VIRTUAL London.

Abstract

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The right to housing is timely and critical. The ever-changing question of what constitutes home is, today more than ever, at the forefront of the battlefield where architecture and urbanism confront the social, political, economic, and environmental forces that shape contemporary life. Critical issues of inequality, environmental concerns, the ongoing pandemic, and the continuous displacement of people are all soundly portrayed and expressed within our domestic spaces. The research presents a recent book publication entitled “KatOikia.” The book emerged as an indirect outcome of the Housing Design Studio sponsored by CetraRuddy Architecture during the Fall 2018 at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York. The publication brings together academic speculations and pedagogical explorations with scholarly voices and practices from the professional realm, including the voices of James Wines, Nandini Bagchee, Steven Holl, and SHoP Architects. The effort is to construct meaningful bridges that reconcile dichotomies between academia and practice and shape collective visions around the critical question: How do we produce a counter to the status quo in all forms of housing production? The intersection of academic speculations, pedagogical explorations, and professional practice serves as a strategy for connecting practical and theoretical forms of knowledge, enabling design to acquire new meaning and value in relation to cultural, environmental, and social concerns. What are the critical and formative moments associated with building our practice? The housing approaches showcased in this research, driven by experimental motivation, exemplify shared affinities, techniques, and sensibilities that propel speculative design within housing’s culture and politics.