Anthony Averbeck

Faculty Research, UVA School of Architecture, with F. Correa and D. Dobrowolski

Abstract

Housing as typology is one of the richest representations of a city’s history and evolution of culture. The gradual collection of dwellings in multiple forms of existence —from individual to collective and from provisional to permanent— makes up the basic building blocks of a city. The space of the dwelling, as a mediator between conditions of exterior and interior, between the public and private realm, is an essential component in the construction of domesticity and urban life. Collective Living and the Architectural Imaginary examines the role of the architect in imagining new spaces for collective housing throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and in doing so, showcases the architect’s ability to invent novel ways of inhabiting domestic space.

Context

Since the 1940s, the design of housing has been a paradoxical exercise. On the one hand, architects have tested and refined models of housing through experimental design projects, inscribing new forms of domestic space and urban life. From the Copan Building in Sao Paulo in the 1950’s to Atelier 5 Halen Estate in 1957 to Charles Correa’s incremental housing at Belapur in 1983, housing design has been front and center to the architect’s agenda. On the other hand, this expansive instrumental and methodological diversity in housing design has not fully participated within the larger institutional frameworks —primarily government sponsored programs, public private partnerships, and market rate developments— put in place for the delivery of mass housing. This divide has marked a stark disconnect between experimental housing models and those implemented more widely by the public and private sectors.

Yet in the last decade, we have witnessed a resurgence of housing as an epicenter for architectural experimentation across geographic contexts and socio-economic levels, and an increasing desire to link design innovation with standardization. From the restructuring of city centers to new rural models for collective living, emergent models of housing design are repositioning domestic space as the backbone of a more integral urban project; capable of integrating the physical and experiential identities associated to domestic spaces with the economies of scale necessary for the delivery of housing at a larger scale.

Exhibition and Catalog

This exhibition presents 60 case studies of collective living, projected in the last 120 years, showing the methodological and instrumental diversity present in architecture in relation to the design of multifamily housing. The book and exhibit utilize ten contemporary examples —built in the last ten years— as a point of departure, and to build a broader genealogy of experimental housing projects. Catalogued by project type, the exhibition traces the conceptual and formal underpinnings of each project and synthesizes their broader spatial ambitions.
The categories that organize the book and exhibition are as follows:
01_ Inner City Residual Sites02_ Communal Living03_ Micro Living04_ Self Organized / Self Growth05_ Joint Freeholds06_ New Urban Extensions07_ Historic Urban Core Retrofits08_ Rural Collective Housing09_ Provisional Utopias10_ Additions and Adaptations
Ultimately, the objective of the project is to showcase the responsibility afforded to architecture in imagining and shaping the many of notions of home.