Our Alpha Boom Co-Housing project received design recognition from the New Jersey Chapter of the American Institute of Architects. It is the only project to be honored in the Unbuilt category this year.
The housing proposal aims to accommodate significant shifts in suburban landscapes. First, the shift from traditional “big box” retail to online retail leaves behind large abandoned structures and oversized parking lots. The project proposes a reuse and adaptation of these defunct structures to accommodate the second shift, an aging population. As a large portion of the populace enters their golden years and balks at the idea of traditional senior living typologies, the aging retail fabric could be appropriated to accommodate seniors who would otherwise have to leave their communities.
The project proposes a hybrid senior housing community and daycare for young children in place of an abandoned department store in New Jersey. The hybrid strategy aims to create diverse energy levels and activities throughout the complex in order to benefit both populations. Activities in and around the housing complex could mix the two communities together in both planned and chance encounters.
The combined senior housing and daycare community is largely enclosed by the existing structure, however, the design carves out and pushes through portions of the original building to create a porous series of indoor-outdoor spaces and courtyards. Modest housing units are located on the first level and supplemented with cooperative amenities like a kitchen, lounges and gardens. The second level incorporates the daycare and stretches across the length of the structure. Double height zones merge the amenity spaces of the older residents below with the classroom spaces of the young children above, creating truly shared, inter-generational links.
