The right detail for the right price

New Urban News Article with images, 9/1/2007

How to get authentic-looking traditional details is one problem that new urbanists have been trying to solve, with mixed success, for two decades. Building affordable housing is another. These two goals are sometimes in conflict, but they needn’t be, according to Donald Powers of Donald Powers Architects in Providence, Rhode Island.

The problem is the sizable gap between getting traditional details right and what production builders are prepared to deliver. From the middle of the 20th Century onward, affordable housing has been strongly associated with production building — which in turn has been associated with sloppy pseudo-traditional design.

“To me, the whole issue is intellectually stimulating,” Powers says. “How do you infuse the production world with a level of design that it has not had until recently, with the new urbanists?”