Th 1:00 -3:30
ANH 230
Property lines, conventionally represented and therefore imagined as infinitely thin divisions between what is mine and what is yours, are far from passive figures in the domestic landscape. The everyday life along these invisible lines tells a different story in Houston in particular, where parcels have been divided and subdivided in ways that often necessitate negotiation between landowners—shared driveway access, party walls held in common, and side yard easements. This seminar speculates on the spatial ambiguity of the property line, asking how re-seeing ownership may reveal other ways of living together.
As the seminar seeks to destabilize conventional notions of ownership, we will likewise challenge attachments to singular authorship, working instead as a research collective. We will investigate histories of alternate forms of domesticity, from monasteries and workers’ lodgings to contemporary housing cooperatives, alongside the economic models and property frameworks that have enabled these forms of living. We will carefully survey, document, and catalog existing housing and parcel typologies of Houston, deploying experimental forms of representation to narrate sites of negotiation, shared use, and reciprocity. We will investigate how representation may serve as a tool for revealing ambiguity and narrating the ways we are already living together.
The collective research compiled at the culmination of the seminar will inform the following semester’s studio, which will explore ways in which architectural interventions to Houston’s existing housing stock may enable new forms of collective domestic life.