Back Lane Intensification by Pyatt Studio
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto 
on 01. 6.09
Pyatt Studios
Many older cities have infrastructures with back lanes, relics of an era when streets were for people, and you kept the horses and the cars in the rear. It worked well; you could put the houses on narrower lots, and the garages were useful for a lot more than just vehicles. It also provides a great opportunity for urban intensification, although it is really tough to get approved and defines the term NIMBY. But who could say no to something as elegant as this studio in Boulder proposed by Rob Pyatt?
We live in an era where we should be promoting things like this, which let people comfortably work from home and still provides for parking. The design minimizes the footprint (an elegant truss expressed on the facade lets it cantilever over the outside parking space).
For example, in Toronto they have been talking about legalizing back lane developments for years. Yet every time it comes up for discussion, the NIMBY crowds flip out, even though most back lanes are grossly underutilized, have sewers and services, and could support many small apartments and offices above the parking. They say that the small apartments will attract the wrong kind of people or the offices will attract more cars.
But cities need a range of accommodation; homeowners might need the extra income if they are going to keep their homes; many of us have aging parents and could use a granny flat. Rob Pyatt demonstrates that these additions to the urban fabric can tread lightly, maintain the parking and look spectacular. More at Pyatt Studios
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Houses look much more inviting from the street when there isn't a big ugly garage door in front of you.
Actually, this casedefines not NIMBY but NIMNBY:
(Not In My Neighbours Backyard)
:-)
The garage door facing the street is bad, but the rest is too; and clearly not green except in the modesty of square feet. (How can this person have a rooftop garden, etc.?) I'm not against all modern designs, but ones that feel like Stalinist architecture like this give ultra-conservative architecture advocates like Prince Charles a wider audience than he deserves. Infill of lanes is only conditionally a good idea, not necessarily laudable, especially if it's not really green.
In Chicago, back-of-lot buildings for residence (carriage houses) have been illegal to build new for a long time. I was told the reason is because there aren't any hydrants in the alleys, so carriage house fires are difficult to put out and spread to neighboring buildings quickly.
This is Chicago, so that excuse could just as easily have been the cover for an anti-poor-people initiative, as most carriage house apartments are smaller, one bedroom affairs.
I did work for the Vancouver Ecodensity initiative, of which laneway housing was seen as one of the politically palatable actions.
However, I am not in favour. I think a study is needed to try to find the "sweet spot" of urban density that balances population, urban agriculture, energy generation and waste disposal. In other words, what would a sustainable city look like, and how dense would it be? My gut tells me that we need denser housing blocks and much bigger gardens. Most laneway housing simply adds another inefficient single family home that hemorrhages heat from the walls and roof, while covering precious water infiltration and agriculture space.
At the very least, I don't think any laneway housing, or heck, any single-family housing at all, should be built unless it is passivhaus and has a green roof.