HousingLab: History And Future Of Living Research Group

Background

HousingLab develops research methods that address the large-scale and multifaceted nature of housing, devises design theory and design methods to ensure that planning and design target housing needs for the greater public facing the global housing crisis. Looking into the future of architecture history, HousingLab engages in developing archival methods for visual digital data as primary sources.

HousingLab Research Group provides a platform for studying housing as architecture in addition to policy. As the historical arena for the modernization of the discipline via revolutionary design to meet sociopolitical changes, the timeliness of housing today as a re-emerging field of innovative scholarship is reflected in the ongoing global housing crisis. The phenomenon of housing for the general public poses a challenging premise for research and design: the detailed specificity of housing provision vs. housing as a fundamental, persistent problem-space, requires the development of theoretical and analytical methods. Our group has made several important contributions to both the historiography of housing as architecture and to its theorization as a key arena for cultural production for and by society at large.

Research focus

The HousingLab research group involves expanding three realms of knowledge production:

• History and theory of housing as architecture
•  Architectural history of Israel and Palestine as a housing project.
• Developing archival theory and methods for digital visual primary sources.