24th November 2017, 6.30pm, ICA Cinema

For booking: https://www.ica.art/whats-on/social-architecture-designing-risk-and-opportunity-through-housing

Following the CHASE workshop “On the Social in Architecture” with PhD students, social housing residents and housing activists, Jonathan Massey will give a talk open to the public.

Responding to the need for a sustained international and intergenerational conversation about the intersections between public institutions, social housing and resettlement, Jonathan Massey addresses the question of the social:  “Risk and opportunity are organizing concepts for contemporary neoliberal society. Our politics often play out through debates over who bears risks of modernization—such as vulnerability to pollution, climate change, economic volatility, and creative destruction in the economy and in the built environment—and who benefits from change.”

Architect and historian Jonathan Massey is Dean and Professor at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Previously he served as Dean of Architecture at the California College of Arts, and at Syracuse University he was the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor for Teaching Excellence, where he chaired the Bachelor of Architecture program and the University Senate. Massey was a co-founder of the Transdisciplinary Media Studio and the Aggregate Architectural History Collaborative, which focuses on the ways that history and practice of architecture and urbanism are understood and taught. His ongoing research explores how architecture mediates power by forming civil society, shaping social relationships, and regulating consumption.