Urban Housing: Home

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Integrative Studio: Urban Housing | ARC1004 - ??? | Spring 2017 | ???

Amidst a serious housing crisis, the City of Boston had identified a target of building 53,000 new units by the year 2030. The new developments should meet the needs of a population that can’t afford market priced units: over the last year, the median home sales have increased 6%, while the median rents have skyrocketed with an increase of 13%.

This studio will explore possible responses to this unfavorable context in Roxbury, one of the most at-risk neighborhoods. Four publicly-owned infill parcels are identified as studio sites – all of them with immediate proximity to public transportation, services, and job opportunities.  Being exposed to a range of site conditions, students will react to them with a housing typology pertinent to their specific context – fostering a collaborative working environment in which they will learn from each other.

The main topic of the studio is to re-think housing by investigating and developing strategies to achieve affordability. Students will be asked to build an argument and critically answer through their project the question of what makes a housing development affordable (construction methods and materials, systems, rationalizing plan layouts, reducing areas, etc.). Apart from the quantitative, central to the studio is the research of qualitative aspects of housing through architectural design. What are the roles of circulation in living spaces, relation of serving and served spaces, transparency, light, materiality, flexibility, relation of public-common-private, and other themes will be explored.

As integral part of the studio, guests from City of Boston Planning and Development Agency, Department of Neighborhood Development, and the Office of New Urban Mechanics will meet with students to help them understand more into details the broader housing challenges that the city is facing and discuss their work.