three-story main "spine" building stretches along the east side. On the east side of the three-story building is a pedestrian path that along with the sidewalk adjacent to the curved road creates a loop for evening strolls, all without crossing a street. The three-story building is built over an underground garage. Both three-story and underground parking are very unusual for a low-density suburban community. However, the City was willing to pay the first-cost premium for the garage for three reasons: it frees up an acre of the ground plane for recreation – basketball court, three tot lots and a community pool; it allowed the surrounding buildings to be relatively small in footprint thus creating numerous courtyards; and it created a definable public realm that was varied, orderly and unified in theme and scale. The change in building massing – from one-story at the perimeter view corridor streets to three-story along the inner spine – keeps the overall experience interesting and adds to the sense that not everything is revealed at once. There is discovery as one walks through the community.
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