Global trends are creating pressures to find housing solutions that meet a multidimensional array of criteria. This project aims to create a playbook for optimism: a survey of nineteen case studies to identify innovative solutions that create meaningful impacts on housing outcomes.
Elizabeth Claypool
Stanford University
School of Engineering
Schoonschip. Floating sustainable housing collective in Amsterdam, Netherlands. © Isabel Nabuurs.
Jury
Alessandro Beghini (Chair)
Sarah L. Billington
Paul Fast
Matt Field
Receiving this fellowship means that I have the support and encouragement to investigate housing innovations with an authenticity and depth I could not achieve on my own. Homes are some of the most important and intimate structures that exist, so I am thrilled to have the space to study such a meaningful part of our field. I am incredibly grateful to the selection committee and SOM Foundation for offering me such a unique and enriching opportunity.
Elizabeth Claypool
The World Bank estimates that 70% of the population will live in urban areas by 2050. [1] The Netherlands needs to retrofit over 7.5 million existing homes to fulfill its commitment to have a carbon-neutral housing stock by 2050. [2] In New Zealand, median housing prices are rising faster than household incomes. [3] At the current pace of construction, San Francisco will take 41 years to meet their goal of producing 82,000 housing units by 2031. [4] To top it all off, the International Energy Agency reports global building sector emissions have increased by 1% yearly since 2015, off target from 2050 net zero goals. [5]
These trends are overwhelming, to say the least. But the bottom line is that our populations are urbanizing, our climate is changing, and our approach to housing will need to adapt.
So, how do we begin to tackle the heightened pressures to produce “good,” ample, and affordable housing for the future? What we need is a playbook for optimism—a thorough investigation of the successes and challenges of innovative housing solutions around the world in order to break down the problem and identify which strategies generate meaningful impacts.
To accomplish this, I propose to investigate nineteen curated case studies through on-site visits, interviews, and background research. Using my professional and academic network, I will engage with relevant engineers, architects, and stakeholders when possible. After visiting, I will evaluate each solution based on a set of desirable outcomes, outlined below, and compare case studies to identify successful factors. The highlighted projects cover a breadth of solutions covering low-carbon materials, modular construction, additive manufacturing, resilient structural design, energy-efficient technologies, social housing policies, and cooperative living styles. This project, like a playbook, aims to highlight multiple strategies that are appropriate in different economic, political, and social scenarios. In creating this playbook, the hope is to inspire confidence in our collective ability to meet these tremendous changes.
Lots Road Power Station: Adaptive reuse of historic power station into luxury housing posed many technical challenges. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED diamond geezer (flicker user).
I was impressed by the clarity and focus of Elizabeth’s presentation, her passion for engineering, and her delineation of objectives for the proposed study of what is a very complex problem in today’s world.
Paul Fast, Juror
To evaluate success, we have to understand what we want. Broadly speaking, cities need more and better housing. However, housing is a multidimensional endeavor influenced by regulations, cultural shifts, natural hazards, supply chains, and a whole other litany of factors. Therefore, when thinking about adapting housing, we must ask what, exactly, do we want to adapt to?
A useful approach to address this question comes from the World Bank’s Green, Resilient, Inclusive Development (GRID) framework which prioritizes “economic growth […] environmental goals, and inclusion.” [6]
As applied to housing, my interpretation of the GRID approach can be summarized into five ideal outcomes of responsible housing, which are summarized below. These categories serve as lenses to evaluate the holistic challenges and successes of each case study.
Ideal Outcome Categories:
As structural engineers, it doesn’t feel like we have a lot of opportunity to bring our skills to the residential sector and tackle the challenges around affordable housing, innovative reuse, and sustainability. I want this for Elizabeth. I want her to be able to explore this topic in detail through actual case studies, and bring what she has learned from this fellowship with her into her next job and beyond. This is the kind of fellowship that can begin to shape career paths and create leaders, and I fully believe that Elizabeth has the character and talent to be one of these leaders in our industry.
Kyle Douglas, Engineering Research Associate, Stanford University
Notes
[1] “Urban Development: Overview,” World Bank, April 3, 2023.
[2] Henk Visscher, “Innovations for a carbon free Dutch housing stock in 2050,” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, vol. 588, no. 3, November 1, 2020, 032050.
[3] Ryan Greenaway-McGrevy, “New Zealand’s Bipartisan Housing Reforms Offer a Model to Other Countries,” Brookings, January 24, 2022.
[4] J.K. Dineen, “Last Year, S.F. Built the Least New Housing in a Decade. but There’s Hope for 2024,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 8, 2024.
[5] “Breakthrough Agenda Report 2023,” (Paris: IEA, IRENA & UN Climate Change High-Level Champions, 2023).
[6] “Green, Resilient, and Inclusive Development,” (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021).
ICON's House Zero, Austin, TX. Photograph by Casey Dunn. © ICON.
Elizabeth Claypool’s proposal looks holistically at the issue of affordable housing around the world. She is approaching the problem from various perspectives: from sustainability to resiliency to equity. Her research will help improve the understanding of the complex relationship between innovation in housing and local materials and technologies.
Alessandro Beghini, Juror (Chair)
Elizabeth Claypool
Stanford University
School of Engineering
grew up in the suburbs of Los Angeles and now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area. With an innate passion for architecture informed by a childhood in earthquake-prone Southern California, Claypool was always curious about ways beautiful structures could exist in the face of challenging conditions. To pursue these interests, Claypool completed her B.S. in Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where she received a hands-on education in architecture and a theoretical knowledge of seismic design. During her studies, she constructed and tested full-scale timber shear walls to investigate a novel lateral system for her senior project but also learned how to cast plaster in her architecture studio. More recently, she completed an M.S. in Structural Engineering at Stanford University where her coursework focused on seismic hazards, risk analysis, and entrepreneurship. Outside of studies, Claypool is an enthusiastic climber, swimmer, avid reader, and barista. She looks forward to using this fellowship to investigate the multi-dimensional and very human challenges of modern housing demands.
