In his 1965 essay, “A Home is Not A House,” Reyner Banham declared that a home did not have to consist of four walls connected to a foundation. “Living packages” simply needed to provide shelter, but the form that shelter took should reflect a coming technological revolution, not staid and environmentally inefficient ideas of hearth and stability. Radical architects of the period imagined balloon-like living vessels you could inflate at new sites, or entire cities that roamed the world freely and plugged into settlement spots. This course explores the radical alternatives to housing people have imagined, built, and occupied over the last 125 years. These include feminist, cooperative, environmentally-sensitive, nomadic, and self-sustaining “living environments” that challenge our understanding not only of how most of us live in the United States, but also our notions of gender, racial and ethnic equality; environmental and food issues; class and capitalism; and traditional home-work lives. While some sessions provide historical examples, we primarily consider contemporary examples of alternative housing in practice today. This online course requires at least one self-led exploration to an alternative housing site in your area. Course content is delivered through readings, lectures, online discussions, and online guest speakers.