Fifteen undergraduate students in New Jersey Institute of Technology’s architecture program have designed and built a prototype home that may be part of the solution to Newark’s housing crisis. The “tiny home” is approximately 8 feet by 12 feet and was designed to help address the city’s homeless population.
Erin Pellegrino and Charlie Firestone, adjunct professors of the design studio, also explore some of the root causes of homelessness and how people may be impacted both by individual circumstances and societal structures.
“It is impossible for homelessness to be ‘solved’ by architecture alone, but it’s critical that our industry and our students engage with and design for this issue,” said Pellegrino. “Homelessness is a real and pressing challenge for the world we live in, and our community in Newark has the potential to create meaningful change for people that live here in our city,” said Firestone.
Essex County leads New Jersey in the number of homeless residents with 1,693 – about 21% of the entire state’s total, according to the nonprofit affordable housing advocacy group Monarch Housing Associates, in its annual Point-in-Time count of homeless residents.
Christopher A. Watson, Newark’s City Planning Officer and Sakinah Hoyte, the city’s Homelessness Czar, have engaged with faculty and students at NJIT’s Hillier College of Architecture and Design in the development of a prototype affordable housing unit designed to provide a shelter solution for homeless Newark residents.
“We believe that every person in Newark deserves the dignity and safety that comes with having stable housing,” said Mayor Ras J. Baraka. “We applaud the NJIT students and professors for taking a serious look at the housing crisis in Newark, and using their knowledge to create a viable, functioning home that can help solve one of the most important issues of our time.
“Access to shelter remains an equity issue in this country, this city and as we are now engaged in the community input phase of our master plan, Newark360, this prototype provides an excellent example of the different approaches we must consider as a city to one, provide an affordable house option, and two, anchor vulnerable Newarkers in place,” said Watson.
Hoyte has provided students with the demographic profiles of the Newark community members they are designing for. “We have three extremely vulnerable groups who need housing: people with disabilities and other health issues, people who have partnered for safety on the street and that need to be housed together, and those who need shelter from domestic violence who often have children with them.”
The project, wholly designed and built by the students and professors, was also inspired by conversations about alternative housing solutions as they gain momentum in the general consciousness. Tiny homes have become trendy instagrammable phenomena; accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are increasing in popularity and legality in municipalities across the US, allowing for urban, ex-urban, and even sub-urban areas to densify (or re-densify); and the growing availability and accessibility of mass-production technologies has sparked a blossoming of modular home designs making use of CNC, 3D printing, and other fabrication technologies.
“I’m inspired by what it stands for, it is trying to solve something for the city of Newark. It can be deployed and easily moved from one site to another,” said Pramit Khatri, a student of the studio. “There’s a lot of stigma that surrounds homelessness and I think this is a really dignified way of solving it. This design is more of a home than a shelter.”
Photos courtesy of New Jersey Institute of Technology.
