Events

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We are honored to welcome Richard Plunz for a special lecture in the B Arch Advanced Studio, “Equitable Futures: Design Scenarios for NYCHA’s Fulton & Elliott–Chelsea Houses”.

Plunz’s decades-long scholarship on New York’s housing history and the political economy of urban form offers a critical lens on the contemporary housing crisis—and on the evolving role of New York City Housing Authority within it. From the origins of public housing as social infrastructure to its current entanglement with redevelopment logics, privatization pressures, and climate vulnerability, this conversation situates NYCHA within broader historical and territorial transformations shaping New York City today.

Anchored between the High Line, the Hudson River, and the Meatpacking District, our studio examines the Fulton and Elliott–Chelsea Houses as a contested urban terrain—where public housing stands at the intersection of art, capital, infrastructure, and displacement. Through research-driven analysis and speculative design, students construct a counter-archive: proposals that expand affordability, strengthen resident agency, and reframe public housing as civic infrastructure embedded in networks of mobility, culture, and open space.

Plunz’s lecture deepens this inquiry, foregrounding the structural forces—historic and ongoing—that define the housing crisis, while challenging us to imagine enduring and equitable urban futures.

Richard Plunz is emeritus professor of architecture, planning, and preservation at Columbia University. His study, A History of Housing in New York City, remains an important resource in the field.

Sciame Auditorium (Room 107) 141 Convent Avenue New York, NY 10031

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