Eunjeong Seong, faculty at the School of Architecture, is co-curating and participating in the exhibition Is Housing Still Housing? at the University of Houston. The exhibition opens on March 3, 2025, and will be accompanied by two symposia on March 26 and April 9.
Is Housing Still Housing? Houston’s Single-Family House
Monday, March 3, 2025 | 6:00 PM | University of Houston, Mashburn Gallery
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 housing (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.