With the cost of new homes in Chicago going through the roof, the time has come to use some “good old-fashioned common sense” to design and build affordable, energy-efficient houses for urban in-fill lots.
That’s the opinion of urban architect Hanno Weber, who along with architects Kathleen Hess and Christopher Michaud has designed the “Court House,” an innovative 21st-century home planned for the kind of vacant in-fill lots that dot the South and West sides of the city.
Weber, adjunct professor at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a principal of Chicago-based Hanno Weber & Associates Architecture / Urban Design, created the Court House for the recent “Green Homes for Chicago” design competition sponsored by the city’s Department of Housing and Department of Environment.
Ideally designed to be developed in groups of four on two side-by-side 25-by-125-foot city lots, Weber said the Court Homes could be built at a cost of $100,000 each, not including land costs, and marketed to home buyers for $120,000.
Each three-bedroom, 2.5-bath Court Home has 1,200 square feet of living area configured two rooms deep on three levels. Designed as slab-on-grade construction, the garden level of the home features a foyer with a closet, kitchen, dining room, powder room, laundry and mechanical room. French doors open from the dining room to a spacious private terrace walled with recycled brick.
A central stairway leads to the second level of the home, which has the living room, the master bedroom, a linen closet and two full baths. The baths are built in a separate module back-to-back on the rear of the lot. Two additional bedrooms are on the attic level of the home.
View a site plan for a cluster of Court Homes, and you’ll see four attached single-family homes with steeply pitched roofs each built on an outside corner of the two lots, like Medieval carriage houses grouped around a protected 30-by-30-foot courtyard.
“The central courtyard is key to the design of the Court Homes,” Weber said. “It’s all about control of your castle’s inner world, and the protected courtyard gives these homes daylight and security.”
Access to the traditional-styled stucco homes is through a six-foot wide gated court way that is shared by four homeowners. Parking for four cars is provided at the rear. What makes the Court Home “green,” or energy efficient and environmentally safe?
“The basic house is a compact, well insulated (R-21 walls and R-38 roofs) space that is configured to provide daylight to all spaces and natural ventilation and convection, supplemented by attic exhaust fans,” Weber said.
Each house benefits from sharing an existing urban infrastructure and utilities, concentrated plumbing services and the utilization of “energy-star rated” windows and doors and appliances, as well as non-toxic, recycled and ecologically sustainable building materials, Weber said. Energy efficiency also is achieved through a heat pump system for heating and cooling the houses, with supplemental gas heating in winter.
“In addition, solar panels on the south side of the steeply sloping roof, unshaded by adjacent houses, are capable of generating 6,000 Kilowatts per year,” he said.
“The basic house print of two rooms on three levels separated by a straight-run stair, offers a dwelling envelope that can be rotated to face the sun,” Weber said. “Rooms on the sides of the open stairwell create a dwelling section that engenders convection and gives form to a central utility core housing ductwork, flues and vents,” he said.
Perhaps the most important concept of urban in-fill housing is to utilize every inch of existing land and infrastructure.
“We should not waste the essence of the city – vacant land, the streets, utilities and infrastructure that are already there,” Weber said.
“Habitation,” an exhibit showcasing a scale model of the Court Homes, including site plans, renderings and specifications for this innovative in-fill housing design will be on display from June 11 through July 11 at the I Space Gallery, 230 W. Superior St. For more information, call 312-922-5589, or log on at info@hannoweber.com.
Real estate columnist and media consultant Don DeBat has written about Chicago-area housing and mortgage markets since 1968. He is president of Don DeBat and Associates, www.dondebat.net.