Abov_e, the Agate street prototypes. Above left, note that there are five different types ofwindow here. Alexander has found that windows and dormers are best -sized and situated on site, where the best shape and placement can be determined according to view, light, effect on rooms, etc. Above right, one ofthe most striking features ofthe Agate housing are the many grand old trees that were preserved. The buildings were designed to fit in and around them, unusually sensitive for government constr¥ction. Below, once . students questioned the University's decision to put housing on the Amazon·site, the administration panicked and successfully used Alexander ·as a sc~pegoat. Page 20 RAIN Summer 1994 Volume XIV, Number 4 the Experiment: no design group, or plan to build, should even exist for a project the community finds unacceptable. Even after the tension was painfully evident, the . University continued to let the group,stew. The arguments that surfaced in these meetings were, not surprisingly, a little surreal. They were also particularly revealing. Alexancjer was trying to build low-cost housing of extremely high human quality. To this end, he asked the University to set a per-unit price: with this money he would build something far more livable than the average alienating, motel-like student hovels. · · The students, justifiably concerned over1 the dismantling of their old low-price rentals, argued for the cheapest possible construction. They hoped that this would keep the rents at affordable levels. Alexander tried to explain that the price of the housing was not set by him, but instead by the University. The functioriaries present naturally wanted to ·avoid responsibility for unpopular site and price decisions, so made no effort to back him up. In any case, the cheap buildings that the stud~nts wanted would not automatically be as inexpensive as the older units. The old housing is only cheap today because there is no "mortgage" left to pay. On the other hand, new units.would be built with borrowed money, so they couldn't compete with the o.ld rents. . Alexander fought hard in the group against proposals for thrown-up structures. If you build inferior housing, it just falls down by the time the loan is paid off. So, decades from now, new borrowing .would be necessary, keeping rental prices always close to market levels. For student housing, the secret to low rent is longevity. Well-made, 100-year housing will be dirt cheap after the loan is paid off in thirty years, so generations of students will benefit from it. But lowincome·students looking at their own slim budgets are, for very good reasons, not so interested in students thl1:1y years from now. Consequently, this straightforward analysis of the long-term public benefit became lost.
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