# First-year building project

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2018-10-18

affordable-housing, architecture, building-project, construction, housing, school, uncategorized, yale

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/1ecd518dd06b35a127f520ddf0052783.jpg)

Each year, first-year graduate students at the Yale School of Architecture are tasked with designing and then physically building a new single-family house in an economically depressed neighborhood. Sometimes, [like this year](https://www.curbed.com/2018/10/17/17986002/yale-architecture-school-jim-vlock-house-2018), the house may have multiple dwelling units.

I have always thought that this is a great exercise both from a pedagogical standpoint and from a positive impact standpoint. Young architecture students get to experience designing and building something from scratch, and lower-income families get a new house. I toured one of the completed houses in New Haven back in, I think, 2005. 

This [building project](https://www.architecture.yale.edu/academics/building-project), which was started in 1967, is fairly unique among architecture schools, though others have replicated the model. When I was living in the US, I spent a few weekends working on homes for Rebuilding Together Philadelphia. But the scope was fairly limited. It was nothing like this.

I think more schools should do this. And I also wonder if there aren’t permutations of this model that could live outside of the university context.

_Image:_ [_Yale_](https://www.architecture.yale.edu/academics/building-project)

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/first-year-building-project)*