Housing is not just a right. Housing is right. Rights are never singular, or solitary; especially when the right is treated as property. Property is always a bundle of rights. Property gives its owner access to certain rights. Housing, then, is the bundle you hold. The house is a vessel, a transfer of entitlements, securities, obligations, and futures. Housing is both a question of ownership and occupancy. The right to the latter is guaranteed by the institutions of the former. Occupancy is to exercise the right of one’s housing. Ownership, however, is not used; it can only be given, or taken.
Editors
Nick Axel
Nikolaus Hirsch
Georg Vrachliotis
Housing is a collaboration between e-flux architecture and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Chair for Theory of Architecture.
Renato Cymbalista is professor of urban history and the history of urbanism at the University of São Paulo, where he coordinates the Sites of Memory and Conscience research group and the Lab for Other Urbanisms. He is a co-founder of FICA—Fundo Imobiliário Comunitário para Aluguel.
Adrian Daub is Professor of Comparative Literature and German Studies at Stanford University, where he also directs the Program for Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, as well as the Mellon Postdoctoral Program. He is author of the forthcoming book What Tech Calls Thinking (2020).
Jo Guldi is Associate Professor of History at Southern Methodist University. Her first book, Roads to Power, examined Britain’s interkingdom highway and its users from 1740 to 1848. Her upcoming book, The Long Land War, tells the history of ideas about ending eviction, especially around the mid-century rise of “land reform” at the United Nations and its satellites.
Miranda Hall researches the digital economy and work/care at the New Economics Foundation and Common Wealth.
Bijoy Jain is founder of Studio Mumbai, which explores the materiality and artisanal construction of architecture and furniture around the world. He teaches at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio.
George Kafka writes about architecture and cities. He is a founding member of &beyond editorial collective and was assistant curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2019.
Daniel Loick is associate professor of political and social philosophy at the University of Amsterdam. He researches legal criticism, abolitionism, and subaltern forms of sociality.
David Madden is associate professor in sociology and co-director of the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. He co-authored In Defense of Housing (2016) with Peter Marcuse.
Ingo Niermann is a writer and the editor of the Solution Series. His recent publications include Burial of the White Man (with Erik Niedling) and Solution 295–304: Mare Amoris.
Frei Otto (1925–2015) was a German architect and structural engineer. He was the 2015 Pritzker Prize laureate.
Anna Puigjaner is co-founder of the Barcelona architectural office MAIO and associate professor at Columbia GSAPP. She researches collective housing models, including the “Kitchenless City.”
Vyjayanthi Rao studies architecture, infrastructure, and social life in large cities. She is director of Terreform Center for Advanced Urban Research and co-editor of Occupy All Streets (2016).
Dieter Roelstraete is the curator at the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago, where he also teaches.
Hilary Sample co-founded MOS Architects in 2003. She was appointed the inaugural IDC Foundation Professor of Housing Design at Columbia GSAPP in 2019.
Łukasz Stanek is an architectural historian and a senior lecturer at the Manchester School of Architecture. He is the author of Henri Lefebvre on Space (2011) and Architecture in Global Socialism (2020).
Nathalie de Vries is founding partner and principal architect at MVRDV, as well as the elected president of the Royal Institute of Dutch Architects from 2015 to 2019.
