2G2/3G5 - ARCH 562 - WINTER 2025
COLLECTIVES
GRADUATE STUDIO
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN2G2/3G5 - ARCH 562 - WINTER 2025COORDINATOR
Sharon HaarPROFESSORS
Sharon Haar + Adam Smith, Christina Hansen + Lars Gräbner, Claudia Wigger + Craig Borum, Laura Peterson, Kit McCullough, Gariel CuéllarCOLLECTIVES: How do we live together?
Within the discipline of architecture, the house has been the primary vehicle through which architects have explored formal innovation. Housing too is a project of architecture, but it is also a project of urbanism and egalitarianism. It is where the space of the city meets the procedures and protocols produced by economics, politics, culture, race, and gender. Its fundamental question is: “How do we live together?” Housing exists in the blurry boundary between the domestic and collective. It is defined equally by universals such as the need for shelter, specifics such as location, and subjective decisions such as the desired degree of privacy or control over space and property. Housing is also a typology, but there is no agreement about its schema: density, shape or height, access and/or orientation, numbers or population housed, governance or finance models, etc.
As a studio, “Collectives” posits that there is no such thing as a house without housing. In the twenty-first century, our dwellings are spaces of negotiation, not just among individuals living together, be they families, collectives of families, or collectives of individuals who live together by choice, but also within larger publics both physical and virtual. Housing defines degrees of sociality and—in how we design and build it—says who we are as a society.
Through the study of typology and precedents (historic and contemporary), domestic arrangements, and new opportunities for collective life, each studio section will propose its own framework for what it means to live together today.
Rejoin
The REJOIN studio will work on ten distinct lots that frame the Fisher Body Plant 21 in Milwaukee Junction, Detroit to create a new, foundational urbanism for this redeveloping neighborhood. It will address three themes critical to contemporary housing needs: affordable/attainable and equitable housing, changing demographics and evolving family and household formations, and the restructuring of domestic economics and transit to combat climate change. The studio will join the consideration of housing typologies to overcome the current segmentation of options based on age, income, and household structure with collective living programming at the building and urban scale, and construction methods and materials (e.g. timber) to reduce the carbon footprint of new buildings, while developing programming that delivers a greater mix of neighborhood amenities and collective life. We will use an improvisational approach from a given set of prompts to negotiate the relationship among these components and the larger urban scenario produced by the collective of individual studio projects.
STUDENTS
Ainsley Capps, Anthea Cheng, Chris Meade
PROFESSORS
Sharon Haar + Adam Smith
Our project focuses on the different constituencies available to be served in the Detroit metro area. We want to provide space for both upward economic mobility as well as create an environment for healthy and social living. We do this through our variation in unit types and different types of collective spaces available to residents, friends, and community members.
STUDENTS
Alexandra Acosta, Kallista Sayer
PROFESSORS
Sharon Haar + Adam Smith
Graze is a multi-unit housing proposal in Milwaukee Junction, Detroit, that cultivates community through shared rituals of growing, cooking, and eating. Organized around a courtyard garden and communal kitchen, it operates as a closed-loop system where residents grow produce, share meals, and compost waste to sustain future growth. Responding to its highway-adjacent site, the building forms a protective edge while opening inward to a calm, collective landscape. Clustered units and an active ground floor of shared and commercial spaces encourage intergenerational living and invite engagement with the broader community, positioning housing as a living system rooted in reciprocity and care.
MAKING SPACE, LIVING SPACE, LEAVING SPACE
‘Making Space, Living Space, Leaving Space’ investigates the attributes of architectural design components and their importance in relation to multi-unit housing.
The studio emphasizes the significance of ‘housing’ and ‘dwelling' and investigates the social dimension of what it means to be ‘at home'.
The studio focuses on the sensitivity towards dwelling in the city, urban, architectural and landscape design and contributions to interactive, participatory and supportive living conditions for all.
Teams of three have studied living patterns, collective activities and daily routines and formed concepts of how these are manifested in spatial scenarios, unit layouts as well as building and site characteristics.
Within this framework, student teams explored issues such as urban design, landscape design, domesticity, different forms of living, economies of production, constructability, and others.
The outcomes demonstrate innovation in alternative construction methods and advanced technologies.
STUDENTS
Talia Morison-Allen, James Sotiroff, Jack Smith
PROFESSORS
Christina Hansen + Lars Gräbner
Inner-Action responds to a rise in Detroit’s population by arguing that good housing should prioritize neighborhood investment and community interaction. The project proposes mixed-use housing organized through a gradient of public to private courtyard spaces, encouraging daily interaction and business while preserving private retreat. An open-air central corridor connects dual-aspect units throughout the four levels. The projects construction consists of a concrete podium and transfer slab that supports the CLT residential levels above, steel connections are used for efficient construction and future disassembly. Prefabricated timber structure allows for faster assembly, sustainability, and long-term adaptability. A stick-framed envelope allows for a variety of openings to be introduced to the exterior.
STUDENTS
Guanjingchan Xu, Zihang Wang, Shuyang Zhang
PROFESSORS
Christina Hansen + Lars Gräbner
Refill is a housing strategy that constructs only 50% of each dwelling, leaving the remaining 50% as an adaptable framework to be completed by residents over time. This approach empowers inhabitants to shape their environments according to evolving needs, identities, and economic capacities. Rather than prescribing fixed programs, the system supports diverse uses—from studios and workspaces to nurseries and gardens—through incremental occupation. A modular structural framework balances flexibility with construction efficiency and cost control. By combining collective infrastructure with individual agency, Refill enables domestic life to expand, transform, and mature alongside its community.