Project Description: SENT, a non-profit multiservice community center in the Highland Crest neighborhood of Topeka, desired a prototype home that could be used through the neighborhood. In SENT’s unique development model, the organization would use funding tools to subsidize both income-qualified housing as well as market rate homes. The studio was tasked to design a market rate house that would mirror the smaller size of the homes in the neighborhood, originally built to house service families for a nearby Air Force Base which was closed decades ago. The target for the project was a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house that would be around 1200 ft2, with all-electric net zero performance and a focus on wellness-related passive design strategies such as daylight, outdoor spaces and views, and quiet building systems. Wellness and health was of particular important to SENT; at the time the organization was also creating a center for counseling and mental health and had recently opened an award-winning early childhood education center. SENT would build the first iteration of the prototype on a vacant lot down the street from their community center. Students visited SENT and the neighborhood throughout the project to develop the design, incorporating input from project stakeholders and community members in the final design.

More detail about the home may be found on the Net Positive Studio’s website.