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What?
What?
This research-based studio attempts to propose new models for habitation and social housing expressive of the broader societal systems within which they are embedded.
We are at a critical juncture in the history of human habitation. Real estate has become the highest valued commodity in the global economy, surpassing natural resources and financial markets, and representing more than $217 trillion USD. Residential property is responsible for 75% of that value.
Following other aspects of society predominantly influenced by the market economy, architecture, urban design, and planning policy have become ever more altered, principally generated and defined by the economic models they are situated within. With this realization, it is understandable that so much of the built environment can be read as a physical manifestation of these influences.
The “Common Ground” studio challenges this status quo. It aims to rediscover architecture as a form of thinking and means of understanding the world around us, rooted in the humanities and social sciences. It aims to engage in a more meaningful conversation with the trajectory of human culture, urban planning, public policy, and political action.
We will conduct a global inquiry of the issues impacting habitation in cities as seen through the lens of influences less recognized in traditional architectural education including, systems of politics, economics, and broader societal structures.
Social housing projects and policy are a direct index of the cultures in which they are embedded. They provide a unique insight into how broader social values define policy, that then are implemented in the built environment in physical form.
This will be the point of emphasis for study, the grounds we will speculate upon, and the lens by which we will aim to better understand the relationships between these individual threads.
Why?
Why?
The role of architecture and urban planning in contemporary society is at a critical juncture.
Understanding how to better inform and more meaningfully position ourselves as key participants in the generative stages of the systems we operate within is critical to the continued evolution of design practice.
A core planning challenge is to provide shelter for everyone, especially the most vulnerable populations. Homelessness, segregation, overcrowding, displacement, evictions, are among the most critical social issues of our times. These are issues on which planners can act through fair and equitable social housing solutions.
How?
How?
The process of inquiry has been structured to follow a similar trajectory to how a research-based professional design studio would approach a similar challenge.
This sequence follows an inquiry leading to insight, leading to ideas, leading to the translation of ideas into spatial relationships and architectural design process.
Traditional forms of research will be supplemented with critique and insights provided by a team of carefully selected external subject experts representing various perspectives within the conversation surrounding these issues.
Key factors include a studio-wide examination of local, national, and international paradigms, paying special attention to the role of public / private boundaries.
Where?
Where?
While the studio is conducted as a global inquiry of systems of social housing and gleans influence from all applicable points of reference, each cohort of students focuses on a different site. Mexico City, Mexico, was the focus of the first cohort of students (Fall 2020), followed by Los Angeles, California (Fall 2021), and Phoenix, Arizona (Fall 2022).
This project will encompass three years of research, studying a single topic and developing a shared methodology over that time, but with emphasis on three analogous, but unique cities. These cities will be researched in progression: Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Phoenix.
The aim of this comparative form of analysis is to discover how issues are manifesting differently and what lessons can be shared amongst the approach of each place. It is anticipated that each studio will expose students to the subjects offered by all three locations, but with final projects being completed in a single setting (starting with Mexico City, then Los Angeles, then bringing those ideas home to speculate on future possibilities in Phoenix).
Inherited forms and past attempts at social housing and policy have elicited erratic and questionable outcomes in each locale. By positioning the architect as an agent of change earlier in the process and working to untangle the myriad of threads that connect this complicated problem, context specific responses can be seen to emerge.
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
Architecture is a social act. The evolution of contemporary architecture and urban design can be viewed as an index of the broader social and cultural forces it is embedded within. Reflective of its ever-changing context, the role of the architect in contemporary society is a continually evolving pursuit, inextricably linked and respondent to the deeper cultural values by which society is defined.
All forms of cultural production are coming to the end of an age of optimization of inherited systems - it is now time to revisit the most fundamental values that these systems are based upon and to propose new models. Previous forms of communication, social exchange, technological production, political and economic structures, etc. are all in various stages of disruption and ‘reboot’. Similarly, architecture needs to learn from its past, but now present a future that both acknowledges and engages these new forms. Architectural thinking must emerge from this period renewed.
A crucial part of the studio is first to dispel some of the myths that society is understood by. One of the primary threads of inquiry throughout is to better understand the myth of progress. This is the expectation of this studio; to question the values that have established our current societal perspective; to alter outside perspectives of current conditions, and in doing so, learn from past models to suggest new and untested territories.
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