| Project
Description:
In the spring of 1998, Wolff Lyon Architects was
engaged by Cornerstone Housing LLC of Columbia, MD and the Housing
Authority of the City of High Point, NC to prepare the design
component of a HOPE VI grant application for 192 blighted townhomes
in High Point. Wolff Lyon Architects, together with Jeff Winston
of Winston Associates, conducted a week-long "charrette"
at the site, meeting with residents and preparing design concepts
for the proposed revitalization. The New Springfield Plan will
replace 198 barracks-style apartment units with 156 single-family
homes and townhouses.
The
overall goal for New Springfield is to transform the existing
dysfunctional public housing into an attractive and stable mixed-income
and mixed-use neighborhood that will eliminate the concentration
of poverty and serve as a model for new development in this sub
area of High Point. The emphasis of the revitalization plan focuses
on using the principles of traditional neighborhood design.
The reasons
for locating these concentrations of the poor on the urban fringe
may vary from locale to locale, but the will and the remedies
to transform them and end this exile are no less compelling than
those that affect their more urban counterparts. We believe that
the principles explored here provide a persuasive model for how
these isolated pockets of poverty can be eliminated.
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