Research & Teaching

Taubman College faculty are dedicated to finding pathways for more equitable housing in teaching, research, and creative practice. Through studios, capstones, and seminars, our faculty has educated a generation of architects and planners toward future affordable housing design practice, equitable and sustainable development and financing, and community resilience.

We design and build projects ranging from the scale of ADUs to adaptive reuse to multi-family housing, and study fabrication and building technology from the perspective of both DIY building and automated construction.

We study the impacts of development regulations such as zoning and building codes on housing supply and urban inequalities and develop strategies to preserve affordable housing.

Our faculty’s expertise and areas of strength are defined by four broad and overlapping areas of interest:

• Design For Attainable Construction
• Sustainable Construction & Resources
• Zoning & Code Innovation for Sustainable Housing
• Enabling Financial Structures for Equitable Development

          

Design For Attainable Construction

How can community-based models of construction, such as training programs and shared tools, be scaled to reduce the costs of building and to create lasting equity across communities?

Can a design-build program become a pathway for these models, developing construction skills within existing communities while creating livable prototypes of equitable housing?

Can we partner nationally with other research entities and municipalities to build a continuously updated database of block-scale case studies and communicate successful examples of equitable housing in similar contexts?

 

Sustainable Construction & Resources

How might building technology, construction innovation, or automation be utilized to scale?

What alternatives exist for conventional stick-frame construction and housing models?

Are proposals for “missing middle housing” meeting the demand of contemporary families and their communities?

Can Michigan and other locations within the Great Lakes region become hubs for the manufacturing of timber building components?

 

Zoning Regulation & Code Innovation for Sustainable Housing 

How can research and design practices inform efforts to reform building codes and zoning regulations to allow for flexible building types and mixed-use development?

How can those efforts improve housing affordability, reduce residential segregation, and promote a sustainable built environment?

Equitable Development & Preservation with Enabling Financial Structures

How can research and design practices help identify alternative development and redevelopment models that would offer opportunities to households of different socioeconomic backgrounds and preserve existing affordable housing to ensure equitable distribution of costs and benefits?

How can we structure public and private partnerships and identify innovative financial solutions to enable those developments?

How can the U.S. learn from other countries in the provision of affordable housing and equitable development?

How might tools such as land-banks and community land trust be leveraged towards new models of homeownership and financing?