Future Forms Lab

Contact

[email protected]

The Future Forms Lab identifies emerging ideas to shape spaces—especially housing— that respond to today’s needs.

How can architects respond to Boston's housing crisis?

From rising costs to lack of affordable homes to the dilemma of a rising population, architects are working to find equitable solutions: piloting models for innovative housing typologies, exploring models that better support our region's growing population, and retrofitting our existing stock.

To support such efforts, the BSA’s Future Forms Lab (FFL) brings people together to create models and systems that can be applied across eastern Massachusetts.

BSA Housing Initiatives
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What Is Adaptive Reuse?

Coming Spring 2026.
A guidebook designed for property owners, designers, planners, developers, and community advocates looking for realistic pathways to create housing through adaptive reuse.

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BSA Housing Innovation Symposium

November 6-7 2025.
A 2-day symposium in Boston convening architects, designers, residents, policymakers, developers, and advocates to explore how bold design can unlock housing innovation despite financial, regulatory, and climate constraints.

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Penciling Out Series

A dynamic webinar series co-hosted by the Boston Society for Architecture (BSA/AIA), AIA New York (AIANY), and AIA Los Angeles (AIA|LA) exploring how to successfully finance climate-forward, affordable housing projects. Read the final report here.

ADU Directory

BSA ADU Directory

BSA's ADU Directory serves as a resource to homeowners, as well as other interested stakeholders, to search for architects who may be able to support their efforts to create Accessory Dwelling Units in the region.

Get involved!

Take Our Survey!

Have any interesting ideas, priorities, or curiosity in engaging with housing? Consider taking this quick 5 question member survey to help the BSA (and yourself) gauge your interest, priorities, and engagement with housing innovation.

Click Here!

Our Approach

Housing is about much more than buildings—it is about home, community, health, resilience and equity. The Future Forms Lab has focused on housing innovation to ensure an adequate supply of housing for all—a critical element to the health of our cities. Working with partners in government, business, civic institutions, and community organizations, the Lab has worked on a robust array of creative solutions to meet the challenge of housing affordability. These initiatives cover a broad range of issues, from design and construction to planning and zoning to help increase the supply of housing, particularly for low and middle-income households.

The FFL is embedded within the BSA’s Civic Design Labs, the BSA’s platform for public engagement through architecture. They bring architects together with residents, policymakers, and allied collaborators to explore how design can respond to complex civic challenges. The Labs offer a space for shared authorship, experimentation with process (not just form), and partnerships rooted in care, equity, and public good.

Program Archive

Events on Future Forms Lab
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Exhibitions on Future Forms Lab
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BSA 24

Nov 01, 2021 – Dec 31, 2022

Imaginations of Home

Imaginations of Home explores housing through a variety of perspectives. We invite you to explore the work of many groups reimagining housing models for Boston and its communities. Explore the innovative ideas from Boston residents and designers who submitted to Co-Creating Boston’s Future-Decker. See the possible impact of “future-deckers” in Boston and why that matters in Past, Present, Future-Decker. Tour around the 3D model created by high school students in It Takes a Village. Join a class of Wentworth architecture students in reimagining Blue Hill Avenue in Dorchester in Weaving the Urban Fabric, and finally, view the winning designs from the Greater Boston Affordable Housing Competition put together by joint teams of graduate students and design professionals. We invite you to explore all these diverse perspectives and to share your own in the Housing Design Studio.

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