109th Annual Meeting

The relationship between building and ground is one of the most significant dynamics within the discipline of architecture. During the twentieth century, for instance, numerous critics interpreted the building/ground joint as a symbolic representation of the discipline’s conceptual posture towards modernity’s shifting technological, socio-cultural, and geopolitical conditions. This paper examines architectural conceptions of ground amidst another transformative moment: namely, the arrival of a “post-digital” or “second digital” era. Whereas designers of the so-called “first digital turn” emphasized the formal possibilities facilitated by virtual space’s liberation from gravity and physics, there is an emerging generation of designers who are using digital tools in a completely different manner. Rather than formal virtuosity, these designers of the post-digital generation focus on the integration of physics, along with the properties of matter, into the virtual realm. Among the experimental approaches that fall within this larger conceptual project is the simulation of gravity, a technique that often results with the piling up of digital bits. By examining the recent proliferation of simulated piles, this paper highlights the ways in which shifting applications of digital tools are reshaping disciplinary conceptions of ground.

Architecture is not a science, but a cultural practice. Yet there are certain scientific approaches to architectural questions and issues, which ask for a methodological understanding within the discipline. Traditionally, these have been grouped into two general categories: humanities with research in history, theory, sociology, anthropology, etc. on the one side, and natural sciences with physics, math, civil engineering, material sciences, fabrication, and computation on the others. Design (studio) is conventionally considered to be the arena where the diverge sub-fields converge, overlap, interchange, and integrate in a creative process – both in education as well as in the professional field.  This presentation will discuss a different approach to contemporary architectural pedagogy: design research methods. This hybrid format crosses between a scientific method to design itself, since it catalogues, analyzes and theorizes different design approaches in a comparative manner. That is, it tries to gather general knowledge of the discipline by systematic research into the design process itself. And it is applied science, since it introduces these design methods back into the studio, puts them to test (for a specific design problem) and asks students as well as instructors to comparatively discuss their “performance” for a specific situation. Since the establishment of institutes within schools of architecture in the late 1960s and 70s (both history, theory and cultural studies as well as technological, engineering, computation), there have been concerns about the separation of the sub-fields of architecture from design (studio), creating academic silos, which result from the institutionalization, specialization and autonomization of these academic formats (such as specific master and PhD programs). Today, the difference between knowledge (or “understanding”, in the language of NAAB) and application (or “ability”) is one of the biggest obstacles for design education. Both students as well as society at large ask for a rapprochement between the diverse subfields (“integrated architectural solutions” according to NAAB). Design research methods, and this is a hypothesis, could provide an opportunity for convergence and integration of diverse sets of knowledge into action.  The presentation will discuss a set of model course for incoming graduate students (M-Arch) that combines a comparative design methods lecture, a discussion seminar (on the approaches presented) and a design studio. For the first half of the semester, the studio becomes a weekly theory guided laboratory for exploring the strengths and weaknesses of different design methods. The second half consists of a studio guided seminar that reflects upon the students’ individual research and design method to be developed into an in-class presentation and research method paper. Both components have been designed to empower students to critically reflect upon their own methods (which they have been exposed to previously or developed themselves) as well as turn knowledge into action (design), and tacit design practice back into self-reflected articulation, both in words and drawings. In addition, these courses will challenge students to transgress the selected existing design methods in favor of designing new ones, which integrate cultural, socio-economic, environmental and political issues and speculate about alternative social realities.

The first idea of design studio as a conventional pedagogical structure of architectural education dates back to 1819 in France as École des Beaux-Arts.  Since then, the design studio has been considered a critical element and norm for architectural education and design practice to improve not only “artistic” but also “analytical- structural thinking skills.” However, since March 2020, when governments enforced COVID-19 quarantine restrictions, the entire education system worldwide rapidly transitioned from face to face to online instruction.  This global pandemic has created a significant pedagogical shift in delivering the traditional design studio instruction through the virtual classroom.  While some programs have previously experimented and found success with online education, for most programs, with direct hands-on experiential learning, this transition was a new experience met with uncertainty and anxiety for both faculty and students. This paper highlights the challenges and opportunities of this rapid online transition in architecture education by examining XX University, a Historically Black College and University (HBCU).  This institution has a 5-year architecture program that shifted to online instruction in March 2020 and will remain online through Spring 2021.  This study explored related literature through a database search in addition to an extensive survey that targeted the design studio faculty. Through this survey, the authors evaluated the faculty’s experiences as they tried to rethink the traditional design studio in a virtual world.  The survey also explored the faculty’s perspectives regarding the relationship between an online environment, equity, and the digital divide.  As has been widely covered, the health effects of COVID-19 have disproportionately affected people of color.  Given this reality, the paper also explores how existing inequities have the potential to affect architecture students in the transition to the digital world.  While the paper outlines the challenges that occurred during this shift, it also highlights opportunities for pedagogical changes in design studios at XX University (and others) should online or hybrid instruction continue in the future.

