Hope on Alvarado is the first of a series of supportive housing buildings by a private developer aiming to both house and assist people who’ve been homeless, creating both a home and a supportive community at a neighborhood scale. The goal of this development was to see if there might be a way to build this faster and better than traditional construction – leading the design team to consider modular construction.
The concept of this type of housing is to provide people with private space (in this case, a small apartment), as well as common and service spaces. The design team quickly realized that modular, offsite construction is only feasible for repetitive portions of the building – in this case, the residential units. Other, more community-focused program elements such as counseling offices, laundry room, lobby and other community and support spaces are unique and are best built on-site. This initial division of the building into “site-built” and “factorybuilt” portions became the basis for a prototypical supportive housing building. Incorporated into a site-built concrete podium, the indoor common areas form a pedestrian friendly, active ground floor that can adapt to its specific context. The modular units start on top of this podium, stacking floor by floor to create the complete building.