Design Matters Catalog

Quality design can be affordable. Affordable housing can embody quality design.

The City Design Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago is illustrating these basic principles by compiling Design Matters, the first Internet catalog of outstanding affordable housing design.

The catalog is currently under construction and will be launched in October 2001 on this website.

Design Matters will represent a broad spectrum of permanent housing in the U.S. built or rehabbed in the past twenty years: housing that is functional, innovative, satisfying . . . and above all, affordable to households with limited incomes. The catalog will include examples of creative and efficient built projects to demonstrate that, in affordable housing, design matters.

Project were identified by nominations and a national call for entries. Projects included in the catalog were selected from this pool by the City Design Center team and a nation-wide advisory committee. The selected projects illustrate diverse housing options for a wide range of households, building types, site planning, and technology practices.

The catalog will be a free resource for design professionals, developers, builders, community groups, consumers, policy makers, researchers, educators, students . . . anyone interested in affordable housing.

It will also demonstrate how good design supports one or more of these design objectives:

• Minimize construction and lifecycle costs.
• Support household and neighborhood fit.
• Be adapt to household changes.
• Provide universal accessibility.
• Meet high aesthetic standards.
• Maximize energy and resource efficiency.
• Promote healthy indoor environments.
• Support physical safety and security.