Radical Realism

There was no heroic image of housing design to be had in “Reset: Towards a New Commons,” and this was precisely its strength.

Jonah Coe-Scharff

A drawing from Block Party: From Independent Living to Disability Collectives, one of four projects featured in the show Courtesy the Center for Architecture

Jul 1, 2022

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Reset: Towards a New Commons was on view at the AIA New York Center for Architecture from April 14 to September 3, 2022.

Curated by Barry Bergdoll and Juliana Barton, Reset: Towards a New Commons gently but firmly pushes architecture’s limits. It’s a show about inclusive approaches to designing collective space in American neighborhoods—an expansive theme that brings together ideas about universal design, communal living, exclusionary zoning, and resident engagement. More than that, the exhibition is a showcase for a new mood of radical realism that has been sweeping the American architectural academy of late.

Reset fills the entire Center for Architecture with four commissioned projects by teams of interdisciplinary designers, a wall of case studies, and a miniature library. But it is the two projects in the main ground-floor gallery that steal the show. Block Party, led by Irene Cheng, David Gissen, and Brett Snyder, reimagines a single-family residential block of Berkeley, California, by adding shared infrastructures designed with disable…

JONAH COE-SCHARFF has spent the last year living in a single-family house in a low-rise urban neighborhood. He is an assistant professor of architecture at the University of Virginia.

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