Introduction
Core Architecture Studio III
States of Housing
Housing, as a design studio, is the last semester within the required series of Core Studios. It serves as a conclusion to the core sequence, as well as a transition to the Advanced Studios and specifically building up to the Advanced Studio IV: Scales of Environment. While the studio is structured to present knowledge about the fundamentals of architecture as it applies to designing housing projects, the studio aims to inspire a shift in thinking about architecture in relation to the world at large. There is perhaps nowhere better to study housing than at Columbia GSAPP with its nearly 40-year history of offering housing studios focused on the deeply rich history of New York City. So, while this term, the studio focused on a select site within the Bronx, the studio continually thinks beyond the familiar—reaching globally, never out of touch with the Advanced Studios. While the Core Studios are structured sequentially, housing, because of its unique placement within the sequence, is also situated to absorb and be influenced by research in the advanced studios, while at the same serving to produce serious thinkers and designers about design through the problem of housing types.
1
The Black Vernacular and Homeownership
Building on bell hooks’ ideas of the Black Vernacular, this studio collaboratively explored a multitude of subjectivities as a way to uncover, integrate, formulate, and plot the politics of space. Speculating on the interiority and exteriority of house and housing, it analyzed one’s spatial experiences and histories, as well as architectural and art precedents, to build a catalog of radical strategies that confronted and redefined “homeownership.” The studio simultaneously engaged in active and continuous dialogue around questions such as: Is ownership a moral endeavor or a lingering remnant of white supremacy? Can ownership be expanded upon as a spatial concept? Can ownership be the tool for liberation when it is used for captivity?
Students: Eleanor Birle, Laura Blaszczak, Megan Dang, Cecile Kim, Kim Langat, Khadija ann Tarver, Sam Velasquez, Rose Zhang
Unstitching Property
This project is a speculation, not a solution. By proposing a building on land rather than proper...
Soft-Home
Our housing proposal reimagines systems of waste as a means to restore environmental comfort and ...
2
New Standards
In 1956, the exhibition “This is Tomorrow” took place in London in which twelve independent proposals questioned the status quo in architecture and its incapability of addressing social demands after the war. Group Six was composed of architects Alison and Peter Smithson and artists Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson. Their proposal, “Patio and Pavilion,” represented the fundamental necessities of the human habitat in a series of symbols, a sort of social pragmatism engaged with the commons and reclaiming public space as space for life to unfold. The studio took this parallel moment in history as a conceptual starting point, exploring the capacities of housing in shifting perspectives from “Object to Performance” taking on climate, political, spatial, and social contemporary challenges.
Students: Marcus Chan, Maxine Gao, Yiyi Gao, Justin Hager, Min Soo Jeon, Blake Kem, Anya Ray, Aaron Smolar, Zoe Su, Madeleine Sung, Chi Chi Wakabayashi, Phoenix Yang
Bronx Vertebra
Bronx Vertebra responds to the missing role of public service in the Bronx and becomes an opportu...
PRODUCTIVE-URBIA: Regenerative Housing through Agricultural Production
From the turn of the 20th century until the eve of the Great Depression, the Bronx welcomed a six...
Bloom
Bloom challenges the standards of living in New York. This project aims to nourish the community ...
Topographies of Homecoming
In a housing lecture, Anne Lacaton states: “Housing is everywhere. Housing is here. Housing is in...
3
Nest, Nesting, Nested
This studio considered housing as a fluid set of nested and potentially ambiguous relationships, connecting residents to the city across a series of interrelated scales. Furniture, building element, room, unit, shared amenities, housing, gardens, block, city: these are some of the objects and spaces around which social relationships are woven. Elevated from the incidental to the systemic, these components, spaces, and culturally constructed notions redefine each other, as this studio searched for new and inclusive frameworks for living in the contemporary city. Through the questioning of these elements and their relationships, the studio reconsidered the fundamentals of housing to produce positive social consequences. Students designed for equity and inclusiveness, informing decisions at every step with this objective in mind.
Students: Priscilla Auyeung, Younjae Choi, Anne Freeman, Shuyang Huang, Charlie Liu, Nicolas Shannon, Seung Ho Shin, Cemre Tokat, Peter Walhout, Linru Wang, Yerin Won, Mingyue Zhang
Open Air Home
Inspired by the surrounding neighborhood of tenement houses from the early 1800s, the formal l...
