California Senior Housing Design Competition

Two San Francisco Bay Area housing non-profits, Suburban Alternatives Land Trust (SALT) and Northbay Family Homes (NFH) have, in the past 30 years, facilitated the building of 4,000 homes – half of them affordable to low-moderate income families. Together, SALT and NFH are sponsoring an open competition to develop ideas that optimize their site’s potential uses, including ideas that address the need for senior housing in a suburban setting. The Project site is located in the City of Novato, Marin County in a recently developed area known as “Bahia.” Construction is planned to begin upon securing financing.

Designers are encouraged to develop and present ideas that reflect SALT’s mission: assisting low-income individuals and families to secure good housing, become homeowners and improve their economic position by working with donors of land to maximize and leverage tax advantages and benefits generated in the course of developing a full array for land use options for each parcel, including affordable homes, jobs, recreation, agriculture and open space. Site planning and housing designs must demonstrate: innovative sustainable solutions that can also be applied to meet future housing needs, a zero net energy goal, multiple benefits including job creation, carbon and cost reduction, and opportunities for local food production/agriculture.

This competition will be conducted in two stages. The first stage will be open to all design professionals: architects, urban designers, landscape architects, engineers, and others who are interested in housing issues. All first stage submissions will be anonymous. A Competition Jury comprised of design professionals and community representatives will select the five most promising submissions to become Competition Finalists. Subject to financing, the Second Stage will proceed with each Finalist team receiving an honorarium toward their Second Stage competition costs, which will include design responses to Jury and community comments regarding their First Stage designs, and preparing a study model of their design. Second Stage teams must include at least one Architect licensed in the State of California. Association of out-of-state professionals with California-licensed colleagues (preferably those within an hours drive to the San Francisco Bay area) is permitted.

More info at http://www.nfh.org/competition.html