[INSTITUTIONS] ARCH 552

PROFESSOR
Kevin Bernard Moultrie-Daye

STUDIO THEME

“Statelessness”

Matters of Statelessness understands the current population (approx. 580,466 on any given night) of unhoused/homeless people in the United States as a complex, shifting and underepresented body politic living in dispersed settlements across the country. Although a growing and influential demographic of the urban landscape, unhoused people have no clear governmental infrastructure with which to represent themselves. If we understand an embassy as an architectural manifestation in a “host” country for a given ambassadorial “guest”, then the unhoused can be framed as a country’s own “uninvited guests”. This course seeks to design an “embassy for the unhoused”, not as a single structure, but as a system of urban artifacts and furniture that assists the unhoused population with the challenges that arise from living in the streets. From water and power access, to storage and cooking...or even something as simple as providing a place to sit. These urban interventions attempt to give agency and power back to those who are, very literally, the unrecognized neighbors to the housed, urban citizen.