99K House Breaks Ground

Mayor Bill White Joins AIA Houston,

Rice Design Alliance, and Harvey Builders

At a Groundbreaking for The 99K House

October 31, 11:15 am, 4015 Jewel Street, Houston, TX

 

Houston, TX (October 29, 2008) – Houston Mayor Bill White will break ground for the 99K House with AIA Houston, the Rice Design Alliance (RDA), and D. E. Harvey Builders on Friday, October 31, at 11:15 a.m. Organizers hope the house, designed by the winning team of Seattle architects Hybrid / ORA (Robert Humble, Joel Egan, Ben Spencer, Owen Richards, Tom Mulica, and Kate Cudney), will help rejuvenate the neighborhood, a goal of the Mayor’s Houston Hope program for struggling neighborhoods.

 

The groundbreaking will take place in Houston’s Fifth Ward at 4015 Jewel Street on a lot donated by the City of Houston through the Land Assemblage Redevelopment Authority (LARA) initiative. 

 

The 99K House Competition, announced in October 2007, called for the design of a single-family house with up to 1,400 SF, including three bedrooms and one-and-a-half to two bathrooms, to be built for $99,000 or less. The competition challenged designers and architects to design a sustainable, affordable house, with special consideration given to affordability, longevity, energy savings benefits, and appropriateness for the hot, humid climate of Houston. The 99K House will be built by D. E. Harvey Builders, Inc. and completed early next year. It will serve as a prototype for an affordable, sustainable and energy efficient house.

 

D. E. Harvey Builders, Inc. is donating its services as general contractor of the project. President David Harvey says that his firm was looking for a community project to celebrate its 50^th anniversary. He added that his employees have worked together to build Habitat for Humanity houses, and projects such as these engender team support within the company. The 99K house seemed to be the right project for the firm’s 50^th anniversary as Harvey is Treasurer of the Rice Design Alliance and sits on the board of the Houston Architecture Foundation, the non-profit arm of AIA Houston. Many other subcontractors are donating their services, including engineering expertise from Haynes Whaley Associates.

 

Once constructed, the winning house will be sold or auctioned to a low-income family through the Tejano Community Center.

 

The 99K House Competition Exhibition

From September 3 – October 30, an exhibition of 66 selected entries to the competition was held at the Architecture Center Houston, 315 Capitol. Local builders and Community Development Corporations were encouraged to view the selected designs, and exchange contact information with the architects and designers responsible for the projects and ideas showcased. A catalog was published to accompany this exhibition and includes illustrations of the 66 designs as well as contact information for the architects and designers of these designs.  An essay by juror Bryan Bell, founder and executive director of Design Corps, gives an overview of the competition and discuss how it fits within the larger context of affordable housing. The catalog sells for $9.99 and is available from RDA, AIA Houston, Brazos Bookstore, and bookstores at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Contemporary Arts Museum, and the Menil Collection. The exhibition will travel throughout the U.S.

 

The Jury

The following five jurors representing expertise in design, sustainability, construction of affordable housing, and Houston’s Fifth Ward, selected the designs for the exhibition, which include the winner and four finalists. Bryan Bell, Jr.,  Founder and Executive Director, Design Corps, Raleigh, NC;  Richard Farias, Executive Director, Tejano Community Center, Houston, TX; David Lake, FAIA, Principal, Lake | Flato Architects, San Antonio, TX; Michael Pyatok, FAIA,  Principal, Pyatok Architects, Inc., Oakland, CA; and Rocio Romero, Owner and Principal, Rocio Romero, LLC, Perryville, MO. 

For more information, please go to the competition website, www.the99khouse.com. The competition was supported, in part, by generous grants from the Houston Endowment Inc., the National Endowment for the Arts, the Texas Commission for the Arts, Houston Architecture Foundation, and the Houston Arts Alliance.

 

This year the Rice Design Alliance celebrates 36 years as a nonprofit, public education outreach program of the School of Architecture at Rice University. RDA is dedicated to the advancement of architecture, urban design, and the built environment in the Houston region through educational programs, active programs to initiate physical improvements, and its journal Cite: The Architecture + Design Review of Houston.

 

The American Institute of Architects, Houston Chapter, is the professional society for architects in the greater Houston area and has over 1,700 members. AIA Houston recently moved to downtown Houston in a newly created Architecture Center, a collaboration with the Houston Architecture Foundation, which gives grants for architecture-related projects and provides educational programming for the Houston community.