For the past decade, the Los Angeles architect Michael Maltzan has
designed multiunit housing in a city known for its proliferation of
single-family residences. Working with the Skid Row Housing Trust, these
projects advance new forms of supportive housing that address the
services and infrastructures needed for their particular populations of
inhabitants. For Maltzan, housing manifests an incredibly complex set of
spatial problems--social, economic, political, typological, aesthetic,
and urban--that recast architecture's role in framing the social
relationships and individual challenges of everyday urban life. Social
Transparency includes a recent lecture by Maltzan at Columbia
University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation,
as well as reflections from fellow practitioners on this sustained
engagement with housing and the city.