Opportunity House
Building Architecture- Small Scale (<10,000 sf)
Project Narrative
Opportunity House is a new housing typology located in Highland Heights, Kentucky. The residents of Opportunity house are the charter members of a program, initiated by the Brighton Center, that provides young adults, aged 18-24, with a supportive environment to explore educational and career opportunities, while providing stable housing at an extremely affordable rate, engaging life skills workshops, and a home base for growth and development.
On the exterior, the project reinvents a standard, vacant 1970’s ranch style, dormitory building into an innovative place to live, work, and be transform. Due to a very limited budget, simple but impactful interventions were needed. The most dramatic of these was the introduction of a lemon-yellow “tube” which punctures the front of the building, sides through the interior space and then punches through the rear of the building. The tube denotes the main circulation path of the building, creates a new entrance and lobby, and even allowed for the creation of the cantilevered reading room at the rear. The simplicity of this one element completed transform the basic rectangular building into something a bit more interesting and engaging. A second, complementing lemon-yellow “line” traces part of the rear elevation and helps to define the outdoor space. To keep the emphasis on the main interventions, the rest of the building was wrapped in a simple, neutral palette that compliments the existing brick façade.
In the interior, we transformed the dark and dated spaces by eliminating all the interior partitions and injecting color, pattern, and brightness.
The interior palette is a sophisticated, modern update on primary colors. The use of deep reds, bright yellows, and saturated blues is complimented by bright whites, calming greys and warm browns. The community spaces are outfitted with comfortable furnishings and cheerful artwork to reinforce that this place is home.
Project Details
Submission Category
Building Architecture- Small Scale (<10,000 sf)
Date of Completion
September, 2021
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