2024 Druker Traveling Fellowship Presentation

The 2024 Druker Traveling Fellowship Presentation featured the 2020-2021 Druker Fellow, Sam Naylor MAUD ’21, who presented his research, “Living Without Land: A Field Report on Cooperative Housing.”

The presentation was followed by a Q&A with Joan Busquets, Martin Bucksbaum Professor in Practice of Urban Planning and Design, and a reception in the Druker Design Gallery.

Housing tenure and architecture are limited by our status quo, whereby design and development are driven by speculation and limit resident security by pitting affordability against ownership. In contrast, cooperative housing schemes, both in formation (co-housing, centraal wonen, Baugruppen), and in land ownership (cooperatives, community land trusts) offer alternative approaches in development, funding, materiality, unit arrangement, circulation, and common space. Perhaps more importantly, these models reframe housing as not only a product or shell, but rather as a neighborhood and home to live in forever.

In this lecture, Sam Naylor MAUD ’21 discussed the impact for housing design based on the analysis of over 100 cooperative projects in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, the Netherlands, Scotland, Switzerland, the United States, and Uruguay. The result of three years of travel, dozens of interviews, and a few shared meals, the field report shared lessons learned from residents, developers, and designers of formative projects constructed between the 1970s and the present day. Insights centered around space, function, and form as defined over time and by consensus; they are often left open ended. This favoring of provisional architecture is enhanced by designs that incentivize spontaneity, sharing, and negotiated modifications. Furthermore, longevity in tenure is secured through resident customizations and resident movement—flexibilities that are only possible in co-managed developments, designs, and maintenance regimes.

Sam Naylor MAUD ’21, AIA, is an architect, educator, and researcher of multifamily housing in the US. Currently, he is an associate at Utile; the lead designer for Equitable by Design, a zoning research project at Northeastern University; and a Harvard Druker Fellow investigating cooperative housing around the world. He is putting theory into practice by decarbonizing and renovating a cooperatively owned triple-decker with friends in Jamaica Plain. He is an author of the recently released report: Legalizing Mid-Rise Single-Stair Housing in Massachusetts, as well as a co-editor of The State of Housing Design 2023, a book about national design trends, both of which are published by The Harvard Joint Center for Housing. He believes everyone has a right to a dignified, affordable, and delightful dwelling, and is in pursuit of more expansive and imaginative designs for housing—from the block to the bedroom.

Established in 1986 by Ronald M. Druker LF ’76 and by the Trustees of the Bertram A. Druker Charitable Foundation, the Druker Traveling Fellowship is open to all GSD master’s degree candidates who demonstrate excellence in the design of urban environments. The fellowship offers students the opportunity to travel domestically or abroad to pursue study that advances their understanding of urban design.

This event was organized by the Development and Alumni Relations Department and the Department of Urban Planning and Design.

Questions? Contact [email protected].