Fore-closed: Rehousing the American Dream

Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream is an exploration of new architectural possibilities for American cities and suburbs in the aftermath of the recent foreclosure crisis in the United States. During the summer of 2011, five interdisciplinary teams of architects, urban planners, ecologists, engineers and landscape designers were enlisted by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and MoMA PS1 to envision new housing infrastructures that could catalyze urban transformation, particularly in the country’s suburbs. Drawing on ideas proposed in The Buell Hypothesis, a research publication prepared by the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture at Columbia University, each team focused on a specific location within a “megaregion” to come up with inventive solutions for the future of housing and cities. This publication presents each of these proposals (exhibited at MoMA in Spring 2012) in detail, through photographs, drawings and renderings as well as interviews with the team leaders. With texts by Barry Bergdoll, MoMA’s Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, Henry N. Cobb, a founding partner of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners and Reinhold Martin, Director of the Temple Hoyne Buell Center, Foreclosed examines the relationship between land, infrastructure and urban form, exploring potential futures for America’s extended metropolises.