While head of Yale’s architecture program, Charles Moore established an annual first-year design/build project with his colleague Kent Bloomer. Fifty years later, that effort, now called the Jim Vlock First Year Building Project, continues, and this year’s iteration is a building designed for formerly homeless residents of New Haven, Conn.
The program has built 29 houses in the city, and this year’s is the first of a five-year partnership, Homeless:Housed, with local nonprofit Columbus House. Past collaborators have included NeighborWorks New Horizons and Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven.
Zelig Fok and Haylie Chan
The 1,000-square-foot building contains two units: one ground-floor studio and one two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit with living spaces on the ground floor and a second story that spans a breezeway between the units. The window frames, stairs, cabinets, and dormers were all prefabricated in a facility on Yale’s West Campus.
Filmmaker Anne Munger and producer Matt Marr produced a film about this year’s house, A New Haven, which was submitted to the American Institute of Architects’ 2017 I Look Up Film Challenge. “When we first met them, [Columbus House CEO] Alison Cunningham … said, ‘We are Columbus House and our mission is to end homelessness,’ which I thought was the most kick-ass statement ever,” said student and team member Katrina Yin in the film. The project was completed this month, and residents are expected to move in next month.
