Holiday Urban Neighborhood
Boulder, Colorado
Barrett Studio Architects – working for the Boulder Housing Partners, Boulder’s Housing Authority – designed the Master Site Plan for the Holiday Neighborhood, a 27-acre mixed use, mixed income neighborhood. This vital garden village includes 40% permanently affordable housing, with homes ranging from 580-2700 square feet and starting from $100,000 (average Boulder home price = appx $430,000).
The neighborhood, on the site of the old Drive-In theatre, has become a vibrant new northern gateway to Boulder. It is structured as a series of pedestrian-scaled spaces that give shape to the community. The $80 million build out includes just over 330 residences of all types, offices, live/work spaces, neighborhood shops, a large common green, pocket parks, and a community garden all connected by walkable tree lined streets. This is a realized opportunity combining innovative urban design with green building strategies including energy saving building envelopes and cutting edge stormwater management (design funded by an EPA grant).
Seeking a rich diversity in the architecture, the neighborhood was designed to be developed by a diverse team of architect/developer/builder teams, including Barrett Studio on Block 6. To ensure the vision and social qualities were manifested within this multi-builder structure, Barrett Studio authored Design Guidelines including the community vision and patterns for each building site. These included street sections and figure ground or perspective studies, and both qualitative and quantitative standards for siting & massing, parking, lighting, landscape, and architectural elements & materials. In this manner, diverse subneighborhoods were brought to life within the continuity of the overall vision, ultimately creating a vital whole with interconnections and complimentary patterns.
The Holiday Neighborhood has been recognized as a landmark sustainable community and has been profiled by the Urban Land Institute, Douglas Farr, and Ontario’s Ministry of Infrastructure, as well as being a featured walking tour in the 2008 Greenbuild Conference.
