An exhibition of photography from The Art of Inequality: Architecture, Housing, and Real Estate—A Provisional Report
Fall 2015 (June 2015)
Avery Hall, GSAPP, Columbia University
The Art of Inequality: Architecture, Housing, and Real Estate—A Provisional Report, recently launched by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, was produced in conjunction with the research project and exhibition series, House Housing: An Untimely History of Architecture and Real Estate. The initiative encourages a public, historically informed conversation at the intersection of architecture, housing, and real estate development and consists of a growing body of research that draws on multimedia sources. This provisional report contextualizes the issues addressed to-date as a part of the House Housing project with the contemporary debate over inequality and asks "How might anyone with a vested interest in architectural design and a commitment to addressing our time’s most pressing social concerns reconcile the two, if at all?"
"Part One" of this publication was displayed in conjunction with a series of photographs by Emily Kloppenburg and Ilaria Ortensi, commissioned by the Buell Center and produced in response to the arguments made within the report. The goal was not to illustrate projects mentioned in the text, but rather to convey the often banal, ever-present, and seemingly self-evident faces of inequality, which can be found anywhere, anytime. Together with their advisor Thomas Roma, Kloppenberg and Ortensi—current and former Master of Fine Arts candidates at Columbia University, respectively—proposed Manhattan’s 125th Street as a site of investigation. This important east-west corridor is one of Harlem’s commercial and cultural hubs, and has, in recent years, been the site of charged debates prompted by rapid demographic and physical changes in an area long characterized by disinvestment. If the art of inequality is visible anywhere, it is most certainly visible here, at our doorstep. We hope these images encourage you to find it on yours as well.
Photographs:
Emily Kloppenburg and Ilaria Ortensi (above), edited by Thomas Roma
Publication Editors:
Reinhold Martin, Jacob Moore, Susanne Schindler
Research Team:
Alissa Anderson, Erik Carver, Adele Cassola, Ryan Meehan, Nabila Morales Pérez, Cezar Nicolescu, Julia Pedtke, Pollyanna Rhee, Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió, Sonya Ursell
Publication Design Team:
MTWTF: Glen Cummings, Aliza Dzik, Michela Povoleri
Exhibition Design:
GSAPP Exhibitions with Nabila Morales Pérez
House Housing has appeared in numerous locations as exhibitions, panel discussions, and publications, and relates to different institutional frames. Exhibition locations to date include Columbia University’s Casa Muraro in Venice, Italy (June 2014), the National Public Housing Museum as a part of the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial (October–December 2015), Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt as a part of Wohnungsfrage (“The Housing Question”) (October–December 2015), and the MAK Center’s Schindler House in West Hollywood, CA (April–May 2016). More information, including a full PDF version of the publication, can be found at househousing.buellcenter.columbia.edu.