Among the impacts wrought by COVID-19 are sudden reexaminations of higher education methods and curricula, including those of schools of architecture. This paper focuses on a particular Pre-Architecture program, one built around two models operating in parallel: a normative academic year course set – Foundations, and a competitive, summer intensive – Summer Design. The two sequences attract different demographics, and the course experiences markedly diverge. Their strongest commonality has been an emphasis on analog production in lieu of digital fluency – an untenable prospect in a newly-virtualized curriculum. If the incursion of COVID-19 was a stress-test for entry-level programs, this predominantly analog setup broke under the pressure. Suddenly, critical physical interaction among instructors and students were obviated, and a long-standing analog curriculum had to be rewritten. Moreover, it was determined that going remote meant going digital. With parity paramount, no student could unfairly capitalize on the advantages provided by their retreat home. Thus, all project work became strictly digital, with baseline tools that reduced the advantage gap. In the current setup, the Foundations sequence includes two representation and two studio courses with digital content introduced only in the Spring representation course. Throughout, a high level of rigor and intensity are emphasized, and students operate predominately in analog modes. As a result of the pandemic, 2019-2020 Foundations students transitioned to a remote setting mid-semester, three-quarter of the way through the academic year. Previous knowledge of digital tools and pre-existing relationships between students and faculty facilitated a transition to a remote format with little time invested or lost. The Summer Design sequence includes the same four courses, condensed into a 10-week intensive with the first half being a highly competitive program that results in a limited number of students advancing to the second half. Due to COVID-19, the Summer Design 2020 cohort were the first in the history of the program to begin their architectural education in an entirely digital, entirely remotely format. The remote format created significant logistical hurdles, where parity among competing students meant equal access to software, resources, and support. These challenges became an added element to the newly formed pedagogical pursuits of the program – teaching spatial competency and literacy using digital tools. In Fall 2020, students in these two factions – Foundations and Summer Design –converged as a single second-year cohort. Their divergent experiences provided an opportunity to assess the impact of opposing learning settings. Through an analysis of the work completed and an evaluation of the impact on preparedness, via a survey of students as well as a faculty discussion, this paper will assess the early ramifications of a pedagogical paradigm shift in a beginning design program. The intent is to share our approach in the pursuit of trans-institutional baseline knowledge about how design education can start in a pandemic.

The current COVID-19 Pandemic with its disruptions of where and how we work, learn and interact has intensified questions about how knowledge and skills are acquired in contemporary architecture education. The traditional seminars and studio courses that are the common formats used to teach architecture students the art of building now take place mostly remotely. Internship and co-ops as well as more hands-on workshops, the critical links to practice-based education have been jeopardized. Wentworth launched the FutureLab, a unique experience for co-op students [Innovation Fellows] to turn the current COVID-19 crisis into an innovation opportunity and to create insights and future thinking that could inform a variety of industries as more disruptions through pandemics and climate change are expected over our lifetimes.   This paper examines the framework and results of running the FutureLab, a highly participatory project-based learning environment situated in-between academia and practice. Wentworth Institute of Technology requires two mandatory co-op experiences. Designed to offer an alternative for mandatory co-op, the FutureLab connects students to industry and community leaders across different disciplines. These interdisciplinary immersions are the foundation from which students expand their viewpoint focusing on the question of “Post-COVID-19: How we may live and work in 2030?”   For 13-weeks, Innovation Fellows work in teams. Initially, they diverge into different verticals such as healthcare, sustainability, future of work, communities & neighborhoods, retail and consumer behavior among others to get inspired and jumpstart broad future thinking. Further into the FutureLab Innovation Fellows determine a concrete project topic based on their interests and select a theme from three tracks: Future Cities, Re-inventing Spaces, or Impact + Society.  Over the course of the FutureLab teams utilize a variety of innovation methodologies and tools such as Future Scenarios Planning, Design Thinking, stakeholder interviews, conceptualization, research and data analysis, strategy development, and visualization. Students participating in the Future Lab hone interdisciplinary, innovative, strategic and future thinking and strengthen their employability well beyond their discipline knowledge. Student insights and outcomes are published and shared with employers, alumni, and other stakeholders.  Assessing the outcomes, impact and participants’ experiences reveal the potential of an alternative teaching and learning format and could provide a path forward in an ongoing or a post-COVID-19 world especially during a time of re-shaping and reassessing of higher education. While based on a non-hierarchical studio model augmented with innovation methodologies, the FutureLab is not solely focused on the authority and competence of one professor or on specific assignments. Teams are provided with input from stakeholders and professionals and are asked to identify an area of need and an agenda of intervention. This paper documents the research and results in combination with learning outcomes that might make the format of a FutureLab a suitable teaching format potentially with credits and NAAB Program criteria assigned. The FutureLab further contributes to the need of our built environment to address solutions that go beyond function and form of projects and include assessments and consideration of human experience and identity.

