American Pastoral: The Invention of Student Housing and the Architecture of the Dormitory

This review examines Carla Yanni's Living on Campus: An Architectural History of the American Dormitory (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2019), situating the book within the broader historical evolution of student accommodation. It argues that the modern concept of student housing is a relatively recent invention, emerging alongside the Modern Movement and the expansion of the mass university after the Second World War. While the term denotes a building typology specifically designed for student accommodation, its historical roots lie in the medieval college, an institution derived from monastic architecture. Founded in cities such as Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge, early colleges provided lodging for impoverished students and, in some cases, supplementary instruction, establishing the quadrangle as the dominant architectural model for more than four centuries. Following the French and American Revolutions, higher education underwent a gradual process of secularization, transforming from a predominantly religious enterprise into a public institution serving the emerging republican state. This shift culminated in new architectural forms, most notably Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia, which integrated student and faculty residences within a unified complex. By absorbing the traditional functions of the college into the university, this project gave rise to the campus as a distinct spatial and institutional model. The review explores how Yanni traces these historical developments, demonstrating that the evolution of student housing reflects broader changes in educational ideals, architectural practice, and the relationship between universities and society.