Living Air-Right: Redefining Affordable Housing in NYC

April 25, 2017 | by Archipreneur

Welcome to our projects series where we present benchmarks of urban living – self developed by architects and creative city makers. This week we want to present you a project by New York City based architects Beomki Lee and Chang Kyu Lee.

Adding cabins to unused roof tops like CABIN SPACEY or designing houses on misshaped “leftover” lots like Jonathan Tate – when it comes to inventing new genres for urban living, Archipreneurs can be quite creative.

The two architects Beomki Lee and Chang Kyu Lee now take on the air rights of existing buildings in New York City and proposes that affordable housing and public programs can be build there. This projects has just earned them an honorable mention in the New York Affordable Housing Challenge.

In response to the increasing lack of home ownership in New York City – more than 75% of residents rent rather than own – a “Instant City” is proposing new affordable housing design combined with public programs. This proposal does not only provide sufficient living spaces but also foster community-based activities by reconsidering air-right of the city that has been overlooked for a long time. A “Instant City” celebrates multi-dimensional interaction between habitants and city structure while maintaining habitants’ daily activities within the condition of new urban life.

Instant City: Living Air-Right by Beomki Lee, Chang Kyu Lee

Collecting of Air-Right brings opportunities to maximize capacity to contain affordable housing units within the limited spaces, but also it gives another level of community composition which is flexible and open to existing city plot. This project seeks to utilize abandoned air-right spaces as new possibilities for affordable housing. Since each building categorized by zones has every different restriction in terms of FAR, “Instant City” respects divers contexts of the existing neighborhood in Manhattan.
Instant City: Living Air-Right by Beomki Lee, Chang Kyu Lee

“Instant City” also offers a new type of public area called “Living Surface”. By differentiating sizes and materials of the platform, the surfaces serve a lot of community-based functions to encourage the interaction between residents and to let people share their culture together. The types of modules for these spots include stairs, playgrounds and gardens.
Instant City: Living Air-Right by Beomki Lee, Chang Kyu Lee