This paper provides a condensed history of the allure of cars as well as their catastrophic impacts, including vehicle crash fatalities, environmental and atmospheric damage, military conflicts, insufficient infrastructure, and economic injustice and segregation in cities with the expansion of highways.[1] Any personal mobility and individual freedom that cars provide come at the cost of social mobility and collective liberty. With this problematic history in tow, the nature of automobiles is changing. In the last two decades, self-driving cars have advanced from research to reality and offer tremendous promise, from reducing emissions and congestion through ridesharing to decreasing the number of driving accidents and deaths. Still, new problems surface, including adversarial attacks that undermine safety, algorithms biased by economic factors, congestion increases due to decreased labor costs, and surveillance exercised on vulnerable populations.[2] [3] Autonomous driving is in its early stages, with safety unproven and spatial potential or perils unclear. It is crucial for architects, engineers, and urban designers to respond to new technological imperatives and ongoing systemic problems tied to the car’s legacy. This paper looks at a case study in operable physical models as simulations through research to create an experimental testing platform for autonomous driving. This research examines the question: what new opportunities do autonomous vehicles (AVs) offer designers to innovate in the built environment? And how might those innovations decrease environmental degradation and better serve the disenfranchised in urban areas? [1] Keller Easterling, “Switch” E-flux Architecture, September 2017, para. 1. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/positions/151186/switch/. [2] Paglen, Trevor. “Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You).” The New Inquiry, December 8, 2016, para. 3. https://thenewinquiry.com/invisible-images-your-pictures-are-looking-at-you/. [3] Vorobeychik, Yevgeniy, and Murat Kantarcioglu. Adversarial Machine Learning (Synthesis Lectures on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning). Ronald Brachman, ed. Williston, VT: Morgan & Claypool, 2018, p 1-4.

The paper introduces theoretical paradigms, computational strategies, and representational techniques to uncover, analyze, and engage cross-boundary, territorial phenomena affecting multi-jurisdictional urban environments. Jurisdictional boundaries between cities, states, regions, and nations, and urban boundaries between zones, neighborhoods, land uses and owners, routinely impose artificial limits on the representation and understanding of territorial phenomena. Just as architects often limit site surveys and detailed site investigations  near the confines of a given property line, designers and public officials considering transformations of urban neighborhoods, cities, and city regions are often bound to studies that end at the limits of the urban form. These representational limits are not necessarily intentional oversights on the part of the designer; rather, they are practical results of various data regimes, economic constraints, and ownership models which atomize and selectively distribute spatial and environmental information. Simultaneously, there is a growing sensibility toward transboundary conceptions of shared challenges within bio-regions, eco-regions, watersheds, and similar transboundary constructs gaining geopolitical and design currency (Aït-Touati et al, 2019; Latour, 2018, Espejo 2020). Designers seeking to assemble cross-boundary geospatial representations to better assess and intervene within these constructs face challenges in the fragmentation of data sources and incongruous or incomplete data across jurisdictional divides. The paper details a series of novel synoptic tactics, computational tools and geospatial data visualization techniques projecting territorial transformations beyond the limits of jurisdictional boundaries.

