Organized by De Peter Yi, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Cincinnati DAAP and director of Rebuild Collective, Block by Block is an exhibition that explores the design potential of accessory dwelling units, upzoning, lot splitting, single stair exits, and mass timber construction in housing.
December 9, 2025–January 31, 2026
GBBN
332 E 8th St, Cincinnati, Ohio, 45202
A Lot More reinvents the fourplex as self-sufficient starter homes through California's SB1123 small lot subdivision law. © Rebuild Collective.
Across North America and here in Cincinnati, zoning and building code reforms are galvanizing efforts to build more housing. But how can these policy changes also recenter a collective conversation around imaginative housing design?
Organized by De Peter Yi, Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Cincinnati DAAP and director of Rebuild Collective, Block by Block is an exhibition that explores the design potential of accessory dwelling units, upzoning, lot splitting, single stair exits, and mass timber construction in housing. Such changes to zoning and building code allow us to not only reimagine the design of buildings on individual lots, but also the relationships between buildings within a larger block.
By positing housing as simultaneously inward-looking and outward-facing, the exhibition offers new models for residential architecture that broadens the longstanding American Dream of the single-family dwelling into more diverse examples of desirable, attainable, and adaptable housing. A series of large-scale physical models invite visitors to “inhabit” the proposed designs and interact with the underlying codes and logics that inform their design. The models demonstrate how housing design and zoning and building codes can shape each other toward spatial, social, and environmental benefits.
The exhibition is offered alongside a series of public workshops on reimagining zoning at Cincinnati Public Library neighborhood branches across the city.
Public Opening Reception: Tuesday, December 9, 5:30 p.m–7:00 p.m.
Exhibition Organization, Research, and Design: De Peter Yi, Assistant Professor of Architecture, University of Cincinnati Director, Rebuild Collective.
Project Team: Zakaria Essakalli, Sammi Klassen, James Gibbs.
Research and Exhibition Partners: Cincinnati Port, GBBN Architects, Simpson Collective for Urban Futures, Cincinnati Public Library.
University of Cincinnati DAAP School of Architecture and Interior Design Students Contributing to Exhibition: Jack Allison, Anna Burger, Alfred Carducci, Zakaria Essakalli, Kiryce Fitzgerald, Sammi Klassen, Ryan May, Paul Minnick, Pace Perry, Austin Shenk, Kate Stump, Caroline Theetge, Gabriel Willard, Ella Youtsey, Kenny Lam.
Funding provided by the SOM Foundation’s 2023 Research Prize, with additional support from the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) Simpson Collective for Urban Futures.
