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The team involving a public-private partnership won a U.S. Forest Service Innovation in Wood grant to develop a pocket neighborhood showcasing a holistic energy systems approach using wood. This pocket neighborhood for a rural timber community in central Arkansas triangulates three concepts. First, increase local construction efficiency through off-site fabrication using SIPs (structural insulated panels). Second, create operational affordability through Passive House standards involving high energy performance. Third, build a sense of place that promotes sociability. The pocket neighborhood is a new real estate product substituting shared neighborhood greens for front yards and car garages at the front of the house. The goal is to change the paradigm for suburban housing.
The site is currently a softwood timber farm for harvesting pine trees, which will be converted to housing in this growing region. An old-growth hardwood patch is preserved on the east side of the site. Pocket neighborhoods introduce a social coherence to otherwise asocial subdivisions through pedestrian-oriented networks connecting neighborhood greens, shared streets, alleys, and walking paths. Planning introduces a “shared street” with rain gardens and bioswales that also calm traffic—where motorists are compelled to behave sociably. Here, the street is an ecological and social asset rather than a liability.
SIPs are composite wood panels made from recovered wood waste sandwiching a thick layer of insulative foam with R-values meeting Passive House net-zero standards. This replaces the inferior balloon frame that leaks energy. Passive House standards are reached by combining SIPs with insulation wraps around foundations, and double-and-triple glazed windows. SIPs for walls and roofs compels an economy of form, where buildings are a simple volume. Neighborhood planning substitutes soft-engineered stormwater management facilities—bioswales, rain gardens, infiltration basins, etc.—for expensive hard-engineered facilities based on underground pipes, catch basins, curb-and-gutters, and impervious paving. Streets costs will be reduced by 40% since streets will not be used for underground drainage.
A powerful counter to the absence of social care fixes in rural communities is housing-neighborhood complexes that can readily support various levels of cooperative living. The five house typologies range between 950-2,400 sf (88-223 m), accommodating mixed income populations. The “living transects” of homes incorporate extensive covered building frontages—porches, galleries, balconies, and patios in defining shared neighborhood spaces, including streets. Generously sized building frontages add qualitative semi-private living space at 25 percent of the cost of conditioned space. The deployment of shared neighborhood greens and street spaces create a pedestrian and play network where the neighborhood template adds value, including social capital. The automobile does not dominate the neighborhood as it usually does in subdivisions. We need housing solutions that solve at the level of the neighborhood, merging social, material, and energy systems. The right housing environment may be the single most useful tool for building community resiliency and security amidst rural precarity.
We need housing solutions that solve at the level of the neighborhood, merging social, material, and energy systems. The right housing environment may be the single most useful tool for building community resiliency and security amidst rural precarity.
This project sponsored in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Forest Service
The University of Arkansas Community Design Center is an outreach center of the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, and one of a few university-based teaching offices in the United States dedicated to delivering urban design work. Originated in 1995, the center advances creative development in Arkansas through design, research, and education solutions. Nationally recognized in public-interest design, the center has its own downtown facilities and 5-6 professional design/planning staff, some who also teach. Beyond the focus on urban projects, UACDC has developed eight place-making platforms to shape civic design and public policy at state and municipal levels. These interdisciplinary platforms include 'missing middle housing,' 'agricultural urbanism,' 'transit-oriented development,' 'context-sensitive street design,' 'watershed urbanism,' 'big box urbanism,' 'smart growth,' and 'low impact development,' vocabularies which are locally articulated but hold universal currency.
