ARKDB_09/10: 2010

"Prefabricated Landscapes"

The PreFab Landscapes project will focus on affordable housing and sustainability through the seemingly incongruent combination of landscape design and modular housing. More specifically, the project will result in a new unit of affordable housing that explores the potential for combining efficiencies common to factory construction with a spatial, site-specific, exterior domesticity. The success of this project could offer new insights and alternatives to conventional affordable construction with an impact not only in the neighborhood, but throughout Little Rock and across Arkansas.

The project is a collaboration between the University of Arkansas, the non-profit Downtown Little Rock Community Design Corporation, and members of the construction industry. The Downtown Little Rock CDC has been working to impact the East of Main neighborhood, just south of MacArthur Park, since the early 1990’s. In 1993 President Clinton dedicated their first project, the Mahlon Martin Community Apartments, and the success of that initial project established the beginning of the revitalization efforts in area. The DLRCDC has been acquiring property, and creating partnerships with other non-profit and for-profit organizations to increase our development efforts and create a greater impact on the neighborhood. We see our partnership expanding to include a wide range of research into affordable and sustainable housing that can be built and tested at full-scale. The focus on the design, production, and implementation of new housing models for the 21^st century forms the shared basis for our collaboration.

Specifically, the project will result in a new home designed and built by 4th and 5th year students at the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture to be located at 1519 Commerce St. in Little Rock, AR.