The perception of  architectural space involves a visual understanding of objects, light, color, and the configuration of wall, floor, and ceiling elements. This eye-tracking study examines how architectural student viewers of two-dimensional scenes see these elements in images from 17th century Dutch paintings and photographs of mid-20th century modern architectural interiors. Results indicated significant patterns in how viewers observed these spaces, especially the attention given to openings with space beyond – the distant and vague regions of the scene. These patterns did not vary significantly between the three types of images viewed: historic color, historic black and white and modern black and white. Gender differences emerged, especially in participants’ visual attention to foreground objects. In addition, there were distinct differences between the results proposed by a computer simulation model and those of the actual participants. This study elevates the significance of architecture as a spatial practice in contrast to its focus on the object. 1. August Schmarsow, “The Essence of Architectural Creation,” Empathy, Form and Space: Problems in German Aesthetics 1873-1893, trans. HF Mallgrave and E. Ikonomou (Santa Monica: Getty Center, 1994), 289. Essay originally published In German, 1893. The perception of architectural space involves a visual understanding of objects, light, color, and the configuration of wall, floor, and ceiling elements. This eye-tracking study examines how architectural student viewers of two-dimensional scenes see these elements in images from 17th century Santa paintings and photographs of mid-20th century modern architectural interiors. Results indicated significant patterns in how viewers observed these spaces, especially the attention given to openings with space beyond – the distant and vague regions of the scene. did not vary significantly between the three types of images viewed: historic color, historic black and white and modern black and white. Gender differences emerged, especi ally In addition, there were distinct differences between the results proposed by a computer simulation model and those of the actual participants. This study elevates the significance of arc h itecture as a spatial practice in contrast to its focus on the object.

This paper discusses a research-based architectural design called “Recasting Concrete” that explored ways in which concrete 3D printing can be utilized as an architectural pedagogy. The paper begins by discussing how current architecture-oriented concrete 3D printing research is fixated on the technology’s application in practice, and how such fixation has prevented architects from exploring other realms in which concrete 3D printing can have impact, for example, education. Recasting Concrete is then situated within digital fabrication-centric pedagogies that have increasingly been introduced in architecture schools worldwide. The studio’s structure is detailed with particular focus on the ways in which students developed experimental concrete 3D printing methodologies. The work of three student research groups is presented. The studio’s work is then put in conversation with contemporary affordance theory in order to illuminate some of the students’ conceptual learnings. Finally, the paper discusses a novel architectural design approach that students learned through their investigations into concrete 3D printing.

In the history of modern architecture, Mark Twain’s maxim “The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice” may well have a place.  If one examines the development of architecture since the early twentieth century, two divergent lines can be discerned.  The first of these lines  is the one with which we are all familiar, mainly written by the “victors” of The International Style debate, Le Corbusier, Walter Gropius, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and Sigfried Giedion.  The architectural and written works of these men loom large in the history of modernism and were chronicled in Henry Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson’s famous book, International Style.  Even today, it is this version of modernism that is universally studied in the history and theory of modern architecture.  However, there has always been one piece of this puzzle that does not fit in an otherwise neatly organized historiography.

Ironically absent from this list of titans is another equally famous architect, Alvar Aalto, whose divergent modernism is at odds with the international style of Corbusier, Gropius, and Mies.  Aalto’s architectural and theoretical works seem to emanate from a modern regionalism based on the vernacular architecture and landscape of his home country, Finland.  A consideration of Aalto leads us to a second line of development in modern architecture, one that starts with a little known French architect, André Lurçat, passes through Aalto, and completes itself in the Midwestern town of Columbus, Indiana with the built and written work of the architect, Harry Weese.  This second line of history, by way of Lurçat, Aalto, and Weese requires much closer historical research in order for its contours to emerge with complete clarity.

Examining this second, neglected architectural tradition is a desideratum not only because it has been understudied, but also because it contains the seeds of an inclusive modernism that is regional and historically aware.  As the French philosopher Paul Ricœur noted, a pure modernism gives “the feeling that this single world civilization at the same time exerts a sort of attrition or wearing away at the expense of the cultural resources which have made the great civilizations of the past.” In contrast to this, the work of today’s regionally inspired architects speaks to the tension inherent in this story of modernism generally, and specifically to that of “modernism” as it is practiced today.  My paper will examine the place of contemporary modernism as it relates to Lurçat, Aalto, and Weese.  The research is presently funded by a Mellon Grant through Indiana University | Bloomington.

