Humanity is facing an ongoing, global housing crisis with major consequences for social stability in cities and nations, and by implication for the lives and health of millions. Theorization of the crisis in housing studies points to processes of neo-liberalization which have, since the mid-1970s, transferred responsibility for housing provision from the state to markets, corporations, and the dwellers themselves. Theorizing the role of architecture in these processes has remained remarkably understudied. "Architecture" as a cultural product is thus often seen as distinct from, and unrelated to, "housing" as a socio-economic need, not only among the general public, but among both policy makers and designers themselves.
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The aim of this project is to develop new outlook on the current housing crisis and architecture’s role in it. We do so through the critical analysis and investigation of the terminology used to discuss housing. The language we use—whether “model,” “unit,” or “housing” itself, to cite just three examples—embeds normative assumptions as to how we should live and thus frames not only how we evaluate the present, but how we envision the future. Often, the origins of terms, their changing meaning over time, place, linguistic contexts and disciplinary settings, has had direct impact on the ground, and uncovering these trajectories is one way to change the conversation moving forward. Terminology is thus both the object of inquiry and the tool of research, providing the backbone of the research activity and methodology. It provides us with a way to counter the lack of discussion of the housing crisis as an architectural problem and serves as bridge to recast the relationship between the social, economic, political, and design dimensions of how we live together.
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The main aim of the project is to recast architecture as a crucial aspect of housing provision and closely examine its divorce from housing by the late 1970s as cardinal to the development of the current crisis.
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During the granted period we intend to move from the systematic terminology analysis of housing as an architectural question conducted during the first phase, to the definition of a theoretical frame for the investigation of housing as architecture. The research will provide relevant contribution for scholarship as well as for design inquiry renewed outlook on the capacity of architecture in envisioning a post-neoliberal society. The research will lead to a publication in the tradition of the architectural manifesto, organized around the terminology of housing, tentatively titled “Re-theorizing the Architecture of Housing in Research and Practice.”