Works
Guides, cards, visual resources, and interactive tools come together as a growing collection for exploring housing and community design. Explore the Toolkit.
Research moves into different formats—from detailed guides and visual references to cards and interactive tools that support different ways of learning and working.
An interactive workshop at the AIA National Conference brings people together to use the Toolkit, compare ideas, and explore housing questions through conversation.
Three connected sets bring together principles, possibilities, and participation. Explore the Blue Set, Green Set, and Yellow Set.
Plan Your Neighborhood brings density and neighborhood form into the Toolkit as an interactive experience, allowing people to build and compare possibilities in real time. Try Plan Your Neighborhood.
Cards turn research into something people can sort, compare, discuss, and use together when making decisions about housing.
Conversations with families reveal how they use, adapt, understand, and experience the places they call home.
Thirty families across O‘ahu, Moloka‘i, Hawai‘i, Maui, and Kaua‘i bring different places, households, and ways of living into the research.
Designing better housing and communities takes many hands. Residents, students, design experts, builders, developers, nonprofits, businesses, and government agencies all have a role to play.
The first public pilot tests how conversation, visual information, and interactive tools can make ideas about housing easier to explore together.
A custom entourage reflects the diversity of Hawai‘i’s communities—different ages, cultures, households, abilities, activities, and ways of living.
Outdoor spaces ranging from private to shared to public support everyday life, with relationships that can be adapted across climates.
Twenty-six architectural models turn the housing variations developed through Understanding Density into a physical landscape that visitors can see, compare, and move through.
Each model is an exact physical version of one of the 26 A–Z housing variations developed through Understanding Density, bringing the same forms and data into three dimensions.
Every variation begins with the same two-acre block, allowing differences in building form, height, open space, and density to be compared directly.
Low-, mid-, and high-rise alternatives show how density can take many forms, from familiar housing types to much larger buildings and communities.
Rather than presenting a single answer, the Alphabet creates a shared setting for comparing housing possibilities and discussing what different forms of density might mean for Hawai‘i’s communities. Continue exploring density research and tools in the Green Set.
The catalog opens with “Density Done Right,” a foreword by architecture and design writer Allison Arieff that frames density as a question of how we create walkable, sustainable, equitable communities—and how we make those possibilities easier to understand and experience. Explore Understanding Density in the Green Set.
Neighborhood samples document how density already takes different forms across Hawai‘i’s rural, suburban, and urban environments.
Each sample brings together population, dwelling units, land area, building coverage, streets, and other measures to make different neighborhood patterns easier to compare.
Existing multifamily housing across Hawai‘i shows how similar densities can take very different architectural forms.
Seven recurring multifamily types organize the case studies by building form, helping connect numerical density to familiar ways of living.
Twenty-six housing variations test different ways of organizing a common two-acre block, from low-rise to high-rise. These exact A–Z studies later become the physical models in the Density Alphabet exhibition.
Flexible unit studies bring the research down to the scale of everyday life, exploring how homes can adapt to different households, needs, and ways of living.
Lawn Loungers turn open space into an informal place for gathering, conversation, and exchange.
The modular pieces can be arranged in different ways to work with changing sites, group sizes, and kinds of interaction.
The first public installation invited people to explore housing research, talk with one another, and share their own experiences.
Lightweight aluminum frames, nylon webbing, and rope make the pieces portable, durable, and easy to use in different settings.
A large-scale architectural model helps test scale, arrangement, visibility, and interaction before fabrication.
People can build and compare neighborhoods in real time, seeing how each choice changes the form and performance of the places they create. Try the interactive tool: Plan Your Neighborhood, which is part of the Green Set.
Residents and other participants can compare neighborhood choices together, making trade-offs easier to see, discuss, and understand.
A computational system combines neighborhood variables to generate and evaluate many possible configurations.
Different neighborhood forms can have similar densities, making it possible to compare how the same numbers translate into very different places.
Explores housing design through lived experience, density, local typologies, and new approaches to community engagement. Explore the report.
Examines the evolving role of public housing authorities in developing and expanding affordable housing. Explore the report.
Looks at public housing through residents’ experiences and the social dimensions of housing in Hawai‘i. Explore the report.
A wraparound deck, deep overhangs, louvers, and an elevated foundation support shade, ventilation, and indoor/outdoor living.
A deep roof overhang and full-width deck extend the compact interior, while a mobile chassis allows the unit to move when needed.
A steeply sloped roof expands the experience of the compact interior while a small deck and mobile chassis support flexible use.
A shared 8-by-20-foot footprint makes it possible to compare how three different approaches organize compact living and outdoor space.
The mobile-first portal gave residents one place to find timely information, services, and support from HPHA and community partners.
Hawai‘i-specific illustrations adapted the entourage developed through the housing research for HPHA’s broader COVID-19 communications.
A clear information architecture organized a growing network of agency updates, community resources, health guidance, services, and resident support.
Content changed with conditions, adding new resources, program updates, emergency information, and stories celebrating HPHA residents.
The new identity shifts the focus from individual buildings to the people, places, and communities HPHA serves.
Studies of rural, suburban, and urban neighborhoods reveal recurring relationships among streets, paths, natural features, buildings, and blocks.
Lines drawn from neighborhood patterns become letterform studies, connecting the agency’s initials to the places and communities it serves.
Buildings and blocks become simple geometries that can combine to suggest homes, neighborhoods, and larger communities.
Inspired by children’s building blocks, the abstracted geometries come together as playful neighborhood characters that suggest buildings, streets, and communities.
A modular grid organizes the geometries into a flexible system for building the HPHA mark, patterns, and other graphic elements.
A family of marks allows the identity to shift in scale and composition while maintaining a recognizable visual language.
A distinctive blue-purple anchors a flexible palette of complementary tones that carries the identity across print, communication, and digital use.
Photography centers residents and everyday life, connecting the graphic identity to the people and communities HPHA serves.