Definitions of “queer” vary greatly, from activist to theoretical to mainstream discourses. In turn, architectural theorists, historians, and practitioners have used “queer space” to discuss both political challenges to architectural education and disciplinary knowledge and aesthetic challenges to formal conventions. Furthermore, as built examples of queer approaches to design have been very limited, writing has stayed a major mode of expression of queer thinking in architecture. This paper explores how different queer space theorists have used writing, linking essays and exhibitions, performances, and built spaces to understand the tensions between different understandings of “queer space” since their emergence in the 1980s. The paper focuses on untangling how theorists and practitioners link ethics and aesthetics, queer political activism and queer theory, through their writing methods, highlighting, challenging or reinforcing (and sometimes all at the same time) the relation between these different modes of action, between formal and social critiques. Building on the idea that challenges to traditional forms of designing or writing highlight the social normativity of those forms, many have sought to propose new ways of thinking about how one experiences space. However, in writing as in designing, balancing the formal and social critiques brings tension. I argue here for a renewed focus on identifying the objectives behind queer modes of writing in architecture in order to assess their limits and, by extension, more productively use those limits.

Racist ideologies are embedded in spaces we design. From courtrooms to classrooms, and from circulation to threshold, architects in the US design spaces that reflect an institution- alization of white supremacy. While the whiteness of such spaces may be invisible to some, it is oppressive and even violent for others. This paper contributes a framework for describing and analyzing white space in architecture. We build on sociological theories of white institutions to dem- onstrate how architectural elements express and perpetuate institutional racism. We illustrate this framework through reviewing sociological interpretations of institutional spaces. Such elements as seating arrangements in classrooms and spatial hierarchy in courtrooms not only harbor a white insti- tutional history, but they engender a racialized experience of space. We argue that reading architecture through the proposed lens of white institutional space is an important step toward confronting institutional racism inherent in design and space.

Bernard Rudofsky’s 1964 MOMA exhibition Architecture Without Architects launched global interest in vernacular or “nonpedigreed” architecture. Rudofsky explored anonymous, spontaneous, and indigenous architecture as he noted that existing historical narratives focused on “privileged-the houses of true and false gods, of merchant princes and princes of the blood-with never a word about the houses of lesser people.” He and Pietro Belluschi argued that vernacular buildings were communal art, a collective enterprise that demonstrated amenable relationships to their surroundings, climate, and topography.  Later, Amos Rapoport in House Form and Culture advanced Rudofsky’s ideas arguing that the vernacular or “Folk Tradition” was “the direct and unself-conscious translation into physical form of a culture, its needs and values as well as the desires, dreams and passions of a people” which encapsulated a “world view writ small, the ‘ideal’ environment of a people expressed in buildings and settlements, with no designer, artist, or architect with an axe to grind.” Rapoport noted that despite expressive limits, the vernacular adapts to a broad range of situations and creates “place” within them. Its adaptability exists in its open-ended, additive quality allowing vernacular architecture to accept additions and changes that would destroy “High Style Design”. Thus, the “essence” of vernacular architecture is achieved through the relationships between elements and not the elements themselves. By the 1980’s, Tzonis + Lafaivre and Frampton, sensing an advancing alienation from and exhaustion of the remnants of the International Style, advanced their respective notions of Critical Regionalism. While Frampton avoided nostalgic reference to vernacular stylistic elements in his resistance to the homogenization of product manufacture and construction, in Prospects for a Critical Regionalism, he advocated for a resistant architecture that addressed issues of place and tectonics while seizing the artistic potential of the region to advance the “poetic legacy of the prewar Modern Movement.” Like Frampton in their affinity to the artistic precepts of the Modern Movement, Tzonis and Lefaivre in Why Critical Regionalism Today called for a reassessment of local culture but through using Modernist techniques of defamiliarization by means of identifying, decomposing, and recomposing regionally-inspired design elements to elevate them above the provincial.  This paper advances a Modern Vernacular that, as noted by Demetri Porphyrios in Sources of Modern Eclecticism explores the debate between “nature and civilization; between rusticity and the man-made; between country and city; between primitive shed and civic habitat”. Villa Mairea, Aalto, Le Petit Maison de Weekend, Le Corbusier, and Can Lis, Utzon, will be explored and compared to three American Mid-Century works: Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Barnes, Sea Ranch, MLTW, Esherick, and Halprin, and Dreier-Barton House, Jacobsen, to arrive at strategies to discerning vernacular values and deploy vernacular tactics that avoid a nostalgic formal and thin tectonic identity. Currently, such vernacular inspiration in the architectural inclinations of The Renzo Piano Building Workshop, Glenn Murcutt, and the MASS Design Group aim towards the prospect of a Modern Vernacularand, in so doing, the construction of a more humane and engaged architecture that ennobles the human condition and its setting.

