Imaginations of Home

A collaborative exhibition exploring the future of affordable housing in Boston and beyond

What comes to mind when you imagine home?

Home is personal—it is how we take up space, shape our surroundings, and become a part of a community. It can extend well beyond a building, creating a thread between our personal experiences and the built environment. Housing is physical—it makes up the fabric of our cities through a variety of building types. From single-family homes to apartment buildings, the collective nature of housing creates, nurtures, and maintains the communities that reside within.

Through storytelling and design, this exhibition aims to explore the ways we imagine home and how housing can be a tool to build long lasting, sustainable communities. Amidst the stories of triumph have also been stories of collective struggle, centered around housing affordability, racial inequality, and ever-changing environmental conditions. The work showcased in this exhibition explores how innovations in housing, informed by context and community, can lead to greater opportunities for all.

Imaginations of Home explores housing through a variety of perspectives. We invite you to explore the work of many groups reimagining housing models for Boston and its communities. Explore the innovative ideas from Boston residents and designers who submitted to Co-Creating Boston’s Future-Decker. See the possible impact of “future-deckers” in Boston and why that matters in Past, Present, Future-Decker. Tour around the 3D model created by Digital Ready high school students in It Takes a Village. Join a class of Wentworth architecture students in reimagining Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester in Weaving the Urban Fabric, and finally, view the winning designs from the Greater Boston Affordable Housing Competition put together by joint teams of graduate students and design professionals. We invite you to explore all these diverse perspectives and to share your own in the Housing Design Studio.

We welcome visitors to BSA Space between the hours of 9:00 am–5:00 pm every weekday. View the most up-to-date hours and safety guidelines here.

Thank you to our partners:
Berkshire Bank, BluEdge, the Boston Foundation, Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab, City of Boston Department of Neighborhood Development, Digital Ready, Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston, the Kuehn Charitable Foundation, MakeTank, Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, MIT Real Estate Innovation Lab, MIT School of Architecture’s Future Urban Collectives Lab, MKR | MGR, the National Endowment for the Arts, OFF-CODE, Wentworth Institute of Technology School of Architecture and Design, and YouthBuild Boston.

Exhibition designed by Joelle Riffle.

All posted exhibition dates are subject to change.