Housing the Modern Dweller

Course Description

For most avant-garde architects the private home is the main vehicle through which they find opportunity to test radical building innovations. Moreover, the pressing political and social justice issues of the modern era were often explored and debated through the “housing question.” This makes modern residential architecture a useful medium for understanding how architects tackle disciplinary responses to their architectural predecessors; the important yet often obscured role played by women as designers and clients; urban “renewal” and public housing; and changing ideas about “house” and “home.” This class reviews such topics through an investigation of the major contributions to residential design between 1880 and 1980. Topics discussed include the traditional canon, from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Arts and Crafts Prairie Houses to Robert Venturi’s “complex and contradictory” reinterpretation of modernism. We also consider, however, how Eurocentric modernism resonated across the globe, feminist rethinking of spatial organization, and how race and class-based discrimination shaped residential development. Course content is offered online through readings, discussions, films, podcasts, and guest speakers. Students are asked to complete at least one self-led exploration to a house or multifamily housing complex in their area. Group assignments and discussions help students become proficient in virtual modes of communication, such as Zoom, email, and the communication opportunities provided by Canvas.