Robin Hueppe, an M.S. Architecture candidate, has secured a Wagoner Foreign Study Scholarship to pursue a research project in Montreal that proposes the study of past and present housing estate typologies of Québec’s welfare system as alternatives to single-family suburbia.
The Wagoner Scholarship is named for James T. Wagoner ‘29. His love of travel spurred him to establish a scholarship for students and alumni in memory of his parents and late wife. The Rice Graduate Council grants the awards to students who demonstrate outstanding achievement and promise in their research.
Hueppe is focused on architectural postmodernism’s dismissal of the high-rise housing estate as a failed architectural typology. Although a complex mixture of political, infrastructural, and financial problems ended the history of housing estates in the United States before the twenty-first century, influential architect writers blamed modernist architecture and design. Hueppe identified Montreal for its less disruptive history and will visit the Archives de Montreal, the Canadian Centre for Architecture, and the housing research history of McGill University. His research spotlights the creative role of Canadian woman architects, who were influential in Montreal’s housing history yet less visible in general architectural education. His project builds upon previous research on housing estates in Berlin conducted on the John T Mitchell traveling fellowship (PLAT Journal), and thesis research on peripheral housing communities in Rio de Janeiro (City, Culture, and Society Journal).
Image of Robin Hueppe, credit: Isaac Stein