The United States is split by income inequality, racial inequality and housing subsidy inequality, but one architect is trying to make a small difference. Michael Pyatok, principal of Pyatok Architects in Oakland, Calif., detailed how he designs affordable housing for low-income families to more than 100 students and faculty members Monday.
Pyatok has designed more than 35,000 units of affordable housing since first starting his career in 1984, including locations in the Philippines and Malaysia.
Before delving into the specifics of his work, Pyatok gave the audience a brief lecture about economics, specifically income inequality in the United States.
“As poets, we [Pyatok’s colleagues] want to make the world look like it would with a just and fair economy,” Pyatok said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have that. Occupy Wall Street was just the tip of the iceberg of what could happen when people become aware of how unfair things are here.”
Pyatok showered the audience with a wide range of statistics demonstrating the vast inequality in the U.S. Forty percent of the population owns only 20 percent of a percent of the wealth in the country, which is “virtually nothing,” according to Pyatok. Twenty percent of the population owns 85 percent of the wealth and accounts for 60 percent of consumption.
U.S. prison populations per capita dwarf those of every other nation, including Russia, Egypt, China and Iran. CEO income is more than 400 times that of average worker income. Housing and transportation in suburbs, which requires a car as an extension of the home, can consist of 70 percent of a person’s income, leaving only 30 percent for food, clothing and “other essentials,” according to Pyatok.
“The lower classes are living in a dysfunctional circumstance,” Pyatok said. “People have no hope.”
Pyatok also referenced the murder rate in the U.S., which, at 16,000 a year, is much larger than the 6,700 soldiers killed in both Afghanistan and Iraq in the last 10 years.
“It’s a pretty bizarre society,” Pyatok said. “Income is skewed. Crime rates are so high, and society is in very serious trouble.”
To combat this, Pyatok works to design homes for low-income families “trying to raise kids on a peanut salary,” he said.
“But despite however poetic my work may sound, we’re spitting into the wind in terms of tragedies,” Pyatok said.
After presenting the audience with a “healthy dose of realism,” Pyatok moved on to show his designs, which included housing for Native Americans, low-income families and senior citizens.
One housing unit was built above a Native American clinic so that families could be near health care services. The 36-family structure includes a 40-car garage, cultural center and rooftop balcony. Builders adorned the outside with Native American designs, including a giant eagle feather and basket patterns.
Another housing unit—this one for senior citizens—took the place of an old battery factory in downtown Oakland. The new unit has a vegetable garden and a small apple-tree orchard.
Throughout every project, Pyatok said he tries to incorporate input from the families that will soon live in the spaces.
“People learn, we get a better project by learning more about the people we’re serving, and we’re able to organize people into the political process,” Pyatok said. “They are more likely to appear in front of City Council hearings if they are invested in the project from the start. Income isn’t a barrier to good citizenship or good design.”
Pyatok ended by advocating for housing for rich and poor alike in the same areas. He said he can envision a world in which the “poor teach the rich on how to best live on a planet of shrinking resources,” he said.
Pyatok’s lecture was part of a “Situated Modernisms & Global Practice” series hosted by the College of Design.
“He is one of my absolute heroes,” Robin Abrams, head of the school of architecture, said. “He represents a side to the design profession that we can all be very proud of. He practiced sustainable design long before the profession came to support it.”
