Public housing debates can come down to what’s in a word.
Professors and directors from Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation explored the future of public housing and the stigma those two words so often carry in a launch event and gallery opening on Tuesday night. The evening premiered a 44-page publication, “Public Housing: A New Conversation,” which is the product of a day-long workshop in June that brought together students and faculty to investigate the changing needs of public housing during the financial crisis.
The launch event on Monday—which transformed Brownie’s Cafe in Avery Hall into an art gallery with large statements about public housing painted on the walls—was about reinvigorating a long-dormant and dangerously overlooked conversation, according to moderator Reinhold Martin, the director of the Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia.
While munching on snacks and sipping wine, students, faculty, alumni, and other New Yorkers listened to five GSAPP professors debate the fundamental meaning of the words “public” and “housing”—separately and together—while also exploring the broader role of public housing in the capital economy.
“It is an attempt to reclaim the issues,” Martin said of the publication. “It has become rather difficult to use the word ‘public’ in public,” he said. “The implicit stigma is not always said, but nonetheless, it is there,” he added.
Panelists agreed that over time, public housing has evolved alongside the changing needs of society, and this, they argued, must be considered in the modern age. “The American Dream of single family home ownership is precisely a metaphor,” Martin said. “It’s a cultural construction.”
According to Clara Irazábal Zurita, an assistant professor of planning and preservation, the term “public housing” needs to be completely changed. “It is so negative, that we can hardly do anything effective other than literally flipping the term upside down,” she said. She would prefer the name “housing publics,” since one could argue that all housing is subsidized to varying degrees.
Regarding such fundamental change, Mabel Wilson, associate professor of urban planning, said that this new document is a game-changer. Public housing cannot be seen as an object or a commodity, she said, but as an action and an ongoing process. She went on to support one of the publication’s passages, “Housing is a Verb.”
When the forum opened up to audience questions, academic arguments surfaced.
One student expressed her concerns over the debate’s focus. “I want to hear much more about the condition and less so on a semantic debate,” she said of the discourse on the word “public.” Wilson responded that policy debates must happen through words, and as representations of ideas, words and their meanings must be addressed.
Further debate arose on the divergent roles of architects and planners with several architecture students expressing frustrations that the current discussions lacked emphasis on or inclusion of design.
Leah Meisterlin, project coordinator for the effort and a graduate of both the architecture and design programs, responded that different fields must work together. While design is essential, she said, planners are needed to provide architects with the opportunities.
After the event, Martin said in an interview that this was the first step in the Buell Center’s long-term effort to recharge conversation on public housing.
He is motivated by a sense of duty, Martin said, because “Universities are spaces that are unconstrained, and with this freedom, we have a responsibility to think about public issues.”
He added, “We must confront what is outside of the boundaries we inhabit.”
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