4
Home, House, Housing
This studio questioned the meaning of home and its relationship to the city as a way to reveal new directions for urban housing. What we call home, the way we live, and where we live has been in constant evolution throughout history. Embracing change, the studio used time with its many scales, rhythms, and cycles as a tool and measure to shape an infrastructure for living. It created new definitions for home, house, and housing that better reflects who we are today and offer new possibilities for how we choose to live tomorrow.
Students: Qingning Cao, Hallie Chuba, Shining Hong, Isaac Khouzam, Thiago Lee, Jixuan Li, Hanyu Liu, Chiao Yang, Elena Yu, Sky Zhang
Housing of Curvy Walls
In Melrose, Bronx, the majority of the population is immigrants from the Caribbean region. While ...
(Im)permanency
NYC’s average household size has decreased for the past decades, leading to a significant shortag...
5
Recasting: Scale, Systems, Structure
This studio imagined housing design through the lens of operations. Teams engaged multiple roles across the value chain from architecture to operations to material procurement and fabrication to consider their influence on the design of a housing product system. In so, the studio asks: in what ways might the benchmarks for success in design change because of this reimagined structure? Students developed repeatable housing systems responsive to the site’s context within the Melrose neighborhood of the Bronx. As such, students consider how their housing system’s design enabled grounding and connectivity.
Students: Sam Bager, Zina Berrada, Brennan Heyward, Joachym Joab, Jennah Jones, Jacob Kackley, Kerol Kaskaviqi, Julie Kim, Wenjing Tu, Kaixi Tu
MOD:LIVE
Centered on the concept of implementing flexible living solutions to a stagnant and rigid hous...
6
COMFORT:ABLE
By employing strategies of passive thermal design, this studio invited unconventional relationships that foster a thermal symbiosis between program parts. In place of hermetically sealed boxes, meso spatial buildings maintain a blurry edge between programmatic parts, a soft yet productive boundary between inside and outside. This studio embraced this blurry edge and a broadened thermal zone, thereby seeking to give agency to the building inhabitants to establish their own sense of comfort in a less energy-dependent way. It harnessed the human tendency for adaptation, calling the occupants to open the proverbial windows, step onto the veranda and let the breeze flow through, getting comfortable in the space between.
Students: Paige Haskett, Jackie Pothier, Will Rose, Polina Stepanova, Jordan Trager, Yuli Wang, Ruisheng Yang, Zixiao Zhu
Plug-In House
Plug-In House is a multi-generational housing complex that responds to the neighborhood of Melros...
Inter-Growing Homes
The proposed 92-unit housing project provides many scales of communal spaces that lace throughout...
7
Material Care
This studio researched material care in residential architecture. The selection of materials transforms a residential building from a luxury to an affordable designation. Students explored a variety of materials instrumental to both the representation of housing, and its material reality. The material expression of the building’s exterior confronts issues of durability, weatherproofing, providing an address, visibility of form, block continuity or discontinuity, acoustics, gathering spaces, enclosure, and so on. What materials have been used to identify housing and why is this problematic? What materials contribute to creating a sense of place and identity? How does a community identify with materials? What materials embody energy, efficiency, and care? What materials are durable and reduce maintenance and labor? What materials offer cooling properties? What if gardens are materials?
Students: Zoona Aamir, Saba Ardeshiri, Alex He, Myungju Ko, Ari Nadrich, Karen Polanco, Nara Radinal, Emma Sumrow, Karen Wang, Elaine Yu, Yifei Yuan, Stephen Zimmerer
blocktown
A multi-generational reality is imagined through a variety of elevated living spaces that sit on ...
Refigure
The installation of multi-generational housing creates a performance in the neighborhood which re...
8
This is us
The architecture of physical spaces shapes interactions and plays a key role in defining who we are. Therefore, the studio designed from the belief that housing can reduce, or exacerbate, social inequalities in health, crime, climate vulnerability, and social well-being. It looked at design, construction detailing, building costs, and housing finance to determine a point in the scale where efficiencies and natural resources are balanced. Specifically, it produced housing that connected landscape and interiors, allowing every home to have natural light, cross-ventilation, and access to outdoor spaces while concurrently considering project costs to design more wholesome housing at a comparable market. Through these elements, this studio created housing that is connected and beautifully set in its place.
Students: Daniel Chang, Joan Ruonan Du, Rebecca Faris, Kristen Fitzpatrick, Tung Yi Lam, Michael Lau, Nicolas Nefiodow Pineda, Jonghoon Park, Carley Pasqualotto, Lucas Pereira, Maclane Regan, Christopher Scheu
