Architecture of AppropriationArchitecture of Appropriation

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

René Boer, Marina Otero, Katía Truijen (Eds.): Mark, your work focuses on the social, political and economic implications of architecture and planning, and in particular contemporary urban dynamics. Where do you notice the impact of the squatting movement on the Dutch urban landscape?

Mark Minkjan (MM): In Dutch cities squatting has been a significant institutional force in politics and spatial development since the 1960s. Its official criminalization in 2010, when the squatting ban became law, is often seen as the end of an era in which squatting was allowed under certain circumstances, if a building had been vacant for at least one year. The ban wiped out this legal maneuvering space. Yet despite happening in smaller numbers today, squatting is not dead. We should therefore avoid historicizing the movement if that means considering it a thing of the past. However, right now is a good occasion to take an associative look at the ways in which Dutch cities today have been influenced by squatting.

Due to stigmatizing media coverage and spectacularized historical events, common understanding of squatting in the Netherlands is superficial, with a handful of violent clashes between protestors and authorities often referred to - most of which happened over 35 years ago. Common associations with squatters are frequently derogatory, and this dominant stigma was gratefully used by the political parties campaigning for the criminalization of squatting. Framing it as a criminal activity makes it easier to ignore the structural societal problems addressed by the squatting movement, such as housing shortages and real estate speculation, which have far from disappeared. The movement has been an important political factor by researching and calling attention to vacancy, real estate crime, and other social ills. Moreover, experimental spatial and social practices originating from or strongly related to squatting have had a significant influence on architecture, urban culture, policy, and real estate. Its practices have been adopted, inspired spin-offs, and even been turned against the movement's own agenda through appropriation and commodification.

Eds.: Could you elaborate on how these practices have evolved in the Netherlands over time, and the motivations that were behind them?

MM: Squatting blossomed in the decades when inner- city living was out of vogue and those who could afford it moved to villages and suburbs, leaving parts of the housing stock empty. The post-World War II era saw a general disdain for the old, dilapidated, unhygienic and congested inner cities. Amsterdam, for example, saw its population decrease from 870,000 to 675,000 between 1960 and 1985. By appropriating many of the vacant, often deteriorated and unloved buildings, the squatting movement contributed to preserving and renovating architectural heritage which was about to fall into complete disrepair, or be demolished in favor of property development. Amsterdam's Nieuwmarkt area owes it to the squatting movement for its part in preventing the entire area being wiped out for a modernist renewal project in the 1970s. The appropriation of architecture made issues of vacancy, speculation and preservation politically visible, both in the streets as well as through media attention. Squats have also regularly forged coalitions with local residents and organizations to establish social provisions and orchestrate political action.

Whatever society's least favored building type or urban environment at a certain moment in time, it can still provide space for the reimagination and reuse of human environments. Forsaken buildings and urban wastelands that became blind spots on the general population and investors' mental maps - houses, apartment buildings, schools, factories, warehouses, churches and offices - have been fruitful grounds for the emergence of new domestic compositions, architectural typologies, cultural spaces, and places for work. In many ways, the squatting movement has been an example for practices and policies for the greater social good, but unluckily also for exclusionary developments.

Eds.: The difficulty that large parts of the population experience in accessing housing is a very pressing issue affecting many cities around the world, and making them very exclusive places to live. What kind of alternatives to market housing strategies have emerged from the squatting movement?

MM: Housing has been the initial and primary focus of the squatting movement which has resulted in famous squats, unique architectures and policy innovations. Not only have all cities in the Netherlands had vacant buildings squatted by and for people in need of a place to live, many of them still house squats or squatted buildings that have since been legalized as formal social housing options. The squatting movement has paved the way for the repurposing of architecture. An important result of this has been the emergence of innovative living arrangements. With the conversion of warehouses, schools, office buildings and other structures into non-traditional homes, both architecture and domestic structures have been reinterpreted, resulting in novel spatial and social expressions.

The_ woongroep_ (co-living) is such an expression. Although not exclusive to squatting, many squats were set up as a communal housing arrangement. Many of these cohabitations still exist in the Netherlands today, with around 150 in Amsterdam alone, with famous ones including the former Wilhelmina Gasthuis hospital and several early 20th century school buildings. Here, groups ordinarily consist of four to 10 people who individually have a private room and share most amenities such as kitchens and bathrooms. Demographic changes in household composition, housing shortages, and a social, economic and environmental preference for sharing make co-living a woongroep a sensible option for many urbanites today.

The combined home-workspace arrangement is another domestic architecture that has proliferated in squats and was later adopted in formal project developments. Sometimes these innovative housing projects were realized in collaboration with architects, often also without them. ORKZ in Groningen is a repurposed former hospital with combined living and work spaces, housing around 250 people.

The squatted Landbouwbelang in Maastricht is an enormous repurposed granary offering an experimental space where living, creating, and cultural activities are interwoven. Various new developments mixing housing and workspace such as Amsterdam's Vrijburcht and Nautilus projects are direct spin-offs of the squatting movement.

New additions to the urban housing market today still mostly consist of traditional apartments. The alternative strategies of the squatting movement have not scaled up considerably, at least not in not-for-profit ways. In recent years however, commercial urban developments in Dutch cities have also shown less conventional housing setups, such as micro apartments or cohabitation developments like The Student Hotel. These developments rent out small private rooms with other spaces and facilities shared, promising a flexible, affordable way of living and a sense of community. The Student Hotel is probably the most misleading example, selling a luxury version of communal living for almost ¬1,000 per month for a 14 to 18 square meter private room, with shared kitchens and 'play areas' with video games and ping pong.

In contrast, the Student Squatting Information Center (SKSU) has been working for years on entirely different housing solutions for students in a more affordable and political way. Similarly, the legalized squats in formerly abandoned school buildings or other cohabitation arrangements in the social housing sector have rents between ¬250 and ¬400 for a similarly sized private room with shared facilities. In another recent and more uplifting example, the city of Amsterdam has built housing for students as well as refugees of similar ages, where 23 m² studios with private bathrooms and kitchens come at ¬511 (rooms in shared apartments go for ¬387). One lesson here is that when the provision of housing is not left to the market, more affordable options can be offered to a more diverse population. The Student Hotel is only accessible to the more well-off, and because it operates on a hotel license, students have no tenants' rights and can only stay for a maximum of 12 months. That makes for a very exclusive and temporary community.

Eds.: Would you argue that the communal, collective living ethos and conditions present in squatting practices have been commodified? What other influences of the squatting movement on urban development models or urban culture have you observed?

MM: Self-organization is a key feature of squatting collectives, and making and sustaining a community demands time, joint effort and conflict resolution. But it also has the power to generate an increasingly rare sense of social and local belonging. More pragmatically, it lowers the cost of construction and living since much of the required work is done in-kind, materials are reused, and no middlemen take a cut of the pie.

This century, the bottom-up social practice and mantra have interestingly created a middle-class resurgence in Dutch cities. Most clearly, individual self-build projects and cooperative housing developments have dotted urban expansions of virtually all of the larger cities in the past decade or two, including Amsterdam's Zeeburgereiland, Rotterdam's Katendrecht, Almere's Homeruskwartier, and Leiden's Nieuw-Leiden. Here, end-users have thrown developers out of the equation, commissioning architects and contractors, or taking care of the construction themselves. Still, it generally requires above-average mortgages to play this game of buying land and building according to regulations, making it a rather privileged undertaking. Moreover, it seems to have mostly been a crisis reflex of local governments to provide space for self-builds; recently they have mostly reverted to selling large swathes of land to single developers again.

Other local community-driven projects with little or no monetary exchange involved have recently popped up, including community land trusts, meeting places, food growing initiatives, collective childcare, cultural venues, libraries, public space maintenance, alternative local currencies, local waste processing, energy production, repair cafés, and workshops. These have received attention in the media, in professional spatial practices and in academic circles, as well as from local governments. The growing interest in 'the commons' (commonly owned, governed and operated spaces and services) is encouraging, but it also leaves also bitter taste when you consider that since the squatting movement, which has demonstrated various forms of commoning, has now been criminalized. Yet further, if you considering the dismantling of the welfare state and governments calling for citizens' self-reliance, while some of the best self-organized, balanced and sustainable examples of 'the commons' have now disappeared. All the while, local and national governments in the Netherlands have been researching and subsidizing numerous commoning projects starting from scratch. Many of today's projects hailed for bottom-up growth also show a rather middle-class membership, which leaves one wondering how people without the right amounts of time, connections and cultural baggage end up after governments have torn down public provisions.

Cynically, the restaurants in The Student Hotel branches are called The Commons. Pumpkin enchiladas come at ¬17 and you pay ¬6,50 for some watermelon with mint. Another ironic way in which squatting culture has been appropriated to facilitate a more exclusive city is in aesthetics, what I have called 'trashthetics'. The look and feel of squatting is generally associated with recycled materials and (seemingly) makeshift, accidental constructions. The past decade has seen a wealth of places of consumption propped up with reused pallet wood, scavenged objects, commissioned street art, and second-hand furniture in an edgy and seemingly spontaneous fashion, yet designed recognizably enough for the urban middle classes. Temporary and bottom-up aesthetics have interestingly made it from thrifty counterculture pragmatism to being a pretentiously unassuming décor for the manifestation of a mainstream creative urban lifestyle.

Eds.: Has squatting culture survived in other ways that could still be seen as an asset?

MM: The many cultural venues in Dutch cities still functioning today are perhaps the most visible remnants of the squatting movement, even though most people are not aware of their genesis. The well-known ones generally operate in a more commercial form than they used to, but all of them only exist because these locations started out as squats. Concert venues such as Paradiso, Tivoli and Melkweg are among the most legendary, the NDSM wharf is world famous for its reclaimed industrial landscape and as a festival grounds, and Pakhuis de Zwijger is one of the country's main platforms for international debate. Het Domijn in Weesp is an artists and craftspeople cooperative providing space for creation. Together with the many other music halls, galleries, cafés, people's kitchens, food co-ops, no-charge shops, book stores, cinemas, rehearsal spaces, artist studios and free-zones, they constitute an indispensable share of the cultural and social DNA of Dutch cities. Their independent, affordable and unconventional nature has contributed to the emergence and preservation of subcultures, experimental arts, critical debate, and inexpensive places to eat, drink and meet.

However, since cities have experienced an influx of more affluent residents and businesses, and development pressures have risen in the past two decades - certainly since the squatting ban - fewer of these spaces have come into being. More still have disappeared. For a healthy, open, and innovative cultural scene, cities need places and subcultures where mainstream norms, tastes and habits can be challenged and complemented. Artistic production is part of this endeavor. For many artists, makers, and other independents doing labor with little, uncertain, or no economic return, affordable workspace - just as affordable housing - is essential for the development of their practice. Many squatted buildings have contributed to this infrastructure over the past decades, providing a crucial stock of temporary and unofficial, as well as later on formalized, studios and other spaces for work. However, with increasing development pressure on Dutch cities (ironically lubricated by creative industries policies) inexpensive workspace has become scarcer.

In Amsterdam, the local government acknowledged this scarcity in 1998 after a collective of some 700 of the city's squatters called attention to the importance of their own existence, as well as that of the many buildings housing artist studios, workshops, cultural venues and homes that were in danger of being evicted. The assembly demanded a constructive policy for the settlement and growth of young cultural-economic actors in the city. A policy document actually followed, recognizing the importance of a system of alternative live-work setups. It stressed the value of fostering and sustaining the city's arts, design, media and other cultural economies to the city's economy as a whole. Because many artists have a small income and the cost of most workspaces exceeds their budget, the document concluded that the government should intervene.

The resulting policy plan was notably titled 'No culture without subculture' and took the practices of several former squats as a blueprint for supporting - through subsidies and guidance - the creation of new _broedplaatsen _('incubator places') as they have been called since. The initial aim was to provide space to work for some 1,400 to 2,000 artists and cultural entrepreneurs in Amsterdam. In 2016, some 170,000 m² was in use as a result of this policy, ranging from artist studios, workshops, small offices and galleries to shops, cafés and restaurants. Perhaps the most notable of these is the 7,500 m² ACTA building, housing nightclub Radion, and De Ceuvel, a cluster of recycled houseboats used as offices and a trendy Berlinesque café. Over the past decade, multiple Dutch cities have adopted a version of the policy, including Rotterdam, Groningen, Alkmaar, and Tilburg.

Since the policy was inaugurated almost two decades ago, the spatial focus has roughly moved from inner-city industrial and harbor spaces to disadvantaged neighborhoods such as Noord and Nieuw-West in Amsterdam. Another interesting shift is one in perception and purpose - subsidizing incubator places were initially seen as state support for struggling artists, whereas currently the temporary creative projects are regarded as stimulants for - and symbols of - the social, cultural and economic upgrading of neighbourhoods. With many of them only existing for a few years, disproportionate amounts of energy, time and money are wasted on the build-up and dismantling of these places. This also makes it difficult for the communities in these incubator places to have their practices come to fruition, let alone establish valuable relations with their urban surroundings.

A recent example of this phenomenon is Lola Lik, an 8,000 square meter 'creative hub' in Amsterdam's former Bijlmer Bajes prison which only existed for one year, took a huge toll on the people involved, and yet a lot of potential was left unfulfilled. The city council recently sold the area for it to be developed into an upscale neighborhood. Moreover, at least in Amsterdam, the artists and entrepreneurs that the incubator policy provides space for increasingly need to have been earmarked as 'top talent', and the amount of artist studios provided is steadily dropping. Although still providing highly necessary space for many, mostly young independents, the broedplaatsen policy that started from an idea of inclusiveness and preservation is turning into a state-sponsored tool for gentrification, both for urban areas as well as for the cultural scene it is supposed to care for.

Eds.: We should also talk about one of the most dramatic ways in which squatting was absorbed by the market and deployed into neo-liberal real estate policies - the anti-squat.

MM: Squatting largely originated as a response to a combination of housing shortages, vacancy, and real estate speculation, with speculation making it impossible for the demand for space, and the oversupply of it, to equal each other out. Over the past half century articulations of vacancy and housing scarcity have taken on new shapes. If the collective desire were there, the equation could have been solved through policy and action leading to a more accessible and affordable housing market. Yet for the suppliers of space, including real estate investors, property developers, homeowners, landlords, and also governments and the politics representing them, preserving or even producing scarcity is preferable in order to keep demand and thus prices high. With every appropriated vacant building, squatting has contributed to a balancing out of the need for a place to live and the oversupply of space that could not be solved by the market because of property speculation and artificial shortages. Some squats have held out and others have been formalized, but many have been evicted and the buildings handed back to the market in the widespread belief that this is where societal issues should be solved.

The market has even used appropriation tactics to expand speculation. Before criminalization in 2010, occupying a building through appropriation was tolerated after the space had been vacant for at least a year and until the property owner could show a relevant and feasible plan for reuse. The practice and possibility of squatting has functioned as a counter-speculation force in the housing system because it encouraged owners to make sure space was used and maintained.

However, a market response against squatting has been the emergence of an entire industry of anti-squat (antikraak) or property guardianship since the 1980s. The essence of anti-squat is that a small group of people or a single individual 'guards' a building, thereby neutralizing the owner's risk of having their property squatted. It is a considerably cheaper option than using traditional security guarding, and it can help owners dodge vacancy taxes and drive down maintenance costs. These initiatives are often presented as a win-win situation as it still provides space to people looking for an affordable home, office or studio with space. The anti-squat industry is large, and the concept is a successful Dutch export product. Currently, one in 1,000 people in the Netherlands lives in an anti-squat situation, compared to one in 10,000 in the UK.

Yet anti-squat fits the general trend of socioeconomic flexibilization and precarization with things like zero-hour contracts and the gig economy. Despite being called 'guardians', the temporary angels are not paid for their services; instead they pay the property guardian company a utility fee, usually increased by administrative costs, making the actual costs not as low as generally thought. Instead of a normal rental contract, a kind of lend-lease is set up between the property guardian company and the guardians, who are explicitly never called tenants or dwellers. This formality makes it so that the guardians do not have any tenants' rights. Property guardian companies make unannounced visits to inspect the property and single rooms usually cannot be locked. The absence of tenants' rights not only makes trespassing possible and privacy minimal, it also implies the ever-impending threat of eviction, often with a few weeks' notice - sometimes a few days. Sometimes guardians cannot be absent from the premise for more than two nights - this is the precariat's house arrest.

Though it is sometimes presented as a lifestyle decision to live as a property guardian (adorned with adjectives such as cheap, spacious, adventurous and flexible), anti-squat is often the only option for people to live affordably in popular cities. It alleviates immediate pain for some, but it does nothing to address structural housing market failures. Whereas squatting could be seen as a contribution to the housing solution and the debate surrounding it, anti-squatting is no more than a security service for property owners. While squatting weights in to counter speculation and other unjust formsways of spatial distribution, anti-squatting widens the opportunities for speculation, muffles the discussion about housing as a human right, and makes it more attractive not to invest in the long-term functioning of spaces. Moreover, squatting in the Netherlands historically has a strong connection to neighborhood activism, but due to their precarious position, property guardians - not unlike AirBnB tourists - have less of an incentive to connect to their urban surroundings. The lack of tenants' rights also makes it easy to get rid of people with non-conformist political views.

Eds.: What do you think can be the importance of the squatting movement today?

MM: In the first decades of the squatting movement, the fight for housing was not only in numbers but also in quality, to relieve people from coal stoves, shared toilets and mouldy multiple-family apartments. Currently, unhygienic living experiences aren't as widespread as 50 years ago, but a crisis exists - one in availability, accessibility and affordability. The Dutch market, mostly in cities, is not meeting the numerical demand for homes, but a look at the housing quota also shows that housing costs, as a percentage of income, have risen considerably over the last 25 years. For tenants, as the Central Bureau for Statistics showed in their 2015 'WoOn' research, this share has gone up more than 10% between 1990 and 2015 (from 28.3% to 38.8%). Housing for ownership has only risen from 24% to 27.2% during the same period, not even considering the fact that most housing costs can be seen as an investment. Some 20% of lower income echelons paid more than 50% of their income on rent in 2015. In academic literature a consensus exists that when household spending on housing is more than 30%, there is a housing cost burden. This increasing burden is limiting people in their freedom to live, work, and contribute to society. Given that over 25 years a large percentage of the housing system has been left to the market, and that the market is not delivering inclusivity, alternative housing strategies are much needed today.

Yet squatting is not a historical phenomenon. During the past five years, a group of asylum seekers whose asylum application has been rejected and who have no right to housing or work, has appropriated dozens of buildings, aided by the squatting movement. Some of these buildings are iconic, which has drawn attention to an invisible and neglected part of Dutch society. Just like 50 years ago, squatting still helps to address highly problematic and inhumane situations. Similar maneuvers would be welcome today to call on antisocial and austere circumstances in the fields of housing, cultural life, and public provisions. These could contribute to political debate, social good, and spatial experiments which are all crucial elements of an inclusive, productive and sustainable society.