The current (worldwide) housing crisis has its roots in the very conception of the home as private property i.e. as commodity. Housing as commodity means that the house is no longer determined by its use value but by its exchange value. The house becomes an apparatus whose goal is to enforce dwellers into the economic condition of indebtedness. Against this condition the project affirms the house as the most tangible manifestation of the ‘right to the city’ that is living without the burden of debt. Such scenario implies the emancipation of the house from its traditional references such as home property and family living.

For this reason the project proposes typological experiments that question the way private property has incarnated itself into domestic models such as the family home and the apartment. The project ultimately seeks a way of living in which different generation of dwellers can live together forcing domestic space to become a public space where ways of life are tested, discussed, rejected or developed further.

Co-presented and photographs by California College of the Arts & The Urban Works Agency