The Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (Columbia GSAPP) has received a donation exceeding $2 million from the IDC Foundation to support faculty leadership and interdisciplinary research. 

According to Columbia GSAPP's funds will strengthen the department's long-standing expertise in the study of housing, and will encourage the development of new housing models urgently needed to address shifts in demographics, household composition, challenges of climate resilience, affordability, and the widening inequality gap.

The gift will help to launch a new interdisciplinary research initiative, the Columbia GSAPP Housing Lab, and to fund the IDC Foundation Professorship of Housing Design, the first endowed professorship dedicated to the Architecture program at Columbia GSAPP. Additional support from the IDC Foundation will be directed to financial aid and student travel, furthering the School’s commitment to shaping a more equitable, sustainable, and creative world by engaging students from diverse and global perspectives.

"Housing sits at the intersection of the critical questions facing architecture and the built environment today. The study of housing has been paramount to Columbia GSAPP’s academic programs for over forty years, building on our faculty’s commitment to bring design intelligence together with engaged planning and innovative development approaches to think through new possibilities for more equitable, sustainable and creative housing," said Columbia GSAPP Dean Amale Andraos. 

"We are thrilled and incredibly grateful to have the IDC Foundation as partners in cementing our leadership in this area of study and to launch a new research lab dedicated to the study and building of housing for the future."

Hilary Sample Housing Studio, Fall 2018, student work by Alex Wong and Ningxin Rebecca Huang, courtesy of Columbia GSAPP.

IDC Foundation Professorship of Housing Design

In 1974, in response to student requests and to the coordinated interests of its faculty, a series of experiments that took housing as a theme began at Columbia GSAPP. By 1976, the Housing Studio had emerged as a central feature of the Architecture program’s core academic sequence, and has since aimed to inspire a shift in thinking about architecture in relation to the world-at-large for generations.

To honor this important legacy, the IDC Foundation Professor of Housing Design will lead the seminal Housing Studio, in collaboration with the Dean. The Professorship will also add a crucial perspective to the GSAPP Housing Lab research and contribute to the exceptional intellectual community of scholars and practitioners leading the field in housing innovation. 

"The IDC Foundation is very pleased to provide the funding that makes possible the first endowed professorship in the architecture program in Columbia GSAPP’s history," said Raymond R. Savino, President of the IDC Foundation. 

"The endowed professorship will focus on housing design and serve as a catalyst for developing creative practices that can have meaningful impact on the production of affordable housing – with particular attention to the intersection of architecture, engineering, and building construction. In doing so, it will draw on Columbia GSAPP’s renowned leadership in housing design and advance innovations that address the pressing challenge of affordability."

Top image: Hilary Sample Housing Studio, Fall 2018, student work by Alexandros Prince-Wright and Yoonwon Kang, courtesy of Columbia GSAPP. 

> via Columbia GSAPP