Nightingale Village, a housing development project in Melbourne, Australia, is making a name for itself in the architecture industry for its innovative approach to sustainable housing. What sets Nightingale Village apart is the unique role of architects as developers, taking on not just the design but also the financial and construction aspects of the project.
The project was born out of a desire to provide affordable and environmentally sustainable housing that puts the needs of people and communities first. The developers believe that architects are uniquely positioned to drive the creation of socially and environmentally responsible housing models, given their training in design and attention to detail.
The development comprises seven multi-residential buildings, with a total of 209 apartments, all built with sustainable design features such as solar panels, rainwater harvesting, and green roofs. One of the key features of the development is that the apartments are sold at cost directly to owner-occupiers, cutting out the profit-driven middlemen that drive up housing prices.
Nightingale Village also places a strong emphasis on community spaces and facilities, such as a rooftop garden, shared laundry facilities, and a bike repair station. These spaces are designed to encourage social interaction and reduce the need for individual resources.
The project’s collaborative and innovative approach involves architects, developers, and community members working together to create a socially responsible and sustainable housing model. This is a departure from the traditional top-down approach to development, where developers dictate the design and function of buildings without input from the communities that they will serve.
By taking on the role of developers, architects in Nightingale Village are breaking down the boundaries between disciplines and redefining the traditional role of architects in the building process. They are demonstrating that architects have a crucial role to play in driving socially and environmentally responsible building practices and that they can act as a force for positive change in the housing industry.
The Nightingale Village project has received international recognition for its innovative approach to sustainable housing, and it has inspired similar projects in other cities around the world. The project serves as an excellent example of how architects can use their skills and expertise to create positive social and environmental outcomes, not just in the built environment but also in society as a whole.
In March 2023, Alexis Kalagas posted the article “Nightingale Village” at ArchitectureAU.com. See the full article at ArchitectureAU.com.
]]>To learn more about Jason, go to his:
Website: https://boyervertical.com/#
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasondboyer/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/boyervertic…
]]>To see more about Drew, visit his website at: https://langarchitecture.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drew-lang…
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/langarchite…
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Urban Land’s Spring 2022 cover depicts a groundbreaking micro-housing project in the heart of downtown at 320 West Cedar Street in San Diego’s Little Italy. Designed, developed, owned, and managed by local architect Jonathan Segal, the 42-unit structure features 5 low-income apartments, two commercial retail spaces on the ground floor, and a distinctly separate single-family townhouse designed by Matthew, his son, that looks like a cube on the corner. And all on a 5,000-square-foot postage stamp size lot.
Like all of Segal’s projects—he now owns and rents 160 units in 5 buildings in and around San Diego—The Continental began as an experiment. This time, the architect cum developer (cum general contractor cum owner cum property manager) wanted to provide housing for people who worked downtown who didn’t have cars. The result: micro workforce houses at a price point of 65 percent of the average market rent.
The architect’s penchant for experimentation has earned him dozens of top local, state, and national accolades from groups like the American Institute of Architects for residential and urban design. In mid-2020, he was awarded Master Architect for the City of San Diego, the youngest architect at then 59 to receive the honor in a field with 5 living recipients whose average age is 91. He was also awarded California State AIA’s 2021 Maybeck Award for career design work.
Urban Land spoke with Segal about The Continental and his innovative approach to projects that push the envelope of possibilities.
What makes your firm stand out?
Segal: We don’t have any clients. We do our own work. We develop our own work. Each project that we do is sort of an experiment of what we think is pertinent to the time or germane to what is at issue at the time.
Every time we do something, it’s rooted in architecture—it’s not from development. It’s not numbers. It’s not beans. It’s not density. It is: What is right and what are we trying to investigate as an urban architectural experiment?
The Continental was created because the housing downtown was expensive and we needed to create some kind of workforce housing so people who didn’t have cars and could not pay the extra freight for a parking space could have a unit and we wouldn’t have to build an underground parking garage, which would save us money. And that was the genesis of what we wanted to do. We wanted to provide urban workforce housing.
