Housing programs, from the FHA mortgages that made the American suburbs to international 20th-century experiments in public housing, redistribute societal wealth through the construction of housing. Counterplanning from St. Louis examines housing programs that produced particular building cultures. Through regulatory standards and institutional structures, policy shapes not only what is built, but how housing is designed, financed, and constructed. Construction is socially and ecologically demanding, conscripting landscapes, materials, and labor toward the production of singular assemblies. The exhibit uses the architectural detail—a drawing that coordinates activity on and beyond the building site—to open an inquiry into the ways housing policy materializes as building culture. At stake is architectural design as the hinge between policy objectives and the realities of large-scale construction. Exhibiting over 175 construction details from 20th-century housing programs, the exhibit takes local successes and failures as a starting point to consider how the design of the smallest details connects policy objectives, the experience of construction workers, and the delivery of beautiful and durable social housing. The exhibition will open with Modeling Alternatives, a panel discussion in the gallery with Candace Borders, a historian, and Sarah Rose, a community developer and housing organizer. Borders and Rose will discuss social housing and organizing in St. Louis from the 1969 rent strike to the present. Their conversation will consider how the city and its residents can foster institutions capable of building and maintaining equitable housing.
This exhibition is made possible by the James Harrison Steedman Memorial Fellowship in Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis, and AIA St. Louis.