This project consists of two publications: The Buell Hypothesis, a research document which served as the brief for the workshop process of the MoMA exhibition “Foreclosed,” and Foreclosed: Rehousing The American Dream, the resulting exhibition’s catalogue.

The Buell Hypothesis The Buell Hypothesis calls into question the cultural assumptions underlying the “American Dream” in the context of the foreclosure crisis and the demise of the American suburb. The book uses a screenplay format to weave together three types of content: a Socratic dialogue that unearths the underlying premises of the current housing crisis, a visual history of public housing in America as told through the media and a statistical analysis of several American suburbs ripe for radical transformation.

Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream In order to encourage discussion, Foreclosed: Rehousing The American Dream lays its process bare, presenting research, workshop process, the five resulting proposals, as well public discussion and criticism of those proposals. The proposals are the work of five teams of architects, urban planners, landscape architects, economists, ecologists and engineers led by the principals of the architecture firms MOS, Visible Weather, Studio Gang Architects, WORKac and Zago Architecture.

Read the full case study with juror comments here: [http://www.aiga.org/justified-2012--case-study--buell-hypothesis-and-foreclosed/]