Affordable Housing Boasts Modern Design
Sugar Hill, in Harlem, is on the National Register of Historic places. Appropriately named for its notoriety as the center of the ‘sweet life’ during the Harlem Renaissance, it was home to Duke Ellington, Thurgood Marshall, W.E.B. DuBois and Willie Mays.
Broadway Housing Communities (BHC),
funded by The Department of Housing Preservation and Development,
created the Sugar Hill Development to provide rent-stabilized,
affordable housing. Located on the corner of 155th Street and
St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, the 191,00 square foot building features
124 apartments, an early childhood education center, a children’s
museum and a rooftop farm. Students at Columbia University have been
selected to devise a business plan for the 3,500-square-foot farm and
associated farmers’ market to be placed in the entrance plaza.
Designed by architect David Adjaye, the Sugar Hill Development boasts a modern design that breaks the mold of the brick box model typically used for public housing and public schools. The rose-embossed, textured precast concrete façade pays homage to decorative motifs on buildings throughout the community and the recently established Heritage Rose District.
Adjaye’s design concept was transformed by CAD/CAM systems to create the custom floral pattern formliners. Utilizing Computer Aided Design (CAD) software, Architectural Polymers created the photo engraved formliners.
