Finally! A large provider of lower-income housing has teamed up with a high-end architect to create a batch of 117 townhouses along Jamaica Bay that will embrace design and bring a dose of urban planning reality to an end of the market that has suffered at the hands of cheap developers and small thinkers for too long. Alexander Gorlin, a SoHo architect responsible for both Daniel Libeskind’s TriBeCa apartment and the Congregation Orach Chaim synagogue on the UES, is planning a series of modular, colorful homes that will range in size from 1,600 square feet to 3,200 square feet and in price from $180,000 to $450,000.

In addition to dispensing with the inexpensive equals low-quality, the project challenges some of the traditional underpinnings of affordable home building in the City over the past couple of decades. Recognizing what a disaster it has been putting driveways in front of townhouses (as Nehemiah and countless mom-and-pop developers have done to the great detriment of the urban fabric), Gorlin is placing them in the rear. “It’s better to have the front door open directly to the street,” he said. “The sidewalk, not the driveway, becomes a place to meet and talk.” Even if the end product is not to everyone’s taste (what design is?), the attitude alone is a huge step forward for Brooklyn–and the city as whole.
Affordable Houses Infused with Color [NY Times]