UH Calendar

Is Housing Still Housing? Houston’s Single-Family House

Monday, March 3, 2025

6:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Exhibition opens on March 3 and is on view through April 11

Shelter is the fundamental architectural response. The house remains an essential archetype and a core disciplinary inquiry. Evolving with cultural, technological, and social innovation, the content and context of the single-family house remains deeply pertinent.

This exhibition asks designers to consider if the parameters that have defined what is possible in housing and development have shifted or taken on new demands to such an extent that we can ask if the nomenclature of housing and in particular the single-family house (the 80 million plus houses in the United States)—as a stand-alone building type, an asset class, an economic site—are still a productive way to shape future shelter goals.

Do we need an entirely new nomenclature for housing? Are we innovating what exists? Is it a matter of new scalar means to produce housing? With Is Housing Still Housing? we are suggesting a need for a renewed term for the broader climate, economic and social aspects that will reshape shelter over the coming decades. Is housing still beneficially understood as a type of shelter, monetized by existing development practices and long-term mortgages and set atop often expensive metropolitan property and in proximity to a changing if not waning jobs market.

Is Housing Still Housing? relies on the expertise of its contributors to help reframe new directions in housing. This expertise helps us reframe what we could expect from the myriads of forces that shape what is possible and more importantly possible to imagine in housing and in shelter. While we are seeking explicit and real potential for design and building there is a challenge for ideas, research and the framing of the wider conditions that make this work possible.

Events Schedule

All events begin at 6:00 p.m. and are free, open to the public.

Exhibition Opening
March 3
Join virtually.

Symposium I
March 26
Join virtually.

Symposium II
April 9
Join virtually.

Curators

Gail Peter Borden FAIA
University of Houston

Michael Bell
Columbia University

Eunjeong Seong
Pratt Institute

Advisors

Stephen Fox
University of Houston

Jesse M. Keenan
Tulane University

Christina Sanders
Columbia University Climate School