Michelle Chang, the 2025 Arnold W. Brunner | Frances Barker Tracy | Katherine Edwards Gordon Rome Prize Fellow and an associate professor of architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, is investigating how the architecture of artist residencies reflects and reshapes institutional identity. Her current project explores the spatial and social dynamics of artist colonies, contrasting remote sites like MacDowell Colony, the Chinati Foundation, and Headlands Center for the Arts with urban academies in Rome. Through models, drawings, and site analysis, Chang considers how buildings enforce or subvert organizational missions, and how informal adaptations—like the repurposing of the American Academy’s basement—challenge intended hierarchies of space.
Your project explores how artist residencies employ architecture to carry out institutional missions by shaping an identity and sense of place. Where are the best examples of buildings demonstrating this control, and of others that pushed back against an imposed spatial logic? And what are their ties to Rome?
The international academies in Rome contrast to many artist residency programs in the U.S. in ways that highlight their social performances. The former type is in an urban context where the palazzo is an instrument that orchestrates a strong sense of propriety and order. The latter type is often in a remote setting where existing houses (in the case of MacDowell), commercial space (in the case of Chinati), and military barracks (in the case of Headlands) are converted into studios. Here, the existing building fabric forms weak connections to others (slow Wi-Fi, bad cell phone service, and physical distance).
What interests me about reading the architecture of artist residencies with their mission statements is understanding how buildings and residents adapt to fit contemporary needs. For example, the American Academy’s basement, historically a secondary space, has become a primary space of discourse housing lectures and writing workshops. In a way, today’s occupants subvert McKim, Mead & White’s original intent by seeking out spaces with differing proportions, materials, and connectivity to other rooms.
What sites, archives, or experiences in Rome, a city shaped by ancient, baroque, and modern spatial techniques, have provided your most surprising discovery, or gave you an abundance of insight?
Sharing stories with the fellows of nearby academies and looking at the drawings of their buildings.
Your project is exploring not only time but scale. What are you building in your studio, and how does making relate to your research?
I’m currently designing staff housing for a new artist colony in the US. In my studio are scale drawings and models.
How have your interactions with this year’s fellows and residents influenced your work or changed your perspective?
Learning how the fellows use their offices and studios has been fascinating. The functions of these spaces range from dedicated work areas to private extensions of their bedrooms to public-facing showrooms. The various accoutrements housed in each room—hot plates, hammers, small libraries, maps, and even a deli slicer—signal the extent to which daily life is concentrated inward or extends to the rest of the building, campus, and surrounding city.
How did your conceptions of the Academy change over the course of the fellowship?
I was surprised at how critical of a role the staff and “service” spaces play in the Academy. The freedom to practice is brought about less by a kind of self-sufficiency I had imagined but by a host of people moving through dedicated rooms, hallways, and doors to support the fellows, residents, and visitors.