HOUSING AS INTERVENTION: ARCHITECTURE TOWARDS SOCIAL EQUITY

Housing as Intervention: Architecture towards Social Equity
Edited by Karen Kubey
Book Chapter by Neeraj Bhatia + Antje Steinmuller

This 17-essay volume of Architectural Design (AD) examines how housing projects around the world, and the design processes behind them, might be interventions towards greater social equity. Across the world, the housing crisis is escalating. Mass migration to cities has led to rapid urbanisation on an unprecedented scale, while the withdrawal of public funding from social housing provision in Western countries, and widening income inequality, have further compounded the situation. In response to this context, forward-thinking architects are taking the lead with a collaborative approach. By partnering with allied fields, working with residents, developing new forms of housing, and leveraging new funding systems and policies, they are providing strategic leadership for what many consider to be our cities’ most pressing crisis. Amidst growing economic and health disparities, this issue of AD asks how housing projects, and the design processes behind them, might be interventions towards greater social equity, and how collaborative work in housing might reposition the architectural profession at large.

Bhatia and Steinmuller’s chapter, “Commune, Co-living and Cooperatives: Spatial Models for the Domestic Commons,” investigates new typologies of commoning domestic space through co-living case studies in Berlin, Seoul, and San Francisco that offer cues on how architecture, and the architect, can become an agent in developing housing that reflects contemporary urban values.

Contributors include:
Cynthia Barton, Deborah Gans, and Rosamund Palmer; Neeraj Bhatia and Antje Steinmuller; Dana Cuff; Fatou Dieye; Robert Fishman; Na Fu; Paul Karakusevic; Kaja Kühl and Julie Behrens; Matthew Gordon Lasner; Meir Lobaton Corona; Marc Norman; Julia Park; Brian Phillips and Deb Katz; Pollyanna Rhee; Emily Schmidt and Rosalie Genevro