How was this project informed by the California housing crisis and what are the chief obstacles to getting this type of affordable project done?
Segal: This was our answer to the current housing affordability crisis. It’s the law of economics; it’s supply and demand. If there’s big demand, and little supply, things get expensive. There’s a whole bunch of supply and no demand, things get real cheap.
I don’t think that the cities are allowing us to build quickly enough and easily enough and efficiently enough. They’re still getting in our way. They’re just not letting the gates open. It’s amazing to try and get something processed still. The fees are outrageous. I wish that we could work closely with cities to vet issues that would make it more efficient to process a building permit—clearly, that would be the key to the supply issue.
What inspired the design of The Continental?
Segal: We wanted to develop a project with no parking. Its façade of balconies is patterned after a Lincoln Continental car grill. So if you look at the pattern of the late ‘50s Lincoln Continentals, the grills in front of the radiators have a pattern and that was the genesis of a pattern created with the decks. Everything is car-related for me. I collect ‘50s Italian cars and ‘50s and ‘60s American cars. There is an incredible design vocabulary in these cars that I build from.
When did it come online and who is your target renter?
Segal: It was two years ago in December 2019. What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to make it for the people who actually work in Little Italy to live in Little Italy. So if you’re a bartender and you walk three blocks to work, you don’t need to pay $400 for a car payment, another $200 for license and insurance, which is $700 a month. You can apply that to your lifestyle and/or your unit. And if I can make your unit $700 or $800 less expensive a month because it doesn’t have a parking space attached to it, there’s more savings. So it’s just all-around lifestyle savings for people that can’t afford expensive downtown. The rents for 37 of the units, which are 350 square feet or less, are $1,595 to $1,995 with affordable ones at about $900 a month.
Initially, when it came online, this was an experiment. This was sketchy, risky. They didn’t immediately rent up. We had to get our market of the people without the cars in and that was a tight, small market at the time; it’s grown significantly now.
Social interaction is important in urban architecture, so we created an outdoor space at the top of the building, facing the ocean, facing the San Diego Bay. It then has its washer and dryer room connected to it so you can go up and be social, do your laundry, and then socialize with people in the building and have a fabulous view you couldn’t afford because you can only afford the unit on the second floor. So very democratic the way it enables all people to enjoy the best parts.
It is a very good product type to develop provided you don’t have to provide parking for it. And we’re seeing that all over San Diego now; we’re seeing a lot of developments. We do by example, and they copy. They’re everywhere now.
What makes your micro-housing design unique?
Segal: Besides bringing a substantial reduction in parking, we brought large individual private outdoor living spaces to indoor living. That is extremely important in a small rental and also to capture the incredible San Diego weather. And we brought an efficient layout of living space. It’s 350 square feet or less and we have a big, huge sheet of glass at the end of it so the space feels like it’s larger whereas typical developers put a four-by-four or five-by-five window at the end, this is a full-blown, huge commercial-grade window system and a nice patio that’s eight by eight.
It’s only been two years but what kind of turnover are you seeing?
Segal: Our tenants are staying. We were wondering about the units being so small if the turnover would be more than the larger complexes with the larger units and the answer is no, it’s basically the same. It’s crazy. It’s also important to remember Matthew developed a single-family residence and placed it over his Remedy Pharmacy. This living over the store row house is another typological pattern that needs to be understood in urban San Diego regardless of the unit type. We try to be a little less expensive, so we have less turnover because turnover is costly.
What are the sustainable elements of The Continental?