The Company Town was a phenomenon of the early twentieth century in which a single corporation would build housing, commercial, and community facilities for its employees, providing for all aspects of its employee’s daily lives [1]. However, these Company Towns often became devices to police worker behavior and lifestyles, creating isolated communities hostile to labor organization and marked by class paternalism and monopoly economics. Although the Company Town model ultimately declined due to its exploitative tendencies, the concentration of workers uniting over shared hardships also produced significant victories for labor activists and worker unions, spurred on by organized action such as the Pullman Strike [2]. Through this lens of the Company Town, the studio asked if this model of housing could offer clues to developing new forms of solidarity and support for one of the most critical conditions of labor today: the seasonal Amazon fulfillment worker.  On July 15th, Amazon’s 2019 Prime Day began with thousands of fulfillment center employees striking across the world. Workers were protesting not the pay or the hours but “the rate:” a metric of efficiency that drives employees to keep pace with robots transporting goods from stocking to packaging [3]. Accelerated by a digitally-managed landscape of products, bodies, and information, Post-Fordist workers were ironically experiencing a revival of Fordist mechanisms of pace and discipline in their race to fulfill quotas. Despite automation’s promise of a future without work [4], the overlay of the physical and psychological exhaustion of the rate with the financial precarity of seasonal employment had caused the Amazon workers to reach a critical tipping point. Through these dual frames of today’s Amazon strike and the historical Company Town, the studio addressed the relationship between housing and contemporary forms of seasonal work that characterize emerging fulfillment, distribution, and e-commerce economies. Developing worker housing in Houston’s peripheral edge, the studio sought to make visible these increasingly abstract and hidden forms of work, re-embedding labor, land, and capital into the specificity of site and context. Within Houston’s Big Box peripheries, the fulfillment center contains its own internal ecosystems of interdependent populations, economies, material resources, and uprisings, all linked in a corporate totality. The relationships that motivate these internal behaviors produce the complex political, social, and sensorial exchanges of a new type of urbanism—one of interiority, totality, and enclosure [5]. And while the peripheral spaces of the metropolis are increasingly populated by these generic objects, the city itself remains indifferent to the continuous flows of objects, data, and labor driven by these vast economies [6]. Through this lens, the studio sought to leverage the positive aspects of the Company Town—its potential for political solidarity, shared identity, collective presence, and community support—to put forward a more cooperative live-work model. Through the program of cooperative housing, the studio sought to transform the seasonal worker’s condition of invisibility and precarity into a new form of political will and social inertia, repurposing the Company Town as a possible frame for collective forms of life and labor.

Once a prosperous cultural urban center in the Arkansas Delta, Pine Bluff (population: 42,700, 78 percent African-American) is the nation’s second fastest shrinking city. Indeed, an 1899 study of black wealth nationwide conducted by famed sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois found that Pine Bluff had the fourth highest rate of black wealth behind Charleston, Richmond, and New York City. The school prepared a downtown revitalization plan, Re-Live Downtown Pine Bluff, a housing-first initiative focused on building neighborhoods around downtown “centers of strength”. While the revitalization approach is triaged around a combined Framework Plan, Housing Plan, Street Plan, and a Special Projects Plan, students worked with the school’s design center staff on the Housing Plan. Re-Live Downtown is structured around affordable walk-up housing types common to early 20th century urban neighborhoods known as “missing middle housing”—multifamily types (between 2-12 units) encompassing townhouses, bungalow courts, duplexes, mansion apartments, live-work units, triple deckers, and multiplexes, including popular four-squares that have not been built since the 1940s. Because walk-up housing is a typologically-driven problem, students studied precedents in nearby Memphis and St Louis to understand the intersections between codes, affordability, form-making in the ordinary, and placemaking concepts associated with urban housing. The studio developed a matrix of 28 prototypes for implementation throughout downtown. The first neighborhood is scheduled for construction in 2021. In the course of fulfilling this semester’s housing design studio requirements, students addressed its four objectives to: 1) advance resiliency in communities, 2) engage multiple decision-making domains, 3) introduce research and case studies into the design process, and 4) communicate architectural and urban design ideas that can be readily understood by lay audiences. Students deployed a range of representational techniques from diagrams to renderings to tell a story about placemaking and living.