Architecture of AppropriationArchitecture of Appropriation

This chapter is part of the publication Architecture of Appropriation. On Squatting as Spatial Practice.

At the time of publishing, some of the squatting communities presented in this publication have already been evicted by the authorities. The pace and processes by which these spaces are targeted render visible the forces and interests that are leading the contemporary transformation of cities. Yet the spatial and legal strategies used by squatters to inhabit the urban fabric are a reminder that other urban and domestic arrangements, and non-commercial forms of communal living, are still possible today.

Regrettably, discussions among architects, urban planners, scholars and policy-makers around affordable housing and the growing barriers to equal access housing in cities too often abstain from questioning notions of property. Meanwhile, platforms such as Airbnb and the anti-squat business sector have turned the sharing of unoccupied domestic spaces into a synonym for corporate monetary exchange instead of a form of solidarity; co-working and co-living are now mantras for high-end developments targeted at young entrepreneurs. Increasingly appropriated by designers, developers and anti-squat companies, the architectural typologies and strategies of the temporary occupation of uninhabited spaces, and the reuse of materials and aesthetics instigated by the squatting movement, are now marketed devoid of their original ideals.

Rather than a person's right, the architecture of the home is a preferred form of investment and repository of capital. Apartments sit vacant in cities around the world, yet these spaces are not residencies for rent or sale. Instead, these architectures are assets. The object of speculative operations are completely imbricated in the neo-liberal policies of urban development, and the majority of contemporary housing projects and policies follow the logic of the market. House scarcity, insufficient supply and excessive demand, attract investors. As a result, prices rise and distort the market, housing shortages worsen to the detriment of residents, inhabitants are pushed out of the city, and conditions of precarity, and the processes of unequal access and accumulation of capital among the population, proliferate. These inequalities perpetuate centuries of targeted violence towards the excluded and oppressed through master plans and design strategies, in which the architectural community is also complicit.

Paradoxically, it has been the neo-liberal grip of the past decades, and its economic and political pressures, that has pushed people to rely on their own means and on infrastructures of commonality. This has manifested in the construction of alternative forms of collectivity, and new political and civic agency. By inhabiting vacant premises and imagining other models of family and ownership, the squatting movement has set up infrastructures of domestic solidarity. Across the country, squatters have opened spaces for diverse and multigenerational habitation for those who advocate collective living, who don't have access to a home, or even to legal residency status. Through the appropriation and maintenance of industrial, historic, empty and abandoned structures, the inhabitants are at the same time activists, builders and architects who design the architectures of new forms of belonging, and new ways of being together.

Rather than romanticizing informal urban practices, the aim of Architecture of Appropriation has been to reflect on the physical outcomes of the spatial strategies of squatters, on their forms of collective decision making, on their models for welcoming, inclusive, affordable architecture with cultural value. These non-normative architectures are even formalized, at least in the context of the Netherlands, and follow clear protocols and tactics for occupation. The fact that squatting was legal before the ban of 2010 evidences how this model of inhabitation, and occupation not based on property, is possible even within capitalist regimes.

Many of the squats presented here are organized around open-ended structures capable of housing diverse communities and programs, accommodating forms of living for short-term projections. Bodies, materials, artifacts and ideas travelled across the network, from squat to squat, strengthening the sense of collectivity, and giving shape to a distributed, diffuse organization ready to reuse and reclaim the city and occupy its vacant premisses.

Inevitably the permeable, even vulnerable, structures and spontaneous, everyday practices of squatting are impregnated by a sense of instability and precarity. Yet many of these spaces have been home to multiple generations, and became stable residencies for entire communities, having a long-lasting influence on the everyday interactions and futures of entire neighborhoods. In this process, not all residents might have enjoyed living collectively, as group dynamics around decision-making and space-shaping can be a conflictive process. Contrary to how alternative forms of habitation might appear, the careful management of these self-organized and self-built spaces is fundamental for accommodating individual desires within the common good. The administration of a squat demands trust, commitment, time, and energy from its inhabitants. Living is not a passive action, but an active political practice that could potentially become emancipatory. Successful, long-lasting squats learned to creatively organize communal living by destabilizing hierarchies, shifting roles, and using democratic committee meetings to take decisions. In addition, squats often align with and are supported by unconventional approaches to economic and cultural exchanges, forms of collective care, and more equitable and inclusive social, political, technical as well as biological ecologies.

These spaces are important nodes in the cultural landscape of the city, whose actions and initiatives are relevant for its livability. By weaving structures of solidarity, creativity and activism, squatters transgress and disrupt normative forms of domestic inhabitation, patriarchal structures, and neo-liberal forms of living. In the transformation of the state from a provider of public welfare to a promoter of markets, society and the economy are dominated by forms of extraction and appropriation of value derived from the ownership or control of scarce assets, such as property. The appropriation of vacant premisses by squatters serves to infiltrate and transform these regimes of extraction, overcoming the gap between the population who has easy access to assets, and those who don't. Their actions expose these systems of exclusion, challenge the seemingly idealized imaginaries of political democracy, and show the bodies, spaces and territories bypassed by forms of state-based redistribution.

It is precisely within this tension that Architecture of Appropriation situates itself. By including the spatial practices of the squatting movement, whose actions and architectures are criminalized, inside the national Archive - a symbolic, public, state-run building and institution- the project exposes the forms of extraction, nomination, validation, and exclusion intrinsic to these types of archives, their documents, and the systems they represent. This publication infuses the institution with a different ethos and language, as well as other voices and forms of architectural practice. With these strategies Architecture of Appropriation invites reflection upon methodological and historiographical questions connected to archiving, as well as to the architecture of the archive itself, and to challenge, from within, the imposing presence of the archive, its material, and its symbolic preoccupation with authorship and eternity.

Our role as mediators is ambiguous and even problematic. In spite of a strong belief in the importance of public institutions and their capacity to convene forms of collectivity and political action, this project simultaneously sets out to defy their fixed structures, and give way to more permeable, humble, open ones. We understand 'heritage' to mean that which citizens recognize as their own assets, that which manifests and stimulates the human values ​​of a social group, that we wish to keep to future generations. This position has infused the methodology, the forms of architectural representation, the relationships established, and the organization of the project itself. As researchers, and in this case editors, we do not shy away from possible challenges and contradictions, and instead fully explore them to transcend conventions and imagine other alternatives.

This publication is not the end of the journey, but just a small step into a larger active process. In addition to the debates the project triggered both within and outside the institutional context, the collective research has also manifested in other initiatives, including new policies for the State Archive, autonomous squatting archives, and even a nomination for one squat for the 2017 Dutch Design Awards. With the inclusion of the six archives of squats in the State Archive for Dutch Architecture and Urban Planning, keywords and tags were added to the collection's inventory, allowing new vocabularies derived from the architecture of squatting at the interface of the archive, as well as creating new connections between new and existing archives. The project was presented and discussed in international conferences such as MuseumNext ICAM, International Philosophy Olympiad, and Mextropoli, fueling conversations and collaborations with other institutions around the possibility of opening their otherwise hermetic structures. Essays and examples of these architectures have been included in architecture magazines, exhibitions, biennales, as well as in school curricula, pushing the boundaries of the profession and leading to urgent group discussions on city developments, the right to housing, and local and national policies together with programs in architecture history, art history, design, art, sociology and philosophy.

It is not certain that these radical experiments in redefining the role and capacity of collaborative modes of living and action might survive in the long-term. Yet the recent court decision to allow a community of squatters to remain in their occupied premises is an event that seems to mark a new phase in the struggle for housing.