The Harlem Renaissance emerged in the wake of The Great Migration. These intertwined historical events were catalyzed by shared aspirations for social equity and justice, economic resilience, social freedom, and cultural agency and empowerment. This migration to Harlem forged a vibrant community that fostered intellectual discourse and artistic Innovation. Serving as a physical manifestation of collective identity and community solidarity, The Block Party reflected the aspirations of these interlinked occurrences. It materialized as a tangible assertion of presence and cultural expression within urban Landscapes. We will use the morphology of the Block party, a multifaceted, inclusive, and adaptable space, to foster a resurgence in community engagement. This will encompass diverse initiatives including skill sharing, community gardens (FRESH-est), funding endeavors, stewardship, and cultural exchange.

Our housing section will embrace this social variety and complexity, seeking within it a physical corollary: what manner of spatial diversity can accommodate the complex humans we have become? How do we design for the health of residents if there are many states of health? Should our living spaces vary along with us – offer different possibilities for fulfilling vastly different lives? Should we design many kinds of units, spaces, gardens, windows, furniture, stairs….? Or to what extent do we provide for appropriation, accounting for the agency of residents within generic spaces? Can we design for both? Can we stress-test extreme positions across such a spectrum? Alongside a focus on social diversity and physical variety, we will also consider the frameworks that keep us together: collectivity and identity, or a sense of participating with and belonging to a social group larger than ourselves. Should this need for togetherness and order also impose physical form? Where do we multiply or repeat; where do we diversify? How do we balance both the social and formal possibilities of the individual and the collective?

This studio focuses on working with what’s at hand. Observing, re-framing and reshaping what is found to imagine new ways of living that embrace the external ecology of the city as integral to the inner realm of the home. The studio will explore the convergence of housing, public space and adaptive reuse as a platform for architectural innovation, community building, and the transformation of urban landscapes. Considering all scales, from part to whole, each housing proposal will demonstrate its design ambitions through three lenses: 1. Inner Life / 2. Common Life / 3. With a focus on the welfare of its users, its neighbors and the city, projects will construct new domestic territories that explore the needs and potentials of housing now and in the future.

As temperatures continue to rise — according to the global record, July 2023 was the hottest month in NYC’s history — the demand on buildings to provide cooling is increasingly critical. Ironically, the very methods by which we mechanically heat and cool buildings are pollution- and energy- intensive, thereby exacerbating the problem. To escape this vicious cycle, our studio will embrace raw-earth construction, a building tool with an indigenous history and an array of benefits, including passive heating and cooling, as an impetus for design. The implications of organizing our buildings around the benefits of raw earth can change how we use outdoor space, the very air we breathe, the way we exist in light and darkness, and the way we socialize with our neighbors. By harnessing the elements — earth, sun, wind, water, flora — rather than the efficiencies of ductwork and dollars, the homes we design will provide new spatial, social and sensorial experiences of delight. Perhaps more important, raw earth, though ancient in its origins, may be instrumental in helping mitigate the very contemporary climate crisis.

This studio poses the questionL how can architecture exploit underused or uninhabitable spaces to enhance collective living experience?

Gaps, voids, cavities, corridors, shafts, passages, and thresholds: Architecture tends to treat these spaces as after-thoughts. These are often secondary spaces, leftovers that are considered necessary requirements, not expressions of design. In fact, these are critical spaces - they can activate the experience of living by amplifying light, air, views, and the senses. Designing for the in-between spaces is not about finding efficiency, but about envisioning expansiveness.

It has been said that plants are the new pets. The fronds in our pots, corms in our rooms, and trees on our streets are perhaps best understood as what Donna Haraway calls “companion species.” As co-inhibitors of our homes, their cultivation intertwines with a range of urban living issues: climate change, collective identity, and food equity. This studio will speculate on new opportunities in housing design by thinking about and with plants. As the current “vegetal turn” in various fields of knowledge challenges the main tenants of modern thoughts where plants are cast as inferior, centering plants from the margins of design thinking allows us to explore more ethical models of living together in New York.

Photographs and drawings of housing and gardens will ground the studio’s work. Beginning with photographing the city, students will use photographs and drawings of housing and gardens to learn about optimal living conditions. Working through photographs collect or take images of gardens and housing. Using the photograph document a range of scales of housing and gardens and their relationship to: the ground, sky, city, etc…Departing from the photographs, create drawings as paper cutouts, layering space, filtering as you go, illustrate: day to night, color, layering, plants, living, to imagine how changing materials affects the architecture of housing and gardens. Drawings and models (which are also drawings) illustrate concepts and visions for housing as a cultural project. Drawings and models, not isolated events, are integral to the creation of your individual project. Work with the concept of filtration including material filtration to demonstrate how tending architecture creates new housing forms. Students will work with gardens to design efficient and forward thinking buildings, and model and make drawings that creatively illustrate the integration of water conservation and planted gardens as part of city life. These drawings will form the basis of your project. Throughout the term, students will learn about housing, gardens, and drawings about housing and gardens.

Our Housing Studio’s point of departure is T. S. Eliot’s phrase, “Home is where one starts from,” which reflects the idea that our understanding of the world and sense of identity originates from the experiences we encounter in our upbringing in the context of our homes. Here, home is more than a physical place. It is also the psychological and emotional space that shapes our sense of being in the world. We will aim to produce housing that connects landscape and interiors and allows every home to have natural light and cross ventilation, with access to outdoor spaces whenever possible. We will consider the project costs, aiming to design housing that is wholesome yet conscientious of the material resources and costs. We will revise the designs through desk crits and group meetings to create beautifully detailed housing connected to its surroundings.