Yale Building Project

2014
role: Summer Intern and Engineering Coordinator
program: Minimal dwelling (Combined owner and tenant units)
location: Scranton Street, New Haven, CT
collaborators on tenant stair design and construction: Xiao Wu, Evan Dobson

For 2014, the Yale Building Project partnered with Neighbor Works New Horizons of New Haven, an organization committed to develop and operate affordable quality housing, and HTP Ventures LLC, a private equity firm interested in mass producing micro dwelling units.

The house is an approximately 800 square foot dwelling at 179 Scranton Street in the West River neighborhood of New Haven. The house is divided into one 500 square foot unit for the homeowner and one 300 square foot unit for a tenant.

Students worked independently during the first half of the Spring semester and then worked in teams to develop seven design proposals. For half the summer semester, the entire class of 54 first-year graduate students worked together as a studio to finalize the design of and build the selected house, before a group of 14 students completed the construction as part of a summer internship.

The design, fabrication and assembly of an external staircase was carried out over six weeks. The entrance to the tenant unit on the third floor, the stair is appropriately treated both as an identity-giving feature and a robust structure resisting the harsh western sun and other elements.