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To hear about the impact on society that academia and research are bringing about is becoming commonplace in discussions held by researchers in school meetings and doctoral conferences. The sector is evolving rapidly and donors increasingly want to see tangible evidence of the results and outcomes achieved by the projects they fund. It can be argued that this can bring undeniable pitfalls. This can inadvertently put pressure on universities to work, produce and compete in a field that increasingly resembles one of companies dominated by strict or rather unforgiving quantitative metrics presented on a spreadsheet in an annual report. The reality is that when researching complex societal issues, articulating the impact we create is almost as important as finding the perfect research question or formulating the best five-minute elevator pitch to explain what your contribution to knowledge is.   Providing affordable and sustainable housing in Europe is a research endeavour that requires a kaleidoscope of lenses working together in unison. This network intends to do so, and the secondments are the vehicle that links the lecture hall with the field, the idea with the end product, and the research question with the answer. We could argue that, in this context, they play a pivotal role in creating an impact on society.   My secondment in Clarion Housing, the largest provider of social housing in the UK with more than 125,000 homes across the country, began four months ago with a determined aim: to leverage the access granted to expertise, secondary data and, perhaps most valuable to my research, to the inhabitants of the housing estates. My project aims to interrogate the impact of housing design decisions on people's quality of life in the form of social value. As many researchers can attest, accessing and recruiting research participants can pose a colossal challenge to surmount to keep pace with the research plan.   Housing associations hold a privileged middle-ground position between tenants and local authorities. By definition, they have an abiding commitment to their beneficiaries as long-term stewards of the homes. Their social function should characterise and define the operation and management of the existing stock as well as the provision of new developments. This role enables housