Located in San Jose, California, this house complex won the 2009 Residential Architects Design Award : Merit from the Residential Architect Magazine and also the 2008 Silicon Valley Business Journal Structures Award as the Affordable Housing Development of the Year.
This affordable rental housing complex is conceived as a new urban district. It is organized around a main street, Paseo Senter, which runs from the facing arterial roadway to the 13-acre Coyote Creek Park green space. Though this paseo will allow access by cars, it is designed to calm traffic and empower pedestrian use.
It is a delightful project showing an exuberance of life and culture. Its admirable translation of the plaza and paseo prototypes contribute a human scale and sense of place. This is housing that makes a community, where one was sorely needed.
Lined at ground level with active uses, the paseo bustles with the activity of entry stoops, a community room, a library, leasing offices, social worker support spaces, a child-care center, American Indian Educational Program center and a grandparent caregiver center. Three stories of residential apartments are located above in a classic urban-mixed use style.
