Smuggling Architecture is part of a group exhibition titled
Under the Radar. Funded by a 2019 awarded Graham Foundation Grant to individuals, the Smuggling Architecture installation at the Swiss Architecture Museum optimistically smuggles meaning and value into the interiors of generic suburban house plans through architectural orders.

The paring of “smuggling” and “architecture” together is purposeful. The connotation of “smuggling” presupposes that what is secretively being smuggled is something that is small enough that it is easily hidden. By contrast, architecture seems a little bit too big as an idea to be smuggled. The word smuggling provides a new and alternative approach to the act of designing.

Over half of all Americans live in suburbia, and of those in suburbia, ninety-eight percent live in homes developed by off-the-shelf builder’s plans. The history of the suburban house has been and continues to be codified in a handful of builder’s manuals that offer a huge selection of home plans to pick-and-choose buyers. These builder homes are living artifacts: a domestic typology rigidly embedded within the American landscape. Smuggling Architecture seeks to reclaim the suburban housing stock that has been neglected by modern architecture.