Antje Steinmuller Wants to Get the Housing Question Right

Justin R. Wolf: First off, congratulations on this latest appointment. Coming from the Bay Area, where you’ve been for most of your career to date, I’m curious how the move went. Are you fully settled?

Antje Steinmuller: Yes. It took a while though. I was waiting for my apartment to become available, so I was spending time in Airbnb’s in Detroit and Ann Arbor. It was very good to be in Detroit for months and get to know the city and its potential, in order to understand how our programs relate to the city. Or maybe should relate to the city.

There’s a collective for equitable housing here at Taubman, which is a faculty-led research cluster that does actual work out in the community. With my research interests it makes sense for me to be affiliated with that cluster. In my previous capacity as one of the directors of CCA’s Urban Works Agency, I had been in communication with Taubman faculty as part of the collective. So, there’s a common history that predates my coming to Michigan.

JRW: On the topic of your research, what are some of the unique challenges you have noted since moving halfway across the country? Within the context of the Bay Area and its housing crisis, how do things compare with what is happening in Michigan?

AS: It’s a different form of, let’s call it housing challenges. In Detroit, we are still dealing with the city shrinking and the challenge of how to rebuild communities in the absence of density. There are some really interesting bottom-up movements happening that are doing exactly that. Then in Ann Arbor, there are more similarities with what I’ve seen in San Francisco, where housing is disproportionately expensive and there’s a shortage because of high demand.

JRW: You keenly point out that Detroit is reducing its footprint and that so much of the city is rebuilding itself. What are your thoughts on the high-end development currently happening—much of it restorative? Is this in service of what the city says it wants to achieve, like greater accessibility and equitable development and housing?

AS: I see many developments that are outwardly oriented towards building a workforce and attracting employers from the tech industry. And in a way, the housing construction that is happening now caters to those workers, rather than the people who have been living there and who need rebuilding in their communities.

JRW: So where is the market for those existing residents who need affordable homes?

AS: There is a particular kind of density that needs to be considered that isn’t the typical mid-rise or row house condominiums you might see in places like Lafayette Park or Midtown. We need slightly lower density in some areas. And where activity is clustered and neighborhood infrastructure is building up, higher density should be considered. A broader look needs to be taken as to where higher density makes sense.

But before you can talk about housing typologies, you have to take a comprehensive look at what is intended for each neighborhood. I’m interested in the demographics that live in these different neighborhoods. Not necessarily ethnicity, but family types, younger people who live alone but desire social units, and adjusting based on those needs. For instance, instead of building a lot one- and two-bedrooms, there may be greater need for collective, multi-generational, or more supportive forms of housing that are right for those communities.

If you look at the research I’ve done, I really believe in speaking to community first, understanding what the actual needs are, and then working with municipalities and planning departments on adjusting planning legislation accordingly. I’m not the sort of person who wants to impose one housing type just because I happen to think it’s good. In San Francisco, I worked with communities and developers that were propagating more collective forms of living. We then approached the city’s planning department and told them what was actually happening on the ground. We brought this research to them, and they ended up changing group housing legislation in the city.

JRW: This is a loaded question, but what are some of the obstacles for architects, designers, and planners wanting to “fix” our housing crises?

AS: You are asking a very large question. But I would zoom out more and begin by talking about the commodification of housing, and how we think of it as this thing to build wealth. We pin our identity to that. Everyone thinks they have to have the single-family, freestanding house. But there are alternatives to that way of thinking. We need to think of housing as a human right.

Another part of the issue in many U.S. cities is a fear of density. After spending 26 years in San Francisco, I saw how much people’s identities were tied to the three-story houses that look a certain way and occupy the topography in a certain way. The notion that we could, with zoning, actually build six stories, more apartments, and more collective forms of ownership where people share amenities, was really difficult to put into practice because of how it looked.

Our image of housing is tied to the single-family home. I think this poses architectural questions about how we make identity visible. With a lot of bigger apartment buildings you don’t have this sense of identity because you can’t distinguish the unit from the multi-unit building. One could argue this is a design challenge and we just haven’t done it well enough yet.

JRW: As you start your first semester at Taubman, what’s on the horizon for you in terms of your research and work with local communities?

AS: As a school, we are looking closely at who we are and what we want to be with regard to what is happening in the world, and by that, I mean climate change, the housing crisis, and technological developments with AI. Architecture is a very synthetic discipline that often requires collaboration with other disciplines. It is our responsibility to promote things that are beneficial to the climate, to create housing that caters to people’s needs, and to look at how AI technologies can really serve us. This will happen through collaborative processes with students, faculty, and staff over the course of this first year. There’s already a lot happening at Taubman, so it’s a matter of bringing dispersed efforts together and making them more tangible for future students, connecting them with grants, longer term research projects, and within communities around the college. I’m really hoping to intensify the collaborations that we have, and should have, right in Ann Arbor and Detroit and other areas. Detroit especially is a place where we can learn a lot, from the struggles that have happened and the strategies that have worked.

For my own research, I’m finishing a book on collective living, which is mostly focused on California. But I’m looking past that as well, to collective housing typologies that need to happen in communities in Detroit, focused on ecological practices, family sizes, and other things.

JRW: When your research sees the light of day, how do you envision it being leveraged?

AS: My hope is to collaborate with Detroit’s planning and development department, like what we did in San Francisco, and build a platform for public conversations that could take place here at Taubman and different locations in and around Detroit. These conversations could then have an impact on community building, planning codes, and more. This is all very nascent. I’ve only been here for six weeks.

JRW: Well, it sounds like all this work is happening not a moment too soon.

AS: Yes, exactly right.

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• Research

• Antje Steinmuller
• Housing
• Justin R. Wolf
• University of Michigan