Designing for Density: Redesigning the Built Environment for More People

What Impact Can Design Teams Have On Density and Affordability?

To answer these questions, designer and urbanist Hannah Hoyt, Gramlich Fellow at Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies interviewed 30 professionals working in the development sector. The findings? To help make housing more affordable, the report recommends design team’s consider multiple strategies that can curb development costs in all three categories: land costs, soft costs and hard costs, with a focus on what savings are within their day-to-day control and can be passed on to occupants.

Land costs refer to the cost of acquiring land—and amounts to approximately 10% to 20% of total development costs for a typical multifamily project. Examples of strategies to maximize land value include selecting a site that offers economies of scale, considering design solutions for oddly shaped lots or scattered sites and renovating, converting or co-locating housing with existing buildings. A standard approach to site evaluations that considers everything from soil and site clearance to grade and zoning can, according to the report, go a long way to identifying scalability and avoiding unexpected site preparation costs.  

Hard costs are the costs of construction, which can be divided into four sub-categories: substructure and site prep, shell and structure, interiors, and services. Hard costs amount to 50 to 70% of the total costs. Examples of strategies that can have a positive impact on hard costs include designing units for maximum flexibility and efficiency, investigating new techniques and materials and investing in energy and water performance to realize long-term savings for a project.

Finally, soft costs include all other costs—financing, design, engineering, permitting and any impact fees. In this category, engaging general contractors early and as partners can help realize savings and sharing more information with subcontractors can result in more accurate cost-estimating.

The property’s central location maximizes what they can do with the site. Its access to public transit ensures that residents can live comfortably without a car, reducing local traffic and carbon emissions, as well as the need for parking.

By building with wood—which allows for pre-fabrication off-site and quick construction—the developers met an aggressive schedule resulting in significant cost reductions of labour and construction.

“Cost for the structural frame portion only of the building was about $14 per square foot,” according to Brad Ellinwood, engineer on the project. “In comparison, a 7-inch post-tensioned concrete slab and frame would have cost $22 per square foot. So, the wood-framing option yielded about 35 percent savings in the structure.”

Could A Century-Old Building Material Offer New Ways to Increase Density and Affordability?

Wood’s light-weight advantage when it comes to density and city building is pointed out in a research paper: Lightweighting with Timber: An Opportunity for More Sustainable Urban Densification.. Read more

Another example is a 9,000-square-foot berm space in Portland, Oregon that might have looked like an orphaned space to passersby, but Key Development saw its potential: “It was an uncommon, remnant space that perhaps wasn’t considered in the city’s redevelopment plans, and we saw an opportunity to make it stand out,” said Claudia Munk-von Flotow, chief operations officer for the developer.

Tapping into the clever insights of their design team—a local architecture studio, Skylab, and contractor, Andersen Construction—Key Development converted this oblong lot into a striking 5-story mass timber masonry-clad building, given the moniker Sideyard. The project discretely adds 20,000 square-feet of mixed-use space to the Burnside Bridgehead neighborhood.

Flexibility and ingenuity became even more relevant as they completed construction in the midst of COVID-19. When tenants began to terminate leases and change office space requirements, the team found immense value in their ability to reconfigure the design.