The Library is Open 10: Laboratorio de Vivienda/Housing Laboratory

Join Hilary Sample (GSAPP, MOS) and Michael Meredith (Princeton, MOS) for the 10th session of The Library is Open. They will present and discuss their publication, Housing Laboratory / Laboratorio de Vivienda (Barcelona: Actar, 2024), followed by a Q&A.

In 2017, Mexico’s Institute for the National Fund for Workers’ (INFONAVIT) Center for Research for Sustainable Development launched a program to solicit new approaches to affordable housing. To better understand the possibilities, and to better educate developers, workers, and students about the research, INFONAVIT engaged with MOS to develop a master plan for a campus of 32 built prototypes and design an education center to promote awareness and study of workers’ housing typologies.

Presenting the 32 projects selected and built, including research, drawings, and descriptions by the architects, and an essay by Canadian Centre for Architecture Director Giovanna Borasi titled “A Large Urban Garden Where You Can Learn About Architecture,” Laboratorio de Vivienda considers the problem of low-income housing by bringing thoughtful attention and expertise of architects, considering how these proposals, assembled into a collective, would work together toward creating not an estate but a community for Apan. For, given the limited resources of such works, each decision gains greater significance and has greater impact on the design and on the life of its inhabitants.

Learn more about Housing Laboratory / Laboratorio de Vivienda.

Hilary Sample is the IDC Foundation Professor of Housing Design and coordinator of the Core III Studio at GSAPP, and Co-Founder of the New York-based architecture and design studio MOS. Since its establishment in 2003, MOS has won major national and international awards and been recognized in significant publications. Monographs about the studio include an issue of_ El Croquis and Selected Works_ (Princeton Architectural Press, 2016).

Sample recently published Maintenance Architecture (MIT Press, 2016) and has taught at Columbia GSAPP, Harvard GSD, Yale SoA, and the University of Toronto. She has held the John G. Williams Teaching Chair at the University of Arkansas and the Reyner Banham Chair at the State University of Buffalo.

Michael Meredith is Professor of Architecture at Princeton University and, together with Hilary Sample, Co-Founder and principal of MOS. His writing has appeared in Artforum, LOG, Perspecta, Praxis, Domus, and Harvard Design Magazine. Meredith previously taught at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, the University of Michigan, where he was awarded the Muschenheim Fellowship, and the University of Toronto.

MOS undertakes projects diverse in scale and type, spanning throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Recent projects include the Petite École in France, a public pavilion for teaching design to children (2019); Laboratorio de Vivienda in Mexico, a housing-focused education center (2018); Krabbesholm School in Denmark, a complex of four art studios (2012); and a photographer’s studio (2020). A collective affordable housing residence in Washington, D.C. is scheduled for completion in 2022.

The work of MOS is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, Harvard University’s Frances Loeb Library, and Columbia University’s Butler Library.

Sample and Meredith are recipients of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Museum’s National Design Award in Architecture (2015), the United States Artists Award (2020), and the Rome Prize (2022–23).

The Library is Open is a lunchtime series featuring recently published works and their authors, curated by Bart-Jan Polman, Director of Exhibitions and Public Programming and Curator of the Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery at Columbia GSAPP. Hosted in a central location in Avery Hall, the LiO series honors GSAPP’s historical connection to Avery Library, the world’s largest Architecture library.

Columbia University campus access is restricted to Columbia affiliates (with a valid CUID) and to pre-approved guests. To attend an event at GSAPP, please register through the link below at least two business days in advance of the event to request campus access and bring your ID. Learn more about the current Columbia campus access.

Register here to attend the Library is Open 10.