The Columbia University Gradate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation has launched a new interdisciplinary research initiative called the Columbia GSAPP Housing Lab. The lab is to be led by GSAPP dean Amale Andraos. 

Architect and GSAPP associate professor Hilary Sample has also been named to the school’s first endowed professorship position. GSAPP's new IDC Foundation Professorship of Housing Design is made possible by a $2 million donation from the Institute of Design and Construction Foundation, a group that "provides grants to educational institutions in Greater New York City to advance research and the training of students in fields relating to architectural design, engineering, and building construction," according to the IDC website.

Sample has led the school's housing design curriculum since 2011, including the school’s impressive housing studio, and is a co-founder of architecture firm MOS. MOS recently masterplanned an experimental housing community in Mexico that includes housing designs from Frida Escobedo Architecture Workshop, Zago Architecture, and 30 other firms. 

In a press release announcing the creation of the lab and Sample's professorship, Dean Andraos, said, “Housing sits at the intersection of the critical questions facing architecture and the built environment today. The study of housing has been paramount to Columbia GSAPP’s academic programs for over forty years, building on our faculty’s commitment to bring design intelligence together with engaged planning and innovative development approaches to think through new possibilities for more equitable, sustainable and creative housing.” 

Echoing the sentiment, Raymond R. Savino, president of the IDC Foundation, said, “*The endowed professorship will focus on housing design and serve as a catalyst for developing creative practices that can have meaningful impact on the production of affordable housing–with particular attention to the intersection of architecture, engineering, and building construction. In doing so, it will draw on Columbia GSAPP’s renowned leadership in housing design and advance innovations that address the pressing challenge of affordability.”

Bernadette Baird-Zars, a doctoral candidate in urban planning at GSAPP, has been selected as the Lab’s inaugural IDC Foundation Fellowship recipient.