Segal: No parking, no cars, more transit use, more walking, more healthy lifestyle. We have nominal parking, 9 parking spaces for 40 units. And if you’re walking and your neighbor’s not because your neighbor has a car and you’re walking a mile or two a day, you’re going to be healthier. Your being healthier is going to help with your longevity. It’s going to help the medical system—it’s on and on and on. Sustainability isn’t just using bamboo floors. You know, it’s an idea, not necessarily a product. People get that confused. High density is sustainable. Urban suburban sprawl is not. I don’t care if you’re making it out of recycled building paper—your whole house—it doesn’t matter. You’re burning fossil fuels to get from here to there.
I have the most efficient mechanical electrical units that you can buy. The building is made out of concrete so the maintenance on the building is almost nothing. I’m not painting it. I’m not staining it. I’m not doing any redos. The storefront is an expensive product that lasts longer than cheap builder/developer windows. Operable windows for cross ventilation so you don’t have to run an air conditioning system if you don’t want to. We have complete solar, as much as we can fit on the roof to offset the building expenses. We don’t have batteries.
How much does the solar offset the building expenses?
Segal: It covers about 80 replace of the building itself, not the units. We just don’t have enough physical real estate area up there. We would have put more but there’s the physical square footage of the buildable solar area limited us, which is pretty typical for urban housing. You’re limited by your roof.
Do the smaller units make the math work but also mean more management?
Segal: Yes, smaller units allow us to charge less rent. And yes, you’re going to have a couple more units of turnover just by the mere fact that a percentage on a higher number is going to equate to more move-outs. So it is more labor-intensive or management intensive to manage smaller units. Without a doubt, there’s no question.
Does it have any green certifications such as LEED?
Segal: We don’t believe in that. We’d rather spend the money on the building making it green rather than spending ten grand on some certification expert to certify that we’ve done what we’re supposed to do.
This is also a mixed-use project…
Segal: We have two retail spaces. Matthew actually lives above the store like my wife and I have done since 1989. He has a holistic pharmacy called Remedy with his wife and they’re raising their first child there, Oliver.
You mentioned another rowhouse development where you created fee simple ownership over 30 years ago…
Segal: I was trying to get a fee homeownership to downtown and I cut a 15,000 square foot property into 15-foot-wide lots. And then I created something I call ‘convertible housing.’ I’m going to give you the opportunity to have sort of an extra flex space that you can either have your home office in or you could rent out as a separate unit. And if you bought one of the homes that also came with a granny flat, there would be an additional commercial space under your row house. Physically you had your business below and your home above, no commute required. And you can also rent out those spaces for income. So if you get the down payment from your parents, effectively you can live out of it for free. And that was my first foray into developing fee simple living at home and working at home. That was ‘98 and we called the project Kettner Row.
How do you replicate the best of The Continental in other projects?
Segal: We are now starting to incorporate micro-units as part of our product types. So the building next door, the high-rise—25 replace of the units are 350 square feet.
What’s your next project?
Segal: It’s a high-rise that we’re currently getting ready to build next door to The Continental. And because we own contiguous properties next to each other, we are able to for a maximum building height basement of the Continental property and this basement allows us to have a glass wall on the property lines that we wouldn’t be able to otherwise have.
We bought a 50-by-100-foot lot and we developed a 73-unit, 23-story tower there on it. We have an automated parking system that goes with that, which is kind of a first of its kind in San Diego. Typically, a downtown building has got maybe six levels below grade of parking. So you drive into a hole and you spiral down six floors to a space that has bad air and maybe encounter unsavory people without any security.
Our system basically takes half the area of a conventional garage. Your car rolls into this little vestibule parking, and you get out and the machine comes and takes it away. And then it puts it on an elevator, and it stacks it on the eight-story parking area against the building where we don’t have windows. And we’re doing it on a non-buildable lot—50 by 100—in downtown San Diego, so there’s an experiment. There’s a demonstration. No one’s done it. So there’s an opportunity.
Where does the project stand now?
