Housing is the most intersectional project of architecture. It is where the space of the city meets the procedures and protocols produced by economics, politics, race, and gender. It exists in the blurry boundary between the domestic and collective. It is defined equally by universals such as the need for shelter and specifics such as location. In architectural parlance housing is also a typology, but there is no agreement about its schema: urban density, shape or height, access and/or orientation, numbers or population housed, governance or finance models, etc. From the start of the industrial revolution through today, housing is constantly “in crisis.” While we must study housing today in the context of neoliberalism, structural racism, and inequality, the problem of housing predates the first and has always been complicit in the latter two.
While no one seminar can offer a comprehensive take on housing, Domestic Collectives will offer multiple lenses of analysis. What makes a house housing? What can…and can’t we learn from global examples? What are the contemporary impediments to providing safe, equitable, and affordable housing today? Why study housing in an architectural context and what is left out when we restrict our considerations to the formal and typological?
Meets
Mon 8:30-11:30am 2213 A&AB