We first met Rachel Ehrlich while exploring some of the new buildings squeezing into New York City’s churchyards and around its elevated train tracks. The work of the architect, who specializes in affordable and supportive housing at Dattner Architects, is a good example of the tight spots out of which new affordable housing emerges in New York City today: complicated sites, financial constraints, layers of regulation. But from these complex equations, Ehrlich and her collaborators have been wresting comfortable homes for some of the New Yorkers who need them the most. And from walls and windows that make possible sound and serene interiors, it is a short distance to moving developers to consider climate impacts inside a building’s bubble and well beyond. Faced with overwhelming crises of housing affordability and climate, what can a building — or an architect — do? Rather than despair, Ehrlich discusses how she does the work, with care.
