Designing Suburban Futures: June Williamson, Visiting Professor of Architecture
Six Questions with June Williamson, Visiting Professor of Architecture
"There are six urgent challenges for the suburbs: disrupt automobile dependence, improve public health, support an aging population, leverage social capital for equity, compete for jobs and add water and energy resilience. While there is still much more to do, it is exciting to see the bar being raised on this work."
What brought you to CAPLA to serve as a visiting professor?
My spouse and I share a deep and abiding interest in exploring space, me as an architect, urban designer and professor at The City College of New York’s Spitzer School of Architecture, and he as a galaxy evolution astronomer at Columbia University (with longstanding collaborations at the University of Arizona). Perhaps needless to say, we work at vastly different registers of spatial change over time! We were both fortunate to take concurrent academic leaves this semester and be warmly welcomed by the university.
The Retrofitting Suburbia Series of books, authored or co-authored by June Williamson.
What is your current research and what most excites you about this work?
I research northern American suburban form, and its discontents, documenting how dead malls, dying office parks and other underperforming suburban property types and development patterns are being redeveloped, reinhabited or regreened into more sustainable, just, healthy and community-serving places. I’ve authored or co-authored a series of books on the topic: Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges (Wiley, 2021), Designing Suburban Futures: New Models from Build a Better Burb (Island Press, 2013) and Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs (Wiley, 2009). A key piece of the newest book is the elaboration of six urgent challenges for the suburbs: disrupt automobile dependence, improve public health, support an aging population, leverage social capital for equity, compete for jobs and add water and energy resilience. While there is still much more to do, it is exciting to see the bar being raised on this work.
What are you teaching this semester, and what do you most enjoy about teaching?
I’m teaching a section of the second-year Bachelor of Architecture studio, ARC 201 Design Studio 1. It’s both an honor and a responsibility to guide and inspire architecture students at or near the beginning of their professional studies. There are still so many paths they can take, so much that can be done with an architecture degree. I aspire to convey the great range of possibilities, concurrent with building foundational skills and fostering healthy, sustaining work habits.
Participants sketching ideas for a proposed retrofit of a strip mall in suburban Jeffersonville, Indiana, during a professional planning and urban design workshop at a conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo by June Williamson, 2019.
How do you bring your research into your teaching?
Oh gosh, in all sorts of ways. One example: at Spitzer, I’ve been fortunate to teach a series of Advanced Studios (for upper level B.Arch and M.Arch students) on the theme of designing suburban futures: the first was ParkingPLUS, which furthered the design challenge I’d organized for Rauch Foundation’s Long Island Index on rethinking parking around commuter rail stations; the second, RapidTYPING, explored mixing mid-scale housing types on former Sears store sites; and the third, Housing55PLUS, dealt with employing mass timber construction to retrofit a mall to serve older adults living in a naturally-occurring retirement community (or NORC) in outer Queens. I am super proud of the results. To reverse part of the question, I’m always trying to foreground teaching experiences in my service and practice, from volunteering on the boards of ACSA and AIA New York, to entering competitions where I can include students, such as National Parks Now.
Beyond research and teaching, what are your passions?
I’m passionate about attending live theater, from straight plays to musicals (in college, I flirted with set design). I also love reading novels. When I travel, I try to read books related to the places I’m visiting, so I’ve been working my way through a few stories set in Tucson and the Southwest more generally. Send suggestions my way, please!
Timespires, an entry to Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) Competition for Freshkills Park, Staten Island, 2012. Courtesy of Tom Faust, Kim Chan and June Williamson.
What advice do you have for students exploring architecture, urban planning and the built environment?
My main advice is to keep in mind that everything about the built environment—the spaces and places that comprise human habitats—is designed. There are so many paths available for your work as architects, landscape architects and urban planners to make a tangible difference in this world and on this planet.
