Crystal Bridges Imagines the Future of Housing

In 2016 the museum acquired the Fly’s Eye Dome, an experimental home designed in 1965 by geodesic pioneer R. Buckminster Fuller, who imagined that, in the future, people would need affordable, low-energy homes that would help, “the world work, for 100 percent of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.”

While working on these two acquisitions, Turk started thinking about the role that the museum could play in pushing the conversation on housing equity and sustainable design for everyone—not just the families that can afford to hire an architect like Wright. Turk reached out to architects across North America to ask them what the future of housing might look like. Could they design 500-square-foot contemporary housing prototypes that addressed materiality, affordability, and design?

The architecture firms—the New York-based studioSUMO and LEVENBETTS, Los Angeles outfit MUTUO, Mexico City’s Perez Palacios Arquitectos Asociados, and studio:indigenous from Milwaukee—designed five structures that visitors can enter and explore to learn more about materials, scale, form, light and interaction with the landscape.

The exhibit, Architecture at Home, is open now through November 7. The prototypes are an exciting look into the architects’ creative processes while also shedding light on community stories from Northwest Arkansans about what it takes to make a house a home.

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• Addie Broyles
• Crystal Bridges
• Exhibition
• Stephen Ironside