International Housing Studio: 2017-2019, a publication highlighting the work of the 419 International Housing Studio in the Sam Fox School’s Master of Architecture program. Image courtesy of Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis recently announced the publication of International Housing Studio: 2017-2019, which highlights the work of the 419 International Housing studio in the Master of Architecture program.

A core studio taken by all graduate architecture students, the 419 International Housing studio draws from the diverse expertise of Washington University faculty and visiting faculty, with project sites located in different parts of the world. The studio begins with a set of rotations, where students work for two weeks in one city with one instructor before moving to another city with a different instructor, with whom they develop their project for the remainder of the semester. Students explore how each city’s climate, history, and sociocultural particularities inform the making of collective housing.

To dive into the collection of student and faculty research, Archinect previews the publication that was published in March 2021. 

Produced and designed by desescribir, the publication begins with four introductory essays written by Heather Woofter (director of the Sam Fox School's College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design), Monica Rivera (professor of practice and chair of graduate architecture), and Philip Holden (professor of practice). 

During her introduction, Woofter shared, "I struggled with this introduction because of the anxieties surrounding recent world events that accumulate and converge to rouse the social foundations of design education, pivotal to understanding the moment we inhabit. We find ourselves in a world that is laced with uncertainty, affecting us in profound ways. Social and political views, environmental distress signals, and public health disparity name only a few of the transformative events unraveling in front of us [...] How can we begin to address these shared concerns of our profession and community? What kind of agency do we have as students and faculty?" 

"Critics often credit architects with social housing failures and urban designers with polarizing visions that are meant to address all citizens' needs yet are embroidered in policies that challenge to dismantle them," Woofter adds. "Yet we, as designers—urban designers, landscape architects, and architects—are in unique positions to advocate for sustainable, systems-oriented thinking and housing solutions that extend beyond the building into the public realm." 

The introductory essays reflect on the framework and process for the studio, as well as the work and research gathered during the studio. As Monica Rivera shares in her entry The Threshold Image, "Housing makes up most of our built environment [...] With project sites located in different parts of the world, students in the 419 International Housing explore—through the making of a single drawing, the Threshold image, during an initial exercise—how a city's climate, history, and sociocultural particularities inform the thresholds between interior domestic spaces and a dwelling's exterior in the context of a collective building or group of buildings." 

...we, as designers—urban designers, landscape architects, and architects—are in unique positions to advocate for sustainable, systems-oriented thinking and housing solutions that extend beyond the building into the public realm. -  Heather Woofter (Director, College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, Sam Fox School, Washington University)

The 419 International Housing Studio focuses on design projects centered on the following cities: San Juan (Puerto Rico), Halifax, Barcelona, Seattle, Dublin, Berlin, Cagliari (Italy), and Santiago de Compostela (Spain). Student work is paired with city profiles of each researched area in addition to descriptions of each studio and its research faculty. 

"In our International Housing Studio, faculty and students' concerns transcend any one location [...] to consider the necessities that provide citizens a dignified, full life," Woofter shares. "We also consider the individual and collective program within a framework of domesticity. The work projects the world's realities into the studio by exploring changing conditions of nuclear families, economic pressures, natural disasters, and political crisis."

“Housing’s generic quality suggests its value lies in how well it can accommodate diverse occupants through time and changing situations—evolving family structures, aging, natural disasters, financial adversity, and crises. Students explore the complex arrangement of individual and collective programs through the development of frameworks that can host intimate domesticity yet be open-ended enough to absorb change and future uses.” - Monica Rivera (professor of practice)

“Housing’s generic quality suggests its value lies in how well it can accommodate diverse occupants through time and changing situations—evolving family structures, aging, natural disasters, financial adversity, and crises.” Rivera notes in her essay Position in the Curriculum. “Students explore the complex arrangement of individual and collective programs through the development of frameworks that can host intimate domesticity yet be open-ended enough to absorb change and future uses.”

Following the series of studio rotations and students’ proposals for collective housing projects is a set of scholarly essays written by Sam Fox School faculty Emiliano López (senior lecturer), Monica Rivera (professor of practice), and Michael R. Allen (senior lecturer), along with Javier García-Germán, professor at the Escuela Técnica de Arquitectura de Madrid. 

After further exploration of the publication, it's clear how much the program values and celebrates the work of its students and faculty. The publication is filled with essays that inform and further stimulate discourse involving housing outside of the United States. International Housing Studio: 2017-2019 is an excellent resource for students and design professionals interested in exploring housing from a social, cultural, and environmental framework. In addition to this latest publication by the school, the program also regularly publishes "Approach”. This compendium of work celebrates student projects produced by architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design students from the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design at the Sam Fox School. Stay tuned for an announcement of the newest edition.

*The digital version of the full publication can be viewed at issuu.com/samfoxschool. The publication is edited by Emiliano López, Monica Rivera, and Heather Woofter. To learn more about the College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture Urban Design Sam Fox School, Washington University click here.