Postmodern Social Housing: Charles W. Moore’s Whitman Village

While architect Charles W. Moore is well known for his designs of distinctive individual houses, his work in social housing typically receives less attention than those marquee examples. His firm built seven affordable housing complexes, and one of them, Whitman Village, a federally-funded cooperative project in New York, serves as a case study for Moore’s contributions to the field. This paper shows how Moore combined historical references with bold graphics in keeping with postmodern whimsy at Whitman Village and how he scaled the complex to suit the causal living patterns of most Americans. Its design, arguably, speaks to the challenges of planning for population density and lower income residents in the suburbs.