Modeling Alternatives: a conversation with Candace Borders and Sarah Rose
Modeling Alternatives: a conversation with Candace Borders and Sarah Rose
September 10th 2026 at 5:30pm-6:30pm
in Steinberg Hall Gallery
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Modeling Alternatives brings together historian Candace Borders and community-based developer Sarah Rose to discuss the past, present, and future of social housing in the city of St. Louis. Candace will speak to her dissertation research on Black women’s activism for public housing in mid-20th century St. Louis. Sarah will draw on her own experience developing housing in St. Louis to describe how affordability is produced and maintained in the present. Together, the panelists will put forward ideas for social housing which overcome the narrow focus on prominent failures and draw lessons from the deep history of local tenant-led housing activism.
This event takes place on the opening night of Counterplanning from St. Louis, an exhibition on how housing affordability shapes, and is shaped by, construction practices. This event and affiliated exhibition is made possible by the James Harrison Steedman Fellowship in Architecture, Washington University in St. Louis, and AIA St. Louis.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Candace Borders is an interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and curator. She is currently a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Modeling Interdisciplinary Inquiry at the Center for the Humanities at WashU. Her research explores the intersections of race, gender, class, and the urban Midwest, with particular attention to the role of Black women’s activism in shaping the urban landscape. Her current project is a multidisciplinary history of Black women’s public housing activism in mid-20th century St. Louis drawing upon oral history, ethnographic, and archival methods. She received her B.A. in American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis in 2017 and her Ph.D. in American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University in 2025.
Sarah Rose is an affordable housing developer, activist and organizer. Sarah's work and organizing focuses on returning assets and power into collective governance rather than highly financialized markets. Professionally they began at McCormack Baron Salazar, a national affordable housing developer and came up in faith-based structural organizing, later joining the group that kicked off St Louis Mutual Aid. They now work at Dutchtown South Community Corporation, an over 50 year old CDC serving Dutchtown, Gravois Park, Marine Villa and Mount Pleasant neighborhoods. Sarah graduated with a bachelors from Yale University in 2017.
Adare Brown is an architect and educator focused on building culture and big housing projects. They direct as-such, an architecture and research practice, with James Wood. At Bard College, they teach courses on architecture, affordability, and construction history - work which emerged from their 2024 James Harrison Steedman Fellowship project Counterplanning from St. Louis. They received dual-degrees in Fine Art and Architecture at Washington University in St. Louis in 2017 and their Masters of Architecture Yale University in 2022. They have organized with The Architecture Lobby's Just Transition Campaign since 2020.