On February 19, 2026, the Institute for the Humanities Public Humanities Interns welcomed students, staff, and community members for Many Manifestations of Home, an interactive workshop exploring how space is imagined, inhabited, and produced.
The evening opened with a Q&A featuring architecture professor Mireille Roddier, whose work bridges architecture and the humanities. In conversation with the interns and attendees, Professor Roddier described architecture not simply as a professional discipline, but as a way of thinking about how space shapes and is shaped by culture, memory, identity, and power. She encouraged participants to recognize everyday spatial decisions—arranging a dorm room, personalizing a shared apartment, or moving through campus—as meaningful architectural acts.
Following the conversation, participants began the first exercise, “A House of Dreams,” designing imaginative dwellings unconstrained by feasibility. Tables quickly filled with floor plans, illustrated scenes, and written reflections, as guests envisioned spaces ranging from intimate reading sanctuaries to expansive communal homes. Small-group discussions invited participants to consider what their designs revealed about comfort, aspiration, and community.
The second exercise turned to lived experience, prompting reflection on dorms, apartments, and childhood homes. Attendees discussed how these environments are shaped by social norms and institutional policies, and who holds the power to define or alter them. Drawing connections between imagined and real spaces, participants considered how elements of their dream homes might be enacted in everyday life.
Ultimately, Many Manifestations of Home created a warm, thoughtful space to reflect, create, and connect—highlighting home as something continually shaped through memory, identity, and shared practice.
