The seminar is premised on the idea that contemporary housing problems are fundamentally interconnected matters of care: the maintenance of well-being, whether personal, communal, or environmental. Architectural decisions at the scale of the housing unit, the building, and the city shape both social relations and environmental outcomes.

Our present-day “polycrisis,” intersecting processes of climate breakdown, financial volatility, geopolitical instability, and worsening inequality, intensifies housing challenges worldwide. Extreme weather, mass migration and displacement, speculative capital flows, and underfunded public welfare systems interact in compounding ways that compromise existing housing and render the production of new equitable, resilient dwellings especially difficult.

This is, in part, a consequence of the paradigm that organized modern housing discourse in the twentieth century: affordability, standardization, and efficiency. In the postwar era, the urgent need to provide basic hygiene and shelter quickly and at mass scale was met with the tools of industrialization. These priorities achieved real gains but came at the cost of social diversity, ecological sensitivity, and long-term adaptability. Mass housing was built according to the paradigm of functional zoning, a mode of urban planning that separated living, working, and leisure as if these aspects of life had no influence on one another, pushing industry to the margins of cities and treating it as separate from domestic life.

Through lectures, case studies, and critical discussions, the course explores housing as a space of interdependence among people, systems, and the planet, asking: How can housing support diverse forms of life and foster long-term care for one another, our cities, and the planet?

The course takes a global and comparative view, investigating distinct housing cultures so that a common architectural program can be examined under various political and economic conditions.

The course is organized around six matters of concern:
1. Community: Housing cooperatives, mutual aid, and shared infrastructure;
2. Difference: Designing for plural identities, cultures, and households;
3. Live and Work: Hybrid domestic models;
4. Flexibility and Appropriation: Accommodating individual needs and supporting collective stewardship;
5. Planetary Care: Conversion of obsolete buildings, material re-use, and human/non-human coexistence;
6. Individual Well-being: Bodily, material, emotional well-being in relation to housing.

Each topic will be introduced by a lecture from Farshid Moussavi, followed by a guest speaker, and expanded through student-led discussions. Each class engages a specific housing concern through conceptual frameworks and case studies, supporting both studio work and independent research.

Offered in parallel with the design studio STU-1309, students are encouraged to enroll in both courses. The seminar is intended to provide research and helpful grounding for design exploration. The class will meet every Friday. Philip Denny, as Teaching Associate, will be part of the teaching team. Farshid Moussavi and Phillip Denny will take turns being present in person or remotely.