The Tiny Home Competition put together by the Members of the AIA North Carolina Activate14 committee and the Raleigh/Wake Partnership to End and Prevent Homelessness aimed to collect ideas on a new typology for urban housing: a twelve unit community of tiny homes to help address the problem of homelessness in urban centers. The site is comprised of 4 vacant lots owned by the City of Raleigh, just outside Historic Boylan Heights in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.
Activate14 announced the winners for the competition and SOUR (formerly known as Eray/Carbajo, Design Team: Gonzalo Carbajo, Inanc Eray, Pinar Guvenc and Marco Mattia Cristofori) received the “Aesthetic Merit Award”, the jury stating our work to be “the most architectural and formally organized project in the competition”
The jury continued its remarks with “…the units had great clarity. We admired the provision of storage at the ground floor level, which the residents would appreciate.”
There is a pressing need in cities like Raleigh for affordable micro-dwellings to serve people without a stable dwelling place. Tiny home communities cannot eliminate poverty or homelessness, but they can create a more lively, caring, and diverse city. The goal is to generate innovative micro-housing communities that can repair and enliven our social fabric and help people transition out of homelessness.
The winners boards and additional models will be showcased at Transitional Housing Event on Thursday, June 25th. The exhibit and panel discussion will be both a celebration of the Tiny Home Community Competition winners for a hypothetical transitional housing community just outside of downtown Raleigh, and a panel discussion lead by experienced professionals and advocates of transitional housing and alleviating homelessness.
