From the top of the Via Verde housing complex in the South Bronx, you can find sweeping penthouse-quality views of New York's northernmost borough. Twenty stories below, an immense urban experiment unfolds: towering brick projects spike up here and there, dwarfing the occasional church steeple; clusters of identical, vinyl-clad low-rises occupy a block carved out by crisscrossing streets. A neighborhood left to burn four decades ago is now visibly quilted with patches of trial-and-error affordable housing. The brand new Via Verde is the latest and most dazzling installment of the ongoing revival effort. Even from this privileged vantage point, I am reminded of this fact: the coveted corner penthouse at the top of the 20-story tower, usually reserved for the most moneyed, is sparsely furnished with rows of chairs; this is the community room. Views like this, the design seems to say, belong to everyone.
Completed in April of this year, Via Verde, or "The Green Way," is the result of a project six years in the making. In 2006, the New York City HPD teamed up with the AIA New York to launch an international design competition for an affordable and sustainable housing development on a plot of city-owned land. The two-stage New Housing New York competition attracted 32 submissions and narrowed the contest down to five finalists. The winning team paired New York-based Dattner Architects, known for their work with non-for-profit clientele, with Grimshaw Architects, an international practice acclaimed for its more avant-garde, high-end commissions. Together with co-developers Phipps Houses and Jonathan Rose Companies, the two firms drafted a plan to convert a skinny patch of former brownfield into a stunning declaration of the future of affordable housing.
The realized design is a triumph. Via Verde cuts a commanding figure in the Bronx skyline; its radical stepped form thrusts upward, seeming almost mirage-like to those ambling past the unkempt lots and potholed sidewalks along Bergen and Brook Avenues. As I got closer, the architecture did not disappoint: the stepped west side supports an impressive cascade of photovoltaic cells; the matte cement- and aluminum-clad façade is accented with wood panels and sequined with grilled sunshades protruding out from the tops of windows. Completely unrivaled in size and splendor, Via Verde is a striking new beacon of the neighborhood's steady upswing. But the real magic reveals itself on the inside.
At the heart of the project are two abutting inner courtyards. One is a colorful, rubber-padded play area – studded with cork toadstools – for the resident youth, and the other is a simpler, verdant quad. Wrapping around the two courtyards are 222 residential units, incrementally stacking and ascending in elevation as the building spirals upward from the ground level all the way to the apex of a 20-story tower. The stacking formation gives Via Verde its dramatic, stepped silhouette, lets in maximum daylight, and provides ample terrace and rooftop space for a host of communal facilities, including vegetable gardens and a fitness center. At higher altitude terraces, green roofs recycle storm water, and solar panels generate energy for basic building maintenance.
Inside Via Verde, thoughtful details in layout and functionality shine the brightest: colorful stairwells with windows let in natural light, encouraging residents to walk instead of ride the elevator; the two-story, two-bedroom apartments take cues from Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation, with upper floors extending the full width of the building to allow for cross-ventilation; built-in homework desks are placed in line of sight of the kitchen, where parents may be preparing dinner in the evening; private penthouses, as mentioned earlier, are forsaken for public communal spaces.
These are the details that make Via Verde pulsate with a restorative sense of hope. Critics may argue that affordable housing does not need to be handsomely designed, especially if that results in draining subsidized budgets and solutions that are difficult to replicate. But Via Verde's slick perfection is reflective of an objective much greater than an architectural one. Via Verde is not merely a place for lower- and middle-income families to inhabit and comfortably carry out daily routines; it is a means, articulated through the plasticity of architecture and design, to foster a community and a role in that community of which to be proud. This call for pride and ownership is conveyed by the sweeping image of the building's exterior and the intimate nuances of its interiors.
With every recycled wood plank and rooftop cabbage patch in its intended place, the new beacon of the South Bronx has grand expectations to live up to. Last Monday, sometime after a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the first of the new residents began moving in. They are a lucky few, pulled from a lottery of over 7,500 applications contending for 151 rental units (the 71 co-op units are gradually coming off the market). The following day, however, Via Verde was still rapt in an almost eerie quietude, like a theatrical stage devoid of actors. The backdrop for a wholesome, meaningful life was there, but the life itself was absent. Evidently, beauty and innovation alone cannot declare the project a success.
From the onset, I could not help but draw parallels between Via Verde and St. Louis's Pruitt-Igoe, whose televised demolition heralded the demise of public policy and the mythic failure of modernism. But rather than see the virgin quality of Via Verde as an omen of impending ruin – the naively misinterpreted calm before the storm – I thought it better to see this as a justly ambitious beginning. Not every new building in the Bronx can or will be a Via Verde. In fact, the adjacent, empty, city-owned lots have already been marked for less glamorous civic and residential projects. But Via Verde's inimitable design is not a shortcoming of the architecture. Rather, it points to the building's function outside the static boundaries of architecture, as an active participant in a larger, still-unfolding urban agenda. The lofty green citadel rises in the battered South Bronx as a bold visual proclamation, announcing to the neighborhood that the government is actually here, and it can accomplish great things for the people.