Review
Architecture at Home
JULY 9, 2022–MARCH 6, 2024
Review By: Noah Billig
August 15, 2024
Some designers, planners, and scholars have called for a more expansive perspective on justice by moving from environmental justice to ecological justice. Environmental justice is concerned with historical and current injustice—such as access to resources, environmental risks, and exposure to hazards. Ecological justice, however, addresses “both environmental justice and the ecological quality of our practices” (Dimitris Stevis, “Whose Ecological Justice?” This ecological shift is a call to understanding relationships and systems. It explicitly works with connections inherent in ecological processes—including the urban and the human. Ecological justice also acknowledges and fosters relationships with other species and abiotic systems. This expanding perspective also positions the current housing crises as a central and urgent ecological justice concern.
Architecture at Home at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art organized five housing prototypes to create discourse about current housing and issues of housing insecurity, sustainability, and access to attainable housing. The participating architecture firms included studioSUMO, LEVENBETTS, MUTUO, PPAA (Perez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados), and studio:indigenous.
Video 1 – Courtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Video 2 – Courtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
While experiencing Architecture at Home, one’s perspective expands from typical questions of environmental justice (as vital as they are) to more complex and systemic ecological questions. The exhibition explicitly calls for prioritizing people in design and construction processes. While connecting to past injustices, the exhibition is grounded in communities and relationships. It is a call for housing to be a home. It asks critical questions, such as: Why can’t we do better? What barriers exist to housing access that are fundamentally arbitrary and limiting? How can we bring choice, humane connections, and adaptability back to the home? At its core, Architecture at Home calls for a better understanding of relationships and humane design.
Five Inspirations, Five Provocations
LEVENBETTS’s house of trees: city of trees calls for more sustainable urbanization and connection to local ecology and communities “through choice of building materials, placement on the land, and sensitivity to lot size” (quoted from exhibit). They sourced Arkansas yellow pine for the projects’ crosslaminated timber by partnering with local timber experts Resource Management Service, Anthony Timberlands, and Canfor. Their structure evokes site topography while providing its inhabitants with natural light and flexible spaces.
Video 3 – Courtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
MUTUO’s untitled exhibit is inspired by their friend Abraham, a Mexican immigrant house builder left out of the home-buying process. Their exhibit focuses on finding flexibility and inclusivity within home ownership systems. They divided the housing model into four parts representing notions of bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and living area while omitting roof, walls, and floor elements. MUTUO want to challenge basic assumptions about housing approaches. They ask questions such as: “What if housing changed from a commodity that creates wealth to a human-centered value that promotes security, community, and equity? What would make it possible for Abraham and his family to own a home?” The exhibition also adds carved columns and stacked, hand-molded pottery from Mexico using both Indigenous and Spanish techniques. This is a symbolic rejection of rigid housing rules in favor of an empowered, user-centered custom design.
Video 4 – Courtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Not My HUD House by studio:indigenous explores how standard housing development models—particularly those from Housing and Urban Development (HUD)—can be bettered for Indigenous people. Chris Cornelious from studio:indigenous grew up in a HUD-built home on the Oneida Indian Reservation in Wisconsin. He has directly experienced the deficiencies in HUD housing and how it acts as a tool for colonization. Cornelious advocates for changes in Indigenous housing in order to fulfill both the material and cultural needs of Indigenous people. Not My HUD House connects to four elements of architecture: the hearth, roof, enclosure, and mound. The hearth is reconceptualized as an open steel tower, reaching up to connect to the cosmos. The entry door is oriented east, so guests arrive with the sun. The exhibit also introduces flexibility (typically present in Indigenous homes) through adaptable modules. The house siding, for instance, provides both weatherproofing and a representation of animal relatives. The design, both as a whole and as its parts, connects to a more relational connection to one’s environment and community, becoming a more ecological approach to Indigenous housing.
Video 5 – Courtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
studioSUMO’s exhibit, Totem House: Histories of Negation, uses the totem as inspiration. They identified Northwest Arkansas’ location at a nexus of critical historic trails—the Trail of Tears and Civil War trails used by African Americans traveling to prospects of land and freedom—to shed light on histories of negation in Indigenous and African American communities. The exhibit uses totems as the infrastructural elements of a house. Each totem demarcates 50-year periods, “citing significant events related to the resettlement of Indigenous nations and African American expulsion in Arkansas communities and elsewhere” (quoted from exhibit). The exhibit underscores the need to know both long and recent histories to have better dialogues about current housing needs and systems of injustice.
Video 6 – Courtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Perez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados (PPAA)’s Infinite Openness seeks better human connections to nature through the house. The exhibit is inspired by the earliest forms of architecture responding directly to local environments. PPAA also posits that technological advancements enable reduced home space needs. The changed space requirements, new spatial configurations, and direct connections to natural elements (largely through translucent walls) drive the exhibit. PPAA suggests all homes should contain certain minimum elements: direct connections to nature, natural light, flexible spaces, and human scale. Their flexible panel house adapts to user needs while providing inspiration and awe.
Video 7 – Courtesy the artist and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Architecture at Home shifts a crucially nuanced perspective from environmental justice to ecological justice. The houses, alone and collectively, demonstrate the need for a better recognition and understanding of housing systems. The work also calls for understanding relationships—from the national government to the home to the past. The exhibition is not a simple call for amelioration. It demands more radical change—including changes to the fundamental understandings and possibilities of home. These housing challenges, in turn, will require interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches. Architecture at Home challenges the disciplines of the built environment to question: How might architecture (and allied design disciplines) education change? How might professional practice and research methods change? How might collaborations expand? In this exhibit and in practice, designers must move beyond the operational to meet demands for ecological justice.
Noah Billig is an associate professor of landscape architecture and planning at the Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design, University of Arkansas. He also served as the Fay Jones School honors director for thirteen years. Billig has lived, taught, and researched in Minneapolis, Istanbul, Vienna, and Fayetteville, Arkansas. His research focuses on adaptive design and planning, including participatory design, ecological justice, and perceptions of environments.