PRD845

Studio Ma transforms an existing parking lot at Phoenix's urban edge into 12 mid-rise cubiform contemporary units.

By Nancy Levinson
This is an excerpt of an article from the June 2008 edition of Architectural Record.

For decades now, residential development in fast-growing Phoenix has followed a too-familiar formula: large master-planned tracts—one hesitates to say “communities”—of single-family houses expanding at the urban edge—which happens also to be the edge of the Sonoran Desert. The local tendency to view uninhabited desert as a future pro forma for low-density living has resulted in a city of astonishing extent—Phoenix now encompasses more than 500 square miles. Lately, it also elicits a reaction, a growing awareness of the environmental and social consequences of pushing the line of urbanization (or suburbanization) ever outward into an arid and fragile landscape. This inspiration resulted in a comparatively modest (just 24,000 square feet) multifamily infill project by the local firm Studio Ma.

Four years ago—as the housing market began to bubble—Greenroof Development, a local builder specializing in urban infill, approached Studio Ma, a seven-person firm run by Christopher Alt, Dan Hoffman, and Christiana Moss, AIA. The project brief called for 12 units of multifamily housing just north of the city’s long-neglected, now reviving downtown. The developer specified a mix of studios and one- and two-bedroom units, some live/work. Residences would also feature the amenities that locals have come to expect, including outdoor spaces, two-car garages, and views of the mountain preserves that ring the city. The 3-acre site—which was being used (or underused) as surface parking for a local business—posed challenges in both scale and character: a busy six-lane arterial and Interstate 10 dominate the cityscape to the north and east; and a working-class neighborhood of early-20th-century bungalows lies to the south and west.

For Studio Ma, PRD845—the name simply refers to “planned residential development” and the street address—became an opportunity not only to design multifamily housing but also to devise a new typology for urban life in a Southwestern city—what the architects call “desert urbanism.” The desert urbanism of PRD845 blends positive densification and climate-sensitive construction. “Phoenix has a seemingly endless supply of single-family houses, and lately, as part of downtown revitalization, it’s starting to build high-rise condominiums,” says lead designer Christiana Moss. “What’s missing is the middle scale.” To introduce that middle scale, the architects have designed an elegant hybrid: a blend of town houses and mews with three bars of three- and two-story units divided by two interior auto courts. With some of the units accessible from the street and others from the courts, the residences negotiate the sensitive balance between house and street, privacy and community.

The project also responds to the challenges of the Phoenix climate, with its months of triple-digit temperatures that turn summer into the city’s indoor season. Strategies include reducing building mass and the site-blacktop area to counter heat and the heat-island effect. All of the units feature upper-level private patios, some sheltered by roofs, to provide access to the outdoors. The construction system is a typical wood frame; more unusual, the cladding is a cementitious rain screen hung on furring strips to further lighten the section. The surface of the auto courts consists not of asphalt but of decomposed granite, reducing heat-gain on the site. A ribbonlike roof of standing-seam metal unifies the composition by providing a continuous folding element that “gives the project presence, a sense of context” in a complex and visible location, says Moss.

 

Formal name of project: Studio Ma

Location: 777 W. Roosevelt St., Phoenix, AZ

Gross square footage: 27,225 sq.ft

Cost: $3.5 million

Completion Date: March 2007

Client: Greenroof Development

Architect:
Studio Ma
130 North Central Avenue
Suite 300
Phoenix, AZ 85004
602.251.3800 t
602.251.3100 f
www.studioma.com

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