The Future of Modular Architecture

Presenter:
David Wallance, FAIA is an architect, author, and educator. He is the founder of DRA/W, a Brooklyn-based architectural practice that integrates design thinking, technical rigor, and research. 

Over the course of his career David has designed award-winning projects ranging from residences to museums, laboratories, and high-rise housing. As senior designer for the Polshek Partnership / Ennead on the widely acclaimed Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History, he spearheaded the building’s innovative ultra-transparent enclosure, hailed by the New York Times as “what may well be the finest example of glass curtain wall construction ever realized in the United States”. 

David’s recent book, The Future of Modular Architecture (Routledge, 2021) encompasses 15 years of research, design, and technical development of an open-source system of modular construction geared for affordable mid- and high-rise urban housing. 

From 1997 to 2017 David was an adjunct associate professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and he currently teaches an online graduate design studio at Arizona State University. David studied at the Cooper Union under such influential teachers as John Hejduk and Robert Slutzky. His student thesis was published in Education of an Architect (Rizzoli, 1988). 

About:
The lecture advocates for open-source design using the new modular standard, demonstrating how global supply chains can be leveraged to fulfill the long-awaited promise of making housing a well-designed and affordable industrial product.

Learning objectives:

• Recognize the centrality of long-distance transportation to achieving economies of scale in modular construction and thereby reducing the cost of housing.
• Understand that the fundamental transferrable value of the intermodal shipping system is in the standardized dimensions for transport, not the physical recycling of actual shipping containers.
• Understand how the adoption of a modular housing system based on intermodal freight standards — intermodal modular architecture — can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to solving the global climate emergency.
• Learn how intermodal modular architecture will foster an open-source industrialized housing ecosystem.
• Explore the ramifications of intermodal modular architecture for architectural practice.

This course is accredited for 2 LU/HSWs.

Location:
Aronson’s Floor Covering
135 West 17th St New York, NY 10011
(Between 6th and 7th Avenues)

Register:
This lecture will be live in our Chelsea showroom. Lunch will be served after the seminar.