Segal: We hope to break ground in September. We’re in the final process of getting our entitlements and our building permits. The cost of the building is around $31 million construction costs for 73 apartments. We’re giving away eight units to the city of San Diego free of charge for affordable housing. So the city doesn’t have to put a dime out and they’re getting these subsidized units that are about 35 percent on the dollar for rent so if it’s a $3,000 unit, it’s $1,000. If it’s a $4,000 unit, it’s $1,300. It creates a pretty good deal for everybody.
See more about Jonathan Segal {here}.
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Shouldn’t We All Be Developers is a book by Architect & Developer Roger Zogolovitch, founder of {Solidspace}, a design and development company in London. I was really excited to pick up this book. It is a short book now only available on Kindle at {Amazon.com}. Roger recently gave an interview on the Business of Architecture podcast with Enoch Sears {here} which is really fantastic and worth a listen. Roger has a lot of experience and insight as an architect who develops work.
From the title and list of chapters, I really thought it would heavily touch on architects (who I thought was the “we”) developing their own work. I was wrong. This is more of a manifesto of utilizing what author Roger Zogolovitch calls “gap sites.” London real estate, like most of the western world, has seen a surge of growth in the past decade. Prices are unreachable by the general populous. Zogolovitch wants cities to focus on smaller, leftover parcels of land that go undeveloped. He identifies gap sites as “spaces next to railways, behind houses, around factories and warehouses.” He lobbies for an increase in providers of housing through more permissive and “rational” legislative regimes.
There really isn’t much beyond the idea of gap sites. He walks through a few of his ideas, most of which are very contradictive, and ultimately include a heavy-handed government giving him an advantage over the market. There is almost a complete naiveté in his belief that society would be best off if we handed over the keys to a select few, who would naturally do the right thing. “If enough smaller guys got together, they could make a better fist of things than the big battalions who seem to dominate ideas about where and how we should live, and what it should look like… If we champion this smaller scale, independent developer, not only will they use their skills and imagination to build that supply, they will use their development instinct to identify these gap sites to deliver their projects.” I don’t buy it. Most developers are chasing the last dollar. Criticism aside, he does create really nice work. His recent project that he developed and London firm AHMM designed is beautiful and has won many awards.
Zogolovitch became frustrated as a practicing architect with the professional practice in the UK. “I decided to take on a wider responsibility for my work. I wanted to be in control of the projects that I undertook and I wanted to be able to engage with all aspects of making buildings, not just their design.”
Zogolovitch argues in his first chapter on Planning that the planning permission required in London real estate waters down a project to the quickest iteration that the designers could achieve. Planning permission is critical to a development’s financial success, and should be done as soon as possible in the design process in order to secure the project for the developer. This “determines a building be built to its earliest and least developed design iteration, allowing the quality of the finished development to suffer.” This is his argument that government should get out of the way of development. Let there be an as-of-right system similar to other global cities such as New York City.
In the second chapter on Land, Zogolovitch discusses the trading market for undeveloped London raw land. There is apparently a value assessed to a land’s potential, and that value is traded between international investors until someone takes that raw land and begins construction. At which point, the potential value is void and the real value will be assessed. This trading market drives up prices of not only raw land, but all land within the city and makes homes writ large unaffordable for many Londoners. Zogolovitch wants to end this practice.
Zogolovitch also brings up the fact that nearly sixty percent of undeveloped land in London is owned by the Local Authorities. Zogolovitch proposes to create a new government entity called the London Land Commission (LLC) that would assemble these parcels (both those owned by Local Authorities and ones by foreign investors) solely to promote the development of new homes.
This entire argument is counterintuitive to Zogolovitch’s initial argument of less government interaction. This time, when it is advantageous for the “small, local developer,” he wants a heavy-handed government to give him a leg up over the market. While he personally may have the best of intentions, I cannot buy into the idea that all “small, local developers” will have equally good intentions. If there is an incentive being handed to developers, of any sort, those seeking maximum gain regardless of quality will find a way.
