united community corporation

The United Community Corporation is a long-established social services charity located in Newark, NJ. They commissioned Alexander Elias Architecture to design a prototype for a modular 2-family home, of which 10 examples will be built. The project seeks to build homes, not housing. Both the owner and architect believe that the construction of places and spaces should be ennobling of those who inhabit them. To that end, the United Community Village project proposed dwellings arranged front-to-back, rather than top to bottom.This creates more privacy for the occupants of the homes and ensures that each unit has access to outdoor space. The use of a narrow driveway, rather than a wide garage door, allows for more inviting, pedestrian-oriented facades. The homes consist of a smaller front unit and a larger rear unit. This arrangement anticipates owner-occupied homes, which will create more economic stability in the neighborhoods in which they are built.