designboom · Kunst en ontwerp

33 Projects Explore What Housing Should Enable

A new book, "HOUSING — 33 Answers to the Housing Question," edited by Jeanette Kunsmann and Laura Traub, presents European projects that rethink housing beyond mere units and square meters. It examines social and cooperative housing, affordability, shared living, and adaptive reuse, emphasizing housing's evolving role as the center of daily and working lives.

The book argues that housing needs to be more adaptable and connected to its surroundings, acknowledging that people's needs change throughout their lives. The pandemic highlighted how domestic spaces must accommodate work, education, and leisure simultaneously, challenging the idea of a fixed, permanent home. Projects like Buchner Bründler's in Zurich suggest viewing housing as part of a larger residential environment with shared spaces.

The featured projects, organized into chapters on Social and Community Housing, Building Simply, and Renovate, Adapt and Build New, come from diverse contexts across Europe. They share a refusal of standardization, questioning the notion of a single answer to the housing question. Instead, they focus on people's actual needs and available resources, as exemplified by Vienna's Kuku23, which combines subsidized apartments with cultural uses and shared spaces.

The influence of public spaces, transport, and social infrastructure on the experience of housing is significant, though architecture alone cannot create community. While communal spaces can offer opportunities for encounter, they do not guarantee social relationships. Architecture's role is to create conditions for various forms of everyday life, balancing the need for connection with the necessity of privacy.

Beyond affordability and supply, the conversation about housing must include the organization of everyday life and care. Projects like the House for Five Women in Bosnia demonstrate how housing can support both independence and social connection. The time spent on travel, work, and care is also influenced by housing location and organization, suggesting the housing crisis is linked to how we structure daily life.

Renovation, conversion, and adaptation are presented as crucial strategies, given the ecological and material costs of new construction. The Felix-Platter-Spital in Basel, transformed into apartments while retaining its structure, shows how adapting existing buildings to new needs can be a meaningful form of experimentation. Innovation can arise from intelligently reusing what already exists.

The 33 projects serve as an atlas of strategies, encouraging readers to see housing as more than a commodity. There is no universal model for a good home; the right answer depends on people, places, and changing circumstances. The book leaves the housing question open, prompting consideration of what kind of life domestic architecture should support.

AI-samenvatting op basis van de bron.