Gay Housing Project Slated for Palm Springs

Matthias Hollwich has big plans to build an innovative gay housing development for seniors in Palm Springs, Calif., called BOOM. The 40-year-old New York architect is the ringleader of what FastCompany magazine's design blog is calling -- with some understatement -- "a wacky, $250m old folks' community for gays."

As the gay housing market mushroomed over the last decade, developers jumped on the bandwagon by hyping LGBT-oriented retirement communities. But most -- including Santa Rosa's Fountaingrove Lodge, Oregon's Rainbow Vista, and a facility in Boston's Fenway neighborhood -- tanked before laying a brick.

Will BOOM be a bust? "Most other developments just focused on quick sales," Hollwich says. "We don't. We will also have a 10-city tour where we invite people to come to workshops, work with us on the reinvention of architecture and community. Once we have a critical mass and shaped the concept of BOOM towards the needs of the future residences, then it will be for sale....It will be a big success, for the people who will live there and beyond."