Project Description
Rosa Parks Apartments is a 94-unit tax credit community-based affordable rental apartment development consisting of 8 buildings scattered across 21 city lots in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago. As an affordable housing development, critical thought was put into providing buildings that would be economical to build and sustainable for long-term operation and maintenance. In order to achieve these goals, a straightforward design was developed with a limited number of parts and details including a limit of two windows types, the use of precast walls, simple yet clean common spaces and efficient unit layouts. A system of precast exterior load bearing wall panels were furred out for 5.5”of blown-in formaldehyde free fiber glass insulation and steel frame and metal panel bays connected to embed plates in the precast walls. Despite the repetition, parts, colors and textures of each building were carefully selected to appropriately fit their context. Though all of the buildings are built to the same specs, the largest building, a 27 unit 4-story elevator building, has received LEED Gold Certification and includes a solar thermal domestic hot water system, a geothermal system serving individual heat pumps and a heat recovery system for the in unit exhaust.