Negotiating Ungers

In 1972, Oswald Mathias Ungers and his students at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, developed a prototype for a self-help housing system (S-HHS). The houses (or housing units) were designed to be built by the prospective users themselves from standard lumber components. Shortly before, Ungers and his wife Liselotte started a research project on utopian communities in the USA. Both projects focus on the intersection of living and building. They ask how communities or social groups relate to the building process and the architectural forms they produce.

The projects are used as the starting point to take a new look at both Ungers’ work and at approaches to collective building processes. During a summer school in July 2021 the project was analyzed with students from the KU Leuven, Faculty of Architecture and the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Following the summer school, four students decided to continue their work on the subject and to further expand on the ideas developed. The results are now presented in an exhibition realized as a collective project with students from the ENSASE. Rather than delivering an overall interpretation of Ungers’ project, the exhibition represents a plurality of voices, reflections and interpretations of the design. Besides models, images and plans presenting the projects and research of Oswald Mathias and Liselotte Ungers, the exhibition includes installations and analytical presentations as critical comments and counterpoints.

The students who participated in the summer school "Negotiating Ungers. The construction of communities" collaborated on an exhibition in the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Architecture de Saint Etienne (ENSASE).