Policy and Design for Housing: Lessons of the Urban Development Corporation
A major retrospective exhibition & website exploring histories, models, and ideologies to learn from in today’s housing crisis
“Policy and Design for Housing: Lessons of the Urban Development Corporation 1968-1975” was exhibited at the AIA Center for Architecture New York in 2005, at the MIT Wolk Gallery in 2006, and Roger Williams University in 2007.
As curator, designer, and photographer for the exhibition, Buscada worked with the exhibition’s steering committee of architects, planners, and environmental psychologists to explore the UDC’s unique mandate and accomplishments in building 33,000 units of humanist affordable housing for New York State.
We built the only archive on the UDC in the exhibition, and created UDCHousing.org as the long-term home of this archive.
Read more: Policy and Design for Housing website
Policy and Design for Housing on view at the AIA Center for Architecture
Going beyond a retrospective of UDC architecture, the exhibition put archival materials and vintage architectural photographs into visual conversation with new research and a series of Gabrielle’s new photo essays with UDC building residents to understand the lessons from the UDC.
Our curation of the show considered how these buildings have fared after thirty years, and what the experience of living in some of these buildings has entailed. The exhibition culminated the current national and New York housing crisis and what lessons we can draw from the process and legacy of the UDC to address current-day housing issues.
Policy and Design for Housing installed at the MIT Wolk gallery