Agency and Activism: The Yale Building Project

In 1967, the first-year class of graduate students from the Yale School of Architecture travelled to an isolated region of Kentucky to build a community center they designed for impoverished
residents of a hamlet called New Zion. The project was an unprecedented experiment in learning-by-doing and community service that was one of the educational innovations introduced
by architect Charles Moore after being named chairman of Yale’s Department of Architecture.

Each year since then, students have designed and constructed a building for a community-based client under the auspices of the Yale Building Project.  The Yale Building Project has contributed to the education of many of America's leading architects while serving as a model for numerous universities that now incorporate similar programs in their curricula. In recent years, the project has helped construct low-income housing in New Haven itself.

Richard Hayes of Rafael Vinoly Architects will be discussing the project in this free event at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities.  No need to RSVP; a reception will follow the talk.

Hayes’s book, The Yale Building Project: the First 40 Years (Yale University Press, 2007) is the first
comprehensive history of this important initiative.