In Zogolovitch’s fourth chapter on Brand, he argues that larger companies such as John Lewis should be developers. John Lewis is a large department store chain similar to Macy’s in the United States. He argues that a large brand name could help reassure otherwise NIMBY’s (Not In My Back Yard) that the development next to them is of quality by quality people.
“Followers would positively welcome John Lewis branded housing next door to them for they would trust the brand to act in as considerate and thoughtful a manner possible so as not to disrupt their lives or run an untidy site during construction. The would expect the brand to deliver on their promise of quality, carefully priced housing, good value and customer service as principles upheld throughout.”
This entire idea blows my mind. While I do agree that a branded product is a really good idea for the real estate market, and an identity that people could gather behind would likely help sales, none of this would help in providing housing to people at a lower price. You cannot run a jobsite that will bow to the needs of neighbors without driving up costs or time (which is also cost). This is also another contradiction of Zogolovitch’s argument within the book. He wants small developers, but the biggest name brands? Large companies, especially ones who want to protect their brand identity, which is what he is arguing for, are not going to work with small, local developers. They will be bigger than Toll Brothers or Turner Construction. This contradicts a lot of his earlier arguments.
I personally believe that large-scale consolidation of home building will happen in America. I do believe this will help drive some costs down, but most definitely at the expense of watering down the product even further.
In the fifth chapter on Money, Zogolovitch discusses the London mortgage market and how it has escalated in recent years to prohibit many people from every qualifying to finance a home. I was really hoping that this chapter would have real information and proposals of the financial realities of development. Instead, Zogolovitch once again is asking for this new government entity, the LLC, to undermine market speculation and “enlist the support of a new brand of independent developers.” He argues that the LLC should legally separate land from the buildings developed atop of it to drive down the costs of development. Instead of the LLC selling off land to developers, though only these small independent ones, the LLC would lease the land to the development and retain ownership. This is an interesting proposition, but once again argues for a heavy government hand helping a select few developers. His firm, Solidspace, would no doubt be one of those.
Overall, I think that Zogolovitch has an incredible naiveté about development. “Independent and small-scale developers are a resource for the making of more homes and have the right skills needed to work on small gap sites.” There is no evidence that small-scale developers have any more morals than any other developer. Trust is an important asset for all parties in the construction industry, developers, architects, contractors, subcontractors, etc. Zogolovitch argues that for the past 40 years, developers have picked the low hanging fruit as sites to be redeveloped and that the next phase of housing will be both more complex and more interesting as a consequence. This is likely true.
Overall, Shouldn’t we all be Developers is a decent read and worth a few hours of your time. It is a short book currently only available on Kindle at {Amazon.com}. The book is a manifesto on why we should exploit gap sites as a means of helping London’s current housing crises. Roger has developed some amazing buildings and knows his stuff. That said, I can’t help but be a bit agitated with his view of a heavy-handed government giving him an advantage over market economics. There is too much emphasis on the small-local-developer being a good guy.
I think his gap site idea is really great, and not the first time I have heard it. Architect & Developer Jonathan Tate of OJT in New Orleans is also doing something similar with his Starter Home* project. See more about Jonathan {here}.
Mark R. LePage of EntreArchitect recently interviewed Developer Design/Build Architect Chris Krager from Austin, TX. Listen below to hear Chris’ story on how he began developing work right out of graduate school. See more about the EntreArchitect podcast at entrearchitect.com. See more about Chris at krdb.com.
In April 2020, Enoch Sears of the Business of Architecture Podcast interviewed Cady Chintis, the co-founder of WC-Studio based in Tacoma, Washington. It’s a great and honest interview of how architects can finance and develop their work. You can listen to the interview on iTunes {here}, the YouTube video above, or from the Business of Architecture website at businessofarchitecture.com.
I had the pleasure to interview Cady and John for the book, see the interview {here}. See more about WC Studio, their developments, and their efforts on creating housing for the missing middle at wc-studio.com.
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