Silver Gardens opens
Silver Gardens, the first affordable housing development in New Mexico designed to achieve LEED Platinum certification, has opened in downtown Albuquerque, across from the Alvarado Transportation Center. Developer Jonathan Rose described the $12.5 million, 66-unit project as “a model transit-oriented, mixed-income green solution to the changing climate.”
The four stories of energy-efficient rentals, for low- and middle-income families, form a “U” around a courtyard. Among the project’s resource-conserving elements is a roof whose slopes help to collect rainwater, which is then used to water the 15,000 sq. ft. courtyard. There is an underground cistern.
Rose wanted to incorporate contemporary architecture into downtown Albuquerque, and the new building makes a sharp contrast to the more traditional buildings Moule & Polyzoides had designed a few years ago for the city’s Historic District Improvement Company. Silver Gardens has mostly flat unornamented surfaces on its exterior — barebones, some would say. The building was designed by Claudio Vigil Architects of Albuquerque and OZ Architecture of Denver.
The courtyard contains a sculpture of stacked stone representing the region’s early architecture, and a spiral vortex based on the Chaco culture sundial. Courtyard elements were created by New Mexico artists and designers Nocona Burgess and Alejandro Ortiz. Sited on a former brownfield, the apartments were co-developed by the Supportive Housing Coalition of New Mexico and Romero Rose LLC, the Albuquerque affiliate of Jonathan Rose Companies.
