house-housing.com
Twitter,[email protected], #househousing
House Housing: An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate is an ongoing, multi-year research project conducted by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University. The initiative seeks to encourage a public, historically informed conversation about the intersection of architecture and real estate development. The untimeliness of this history, as indicated by the project’s title, is twofold. First, it returns us to financial matters widely discussed in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 foreclosure crisis but now largely abandoned by mainstream discourse. Second, it discloses surprising repetitions of themes, tendencies, and actions—reminding us that the economic infrastructures on which architecture rests are the outcome of such repetitions, rather than an a priori, natural ground. These infrastructures locate housing at the center of the current economic regime, with the United States as an influential node in a transnational network.
House Housing consists of a growing body of research that draws on multiple types of media; appears in numerous locations in the form of exhibitions, panel discussions, and publications, among others; and relates to different institutional frames. The project’s objects of inquiry range from architect-designed houses to prefabricated apartment blocks to suburban gated communities. All of these architectures are analyzed in light of their position at the intersection of design, policy, and finance. New narratives emerge out of surprising juxtapositions.
The project’s website, launching today, as an expanded space in which to develop the research, builds on an exhibition presented by the Buell Center this past June at Columbia University’s Casa Muraro in Venice, Italy. Focusing on evidence, analysis, and clearly articulated sourcing, the site reflects the Center’s dialogic approach to research while creating opportunities for interested parties to join in. In this way, House Housing aims not only to craft what we see as a much needed and heretofore unwritten history of architecture and real estate, but also to support the Center’s mission by generating public scholarship in an open conversation with our various constituencies.
Reinhold Martin: Director
Jacob Moore: Curator
Susanne Schindler: Curator
MTWTF: design
The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture was founded in 1982. Its mission is to advance the interdisciplinary study of American architecture, urbanism, and landscape. Located within the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, it sponsors programs and research projects focusing on issues of both scholarly and general interest.
Director: Reinhold Martin
Program Coordinator: Jacob Moore
Adjunct Associate Research Scholar: Susanne Schindler
Board of Advisors: Dianne Harris (Chair), Amale Andraos, Robert Beauregard, Teddy Cruz, Elizabeth Diller, Jeanne Gang, Mark Jarzombek, Kellie Jones, Phyllis Lambert, Brian Larkin, Mabel O. Wilson.
For further information, please contact us via email at [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @buellcenter.
