Forthcoming 2010

What’s next for 306090?

In 2009, 306090 publishes our 13th volume, Sustain and Develop, the fourth of a series of annual, book-length, multi-contributors editions organized around a contemporary theme. To avoid becoming predictable, without abandoning a good thing, we are tweaking the model this year for a response to changing conditions in the field of architecture in the United States, specifically as related to housing.

Making a Case, 306090 14, will be split in two parts. The first made up of projects for an American house, each prepared especially for this book and conceived in response to a given crisis, such as energy, demographics, politics, economy, climate. The second half will consist of commentary in the form of critical essays and artistic expressions. We imagine the book, unlike our prior volumes which are built around an open call for submissions, to function like the catalog of a curated exhibition on the future of American housing. In fact, we are working to arrange an exhibition of the works for the book in advance so the two can appear simultaneously.

While the focus of the book is on an American condition, we expect an international group of contributors, and a volume with eventual impact on a wide variety of housing conditions worldwide.

Making a Case
306090 Volume 14
Emily Abruzzo, Gerald Bodziak, Jonathan D Solomon, editors

"How long it will take for the inevitable social and economic changes brought about by the war years to affect our living standards, no one can say. But, that ideas and attitudes will continue to change drastically in terms of man’s need and man’s ability to satisfy that need, is inevitable.”
—John Entenza, 1945

Making a Case, 306090 14, focuses on contemporary housing in the United States and the future of the American home. For better or worse, the basic unit of private residence in the United States remains the single family dwelling. Like the Case Study program post World War II, our case seizes on a critical moment in the history of America as a time to reinvent this unit—–post-crisis rather than post-war.

The crisis in this case is the collapse of the housing bubble, with its partnering causes and aftershocks: the reality of less oil, the urge to re-urbanize and the results of economic reorganization. This is a critical moment for housing in America, deserving of careful study and consideration, just as it was at the end of World War II, when the nation was changing in different, though no less all-encompassing ways. Post-urban flight, the need to encourage density, a new focus on food production close to home, a glut of cheap, unused housing in some areas while homelessness persists in others; these changes all suggest a new and different future for the American house.

Organized in two sections, design cases and critical commentary, Making a Case draws together international contributors from a variety of disciplines to make a case for house and home.