Architecture of Appropriation
28 January 2018 - 19 August 2018
Domestic Solidarity
The Covid-19 pandemic has put pressure on the assumed securities of everyday life. Quickly labelled by governments with the language of war, the "fight" against the virus has transformed habits, interaction and jobs. It has brought new routines, security rules and emergency decrees. These measures have transformed the home into the "front line defence against the coronavirus".
"Work from home as much as possible!" "No more than three guests at home!" and "Do you have a cold? Then stay at home!" The exhortations to keep a physical distance, to isolate yourself and to work from home, make it clear once again how indispensable a home is to be able to put these measures into practice. Much advice is based on the assumptions that everyone has shelter and that it is safe (or at least non-violent) there. Moreover, the "household" within which social distancing can be less strictly applied seems to imply a traditional family set-up. However, for many people in the world, these conditions do not apply.
The consequences of the pandemic have further threatened the livelihoods of many individuals and communities. Covid-19 has again exposed the complex relationships between finance, socio-economic conditions, race and housing, stimulating social debate. It is not always an encouraging conversation: it concerns people who are left unemployed, homeless and criminalised by neoliberal austerity; about a debt burden that is rising due to rising housing costs; about the unwillingness to stop evicting residents for property speculation; and about an increasing number of informal settlements of workers who have been forced to leave the city.
Housing and cohabitation forms that deviate from the traditional family composition have their own challenges, but there was much mutual support during the corona crisis. There was room for alternative forms of intimate, domestic solidarity, and a safe haven was offered to people who had lost their homes.
In this series of talks and contributions, which was originally distributed as a thematic newsletter in mid-October 2020, Het Nieuwe Instituut team members talked to with representatives of organisations and collectives concerned with rights of residence, equal and fair access to amenities such as food and water, and alternative forms of living together. The structures and systems involved are often the result of collective design and decision-making processes. We shared a set of questions with each of these groups; they could later decide whether and how to answer it.
What does self-isolation mean in communal spaces that are based on sharing and living with several people?
The series builds on the long-running Architecture of Appropriation project, in which the vulnerable, collective and often criminalised spatial practice of the squatters' movement is investigated, archived and represented. This text appeared earlier in an adapted, shortened form as an introduction to the newsletter, Domestic Solidarity: Forms of cohabitation and closeness in a time of contagion.
The resilience of collective housing
NieuwLand in Amsterdam-Oost "We sometimes joke that this period is the culmination of our 'commune experience', with shared meals and gardening, odd jobs, playing games, watching movies and karaoke and all& If the benefits of recent times show anything, it is that in times of crisis a solidarity-based economy and collective forms of living together can be a lot more resilient."
NieuwLand is a sociopolitical centre and residential group - home to 11 people and a cat - in Amsterdam-Oost. It is an initiative of the housing association Soweto, which puts tenants' self-motivation first.
Quarantine is a privilege
We Sell Reality and their Homeless Quarantine series "Homeless Quarantine aims to help increase awareness that quarantine is a privilege that is not extended to everyone. Homeless Quarantine also shows that the precarious situation in which the We Sell Reality team members found themselves was not only a threat to their physical health, but that life without rights actually permeates all aspects of existence."
We Sell Reality is a collective of undocumented and documented artists who carry out art projects to draw attention to the fate of undocumented refugees in the Netherlands and Europe.
Solidarity among residents
Chandra Christmas-Rouse, Enterprise Community Partners "Chicago's vulnerable renters& could be impacted by massive displacement, leading to further widen spatial inequities along racial and class lines. From renters going on strike to activists calling for the state's rent control ban to be lifted, solidarity among residents has been growing to protect affordable homes like these."
Enterprise Community Partners is a non-profit organisation dedicated to giving affordable housing development a bigger impact by bringing together knowledge, partners, policymakers and investors from across the country.
Joint activities
Macao in Milan "The Macao volunteer team is made up of our own activists, university students and residents of the surrounding blocks. Whereas we started by setting up a call centre for distributing food and medicine to people who were stranded in their apartments without any money& we now run all kinds of other joint activities such as outside play for the neighbourhood's children, theatre and cinema."
Macao is a self-organising sociopolitical arts centre based in a former slaughterhouse in Milan.
A different kind of household
Pension Almonde in Rotterdam "Although there are a number of government guidelines that we can easily follow, it's important to note that, as a street where we practice communal living, we are not exactly the usual 'household' that they have in mind. We need to adapt the rules slightly to meet the needs of our community and tailor the measures to what works for the street."
Pension Almonde is a temporary home for modern city nomads, adventurous guests and orphaned neighbourhood initiatives - an experiment for the future city, in 53 houses scheduled for demolition in Rotterdam-Noord's Almondestraat, by Stad in de Maak /City in the Making.
Read Beyond Cities of "Households", an article by Marguerite van den Berg that questions the traditional image of the city as consisting of a collection of heteronormative "households", where everyone has equal access to public space.
How to resist evictions by real-estate speculators and shell companies? Watch the video recordings of the Evicted by Greed conference, Global Finance, Housing and Resistance, which took place at the end of May.
Read the must-do list for governments from Leilani Farha, UN special rapporteur on adequate housing, urging them to tackle homelessness.
The publication Architecture of Appropriation. On Squatting as Spatial Practice approaches squatting as an architectural practice. The publication examines a series of examples of squatted locations in the Netherlands, through architectural drawings, interviews and archive material.
Listen to the podcast recorded as part of Architecture of Appropriation, in which Guus Beumer, Het Nieuwe Instituut's director, discusses the project with researchers, curators and editors René Boer, Marina Otero and Katía Truijen.