Studio 1 / Studio XX
A manifesto for housing Hazel Cowie and Jess Davidson
”The built form of housing has always been seen as a tangible, visual reflection if the organization of society. It reveals the existing class structure and power relationships. But it has also long been a vehicle for imagining alternative social orders. Every emancipatory movement must deal with the housing question in one form or another. This capacity to spur the political imagination is part of housing’s social value as well.”
As with all disciplines and practices, architectural practice in 2020 is being reassessed through a series of intersecting and critical lenses the pandemic, the climate crisis and post-Grenfell analysis are forcing the profession to consider its role in public life. Taking the position that housing is not only a manifestation of power relations within society, but a vehicle through which an alternative social order can be imagined, the studio will work towards developing a new housing landscape for Newcastle. We will explore ideas about homogeneity, taste, anonymity and placelessness and question the conformist and compliant role that architecture is often seen to have in the production of housing. Our theoretical approach will also extend to material and tectonic thinking and in semester two we will explore creative uses of prefabrication and off-site manufacture and the effect these might have on the shape of architectural practice in the future.
Madden, D. J. and Marcuse, P. (2016) In Defense of Housing: the Politics of Crisis, p 12
“Architecture or, more precisely, space affects and effects social relations in the most profound ways, from the very personal (in a phenomenological engagement with stuff, space, light, materials) to the very political (in the way that the dynamics of power are played out in space). Adopting the feminist maxim (“the personal is political”) buildings conjoin personal space and political space. ... The key political responsibility of the architect lies not in the refinement of the building as static visual commodity, but as a contributor to the creation of empowering spatial, and hence social, relationships in the name of others.” Awan, N., Schneider, T. & Till, J. (2011) Spatial Agency, p59
Image: Denise Scott-Brown and Robert Venturi, from “Learning from Levittown” (1970)