Producing construction materials such as timber requires much energy to dry and process them. This raises questions about what and how we should build with wood and whether the wood industry can and should be radically transformed. Plants’ unique material and structural defense strategies are multifold, spanning from resistance to microbial deterioration to harboring pathogens to preventing water permeation. This exhibition by the Master of Advanced Architectural Design (MAAD) studio at the UC Berkeley Department of Architecture inquires if defense strategies and intentional incorporation of bacteria and fungi in plant tissue, including woods, can lead to unprecedented material functionalities in the built environment.

In March 2021, the Biden Administration released the American Jobs Plan, earmarking $213 billion for “quality” and “affordable” housing, yet the bill lacks specificity on how houses are to be built. Architects can play a unique role in bridging abstract policy ambitions to real construction as these connections are made every day in practice. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) have been a catalyst for including architects in direct policy development. For the first time, cities are directly contracting with architects to provide designs for private property through pre-approved ADU programs. This exhibition of ADU designs uses the economics of building assembly as the groundwork for experimentation and addresses how cities can work with architects to build quality, affordable housing under the American Jobs Plan. Ten architects teaching at Harvard GSD and Berkeley CED consider the overlaps between academia, where cost is often external to conceptual work, and practice, where budgeting is an integral task. The architectural design of each office will be represented by two boards and a handmade architectural model.

Whatever you call them — suburbs, peripheries, banlieues — cities like Oakland, California, and Saint-Denis, France, are today exerting their influence and inventing solutions to challenges posed by equity and the rapid urban development of metropolitan areas. This exhibition highlights a symbolic pivot as artistic movements, social struggles, and urban innovations have begun to emerge from the peripheries, and not just from metropolitan centers.