In a pair of exhibitions, Weitzman students and faculty respond to the office vacancy crisis and US housing shortage.
On view in Venice through November, UNDER PRESSURE brings together housing proposals for sites in Philadelphia, New York City, and Haborside, New Jersey.
The 19th Venice Architecture Biennale Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective. brings together numerous technological developments and experiments in new ways to live and build with nature. “The built environment is one of the largest contributors to atmospheric emissions, placing architecture among the main culprits in the degradation of our planet,” says curator Carlo Ratti, an architect and engineer on the faculty at MIT, of the urgency around his agenda. “As the climate crisis accelerates, must we resign ourselves to this role, or are we still able to offer solutions, substantial and non-cosmetic, effective and quick to achieve?”
Among the myriad issues Ratti’s Biennale tackles, housing affordability and sustainability are at the fore, and two Weitzman faculty members helped shape the conversation there with contributions to the exhibit Time Space Existence in Palazzo Mora, sponsored by the European Cultural Commission (ECC).
Associate Professor of Practice and Director of Urban Housing Hina Jamelle organized “UNDER PRESSURE: Vacancy, Urgency and the Architecture of Conversion,” a showcase of adaptive reuse projects completed in the graduate urban housing studios in the Department of Architecture at Weitzman. The studios build on the ongoing “Under Pressure” framework, where Jamelle leads design research-driven explorations on new models for urban living. Today, in major cities, both housing and office buildings are under pressure—housing due to affordability, offices due to vacancy. In response to increasing strains on resources there is a renewed interest in adaptive reuse, particularly the conversion of commercial buildings into housing. “With companies downsizing their physical footprints, demand for traditional office space has declined, leaving many older or centrally located buildings vacant—often at levels exceeding those seen during the Great Recession,” says Jamelle, who is also a director at Contemporary Architecture Practice. “The adaptive reuse of commercial buildings with a focus on urban public programs and connections encourages the creation of hybrid forms that both add value and uplifts communities.”
Mu Cao's design for the adaptive reuse of Wanamaker House, a historic department store in Philadelphia, on view in UNDER PRESSURE
Designed by Brennan Chase Flory (MArch’25), the exhibition features eight projects across five studios. Each is a commercial-to-residential conversion proposal by a second-year Master of Architecture student that address the ongoing vacancy crisis brought on by factors such as an increase in remote or hybrid work and AI related corporate downsizing.
As orchestrated by Jamelle, the urban housing studios challenged students to find new ways of working within the constraints of city politics and financial logics. Ricardo Alvarado (MArch’25) redesigned New York’s Flatiron Building to be more inclusive. “We integrated a “public commons” space into our housing proposals, which is a space that bridges public and residential programs to foster social change,” Alvarado says. “Rather than treating residential space as isolated and exclusive, the project proposed a more porous, interactive environment, an urban development that can support creative exchange, civic engagement, and collective memory as integral parts of daily life.”
Mu Cao’s project, titled FRamingo, was an adaptive reuse of Wanamaker House, a luxury condominium complex in Philadelphia. He calls the project a “spatial ecosystem,” a term for his strategy to design all of the spaces around the housing units. “For a landmark like the Wanamaker Building, that meant designing not just high-quality residential units,” Cao says. “I also curated a mix of public commons, semi-public terraces, and framed pedestrian views that reactivate the building’s civic role.”
While the urban housing studio features adaptive reuse, Weitzman Lecturer Richard Garber, whose students’ work was included in UNDER PRESSURE, exhibited the work of his firm, GRO Architects. Their work on modular housing complements the work by Weitzman students on view directly across the gallery. For Garber, smaller, more efficient units allow for tighter plans with more units per site, and can even bring alive existing hotels or office buildings with lively residential units.
Nest, designed by GRO Architects (photo courtesy March Construction)
Nest is a new 122 micro-housing unit project (each 220 square feet) in the Journal Square neighborhood of Jersey City. Working with the Italian modular furniture company MobItaly, GRO designed custom furniture that could accommodate multiple functions throughout the day, such as a collapsible dining table and a Murphy bed that transforms to a couch, a mock-up of which was installed as part of the Biennale exhibition.
Also located in New Jersey is GRO’s renovation and adaptive reuse of the iconic brutalist Hilton hotel at Newark Penn Station. Designed by mall guru Victor Gruen, the hotel has a direct passage to the train station, and will become 200 units of housing. “It is a good location for the building, and the larger room sizes of the 1971 hotel make for generous residential units by today’s standards,” Garber says.
For students, Venice presents a rare opportunity to participate in global discussions about architecture before they formally enter (or return to) the profession. “I’ve heard about the Biennale in history courses I’ve taken before and knew it as this critical global platform where architects and designers present ideas that can spark important conversations,” says Alvarado.
“Watching people from completely different backgrounds pause, interpret, and even debate the ideas behind my drawings was both surreal and incredibly rewarding,” Cao says. “Seeing that render, which had lived in my slide deck for months, suddenly elevated under gallery lighting in a Venetian palazzo? That was a moment.”
The projects from Weitzman students and Garber’s firm offer innovative approaches to housing the US that could be applied in other countries—technologically and in the realm of politics, finance, and policy. “This is about changing how people live and work," Jamelle says. “I think the Biennale is a success when people are able to see what architecture can do.”
Jamelle is continuing the conversation this fall with a multidisciplinary panel that convenes architects, economists and policy experts for a discussion titled Vacancy, Urgency and the Architecture of Conversion scheduled for October 29, 2025. The Venice Architecture Biennale and Time Space Existence remain on view through November 23, 2025
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