Mass Support

Cassim Shepard is distinguished lecturer in architecture and urban studies at City College, City University of New York. Trained as an urban planner, geographer, and documentary filmmaker, Cassim produces nonfiction media about cities and places, with a particular
emphasis on housing and civic life. His film and video work about cities around the world has been exhibited at the Venice Architecture Biennale, the
Museum of the City of New York, the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the United Nations, Pavillon de l’Arsenale in Paris, and the African Centre for Cities in Cape Town.

His current exhibition, Mass Support, running at CCNY’s Spitzer School of Architecture through May 7, with a symposium scheduled for April 26, explores the legacy and contemporary relevant of Stichting Architecten Research (SAR). SAR was an architectural think tank active in the Netherlands between 1964 and 1990, which proposed a radical new way of thinking about mass housing. The essential gambit was to fuse industrial production with mass customization, a concept that has strong implications for today’s urban issues.

Intro/Outro: “Plug In!” by Porci Scomodi

Discussed:

John Habraken: “Supports”

Places article

The New York Housing Compact

Prefab Problems: Pacific Park B2 Project – Forest City and Skanska

Tim Swanson, Inherent Homes, Chicago
People’s Architecture Office: Plug-in Houses

Gans & Co.: Build it Back Modular

Nakagin Capsule Tower > Unfrozen episode “1972: A Spatial Oddity”

Levittown

MoMA: Home Delivery:
Fabricating the Modern Dwelling

Herman Hertzberger

Baugruppen R50, Kreuzburg, Berlin

San Riemo, Munich
Kooperative Grosstadt