BY ARCHITENSIONS
AT THE CENTER FOR ARCHITECTURE, NEW YORK
04/14/2022 - 09/03/2022
WORDS FROM ARCHITENSIONS
“Decolonizing Suburbia is informed by an interest in the suburban patterns of development that characterize most U.S. cities. Despite the broad consensus among most architects that the future of housing is in high-density building types, the vast majority of the general population continues to live in neighborhoods that we would consider suburban, even if they are within the legal boundaries of a large city. There is, in the profession, a hesitance to acknowledge the simple fact that in the U.S., the city and the suburbs are often indistinguishable.
Because of the continued popularity of the detached house as an architectural type, and the deeply ingrained place this type holds in the U.S. popular consciousness, this project aims to engage with the potential of the detached house as an architectural type to accommodate more diverse forms of life than the prevailing paradigm of the “single-family.” The project explores the architectural ramifications of decolonizing the planning policies that enabled “white flight” to the suburb and deliberately isolated people of color in under-resourced, jobless inner cities.”