2022 Housing Awards

Recognizing the best in housing design

Highland Park Residence-04

Highland park residence in Highland Park, Texas: EXTERIOR, POOL, and PATIO

The 2022 Housing Awards, presented by the AIA Housing and Community Development Knowledge Community, emphasize the importance of good housing as a necessity of life, a sanctuary for the human spirit, and a valuable national resource. This year, 14 projects were recognized for this honor across four categories:

  • Category One: One- and Two-Family Custom Residences
  • Category Two: One- and Two-Family Production Homes
  • Category Three: Multifamily Housing​
  • Category Four: Specialized Housing

2022 Housing Awards

aMews House

aMews House demonstrates the role of design in transforming an undesirable, restrictive Atlanta lot into a humane and beautiful space. The project follows earlier research featured at the 2017 Bi-City Biennale for Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzen, China, which explored the untold potential of leftover lots in cities worldwide.

2022 Housing Awards

Chandler Tiny Homes Village For The Homeless

Chandler Tiny Homes Village for the Homeless, designed, permitted, and built in just over three months, is helping Los Angeles place people in “bridge” shelters as they await permanent housing. An example of the city’s primary emergency response to homelessness, the project is an aggressive and timely template for addressing Los Angeles’ crisis.

2022 Housing Awards

Costa Rica Treehouse

Built for clients who surf and are stalwart environmentalists, this carbon-positive house is inspired by the jungle that surrounds it on Costa Rica’s Pacific coast. The home is made entirely of locally harvested teak, and it engages with the jungle on each of its three levels. It was envisioned as an open-air surfer’s hut where ocean breezes and ample daylight permeate its spaces.

2022 Housing Awards

Divine House

Overlooking a dramatic bend of Oregon’s McKenzie River, Divine House is a case study in crafting a compact, well-built structure. Built over a year by a small team of local carpenters with only the most basic elemental materials, Divine House explores the area in which familiar form and construction methods intersect with modern detailing and future resilience.

2022 Housing Awards

Flor 401 Lofts

Permanent supportive housing, like this project in Los Angeles, serves the recently unhoused and those living with mental illness, two populations most impacted by a lack of access to care and climate change. Flor 401 Lofts is distinguished by its design, which optimizes architecture’s potential to support health and well-being for these populations in a rare garden setting on the edge of the city’s Skid Row.

2022 Housing Awards

Goatbarn Lane

Goatbarn Lane is a full-time residence for the architect’s father, who sought to live simply and respectfully amid Colorado’s unique mountain landscape. Its architecture explores the power of less and, in doing so, the impact of each of its elements grows. Throughout, the home demonstrates that minimal design can connect us to places, simplify our lives, and inspire us in profound ways.

2022 Housing Awards

Highland Park Residence

Standing as a counter-proposal to the contemporary Tudor mansions and French chateaus that dominate Dallas’ Highland Park neighborhood, this project eschews exterior grandeur for an extraordinary interior environment. The central concept of the home was to provide a compelling setting for an active family with three young children and a significant collection of contemporary art.

2022 Housing Awards

Ohringer Arts

Ohringer Arts repositions a former furniture department store as an arts incubator and housing for artists in one of the few remaining structures from Braddock, Pennsylvania’s industrial heyday. The project represents the culmination of a vision to bring arts to the town just east of Pittsburgh while providing a unique opportunity for artists to live where they practice. It provides not only affordable housing but also a platform for artists to show their work and be inspired by their creative community. In addition, this revitalized piece of Braddock’s history has become an attraction for citizens and visitors, spurring the town’s rebirth.

2022 Housing Awards

Pemberton Residence

In contrast to immodest new homes and significant additions to existing dwellings that have altered many of central Austin’s neighborhoods, the single-story Pemberton Residence revels in its dynamic interior world. Nestled between the gables of its neighboring houses, the residence, built for empty nesters interested in trading unoccupied bedrooms for proximity to Austin’s bustling nightlife, draws inspiration from Joseph Eichler’s noted Northern California homes. Much less expensive to build than the typical construction surrounding it, the home is an enigmatic presence containing a delightful interior that waits to be discovered.

2022 Housing Awards

Rain Harvest Home (La Casa que Cosecha Lluvia)

This tripartite home in the mountains just west of Mexico City splits a traditional home's program across its densely vegetated site. All living functions are scattered across three porous, green-roofed buildings that appear to emerge from the landscape. All three collect rainwater, channeling it into a reservoir for on-site treatment and storage. The collected water accounts for 100% of the home’s year-round water requirements.

2022 Housing Awards

Renovation 1662

The owners of this historic rowhome in Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood purchased it so they could enjoy an urban, walkable neighborhood closer to their place of employment. A thorough renovation has transformed the house into a modern, light-filled, and open dwelling. Visually unchanged at the street, the home still respects the context of the neighborhood.

2022 Housing Awards

Rio House

This jungle hideaway on the cusp of Rio de Janeiro’s Tijuca National Park was built for clients looking to retreat from the city’s urban core to enjoy books, art, and, most importantly, the beauty of the natural landscape. The home is intentionally small in scale, and its architecture provides a minimal protective “uniform” to support the clients’ preferred lifestyle and to foster deep connections with the surrounding ecology.

2022 Housing Awards

The Aya

This new affordable housing project in Washington, D.C., provides short-term housing for up to 50 families that need emergency shelter. In addition, it supplies wraparound services for the families with space for a federally qualified nonprofit health center that offers services for the rest of the surrounding neighborhood. The project is much needed as Washington’s homeless population grows, despite a nationwide decrease.

2022 Housing Awards

West Campus Residence

After leaving a cherished modernist residence they called home for more than a decade, the architects and owners of this project purchased a student rental on an unusual 80-foot-wide lot. While it accommodates their growing family, which includes a set of twins, this home also offers a compact and efficient space that is tuned to its natural surroundings.

Image credits

Highland Park Residence-04

Casey Dunn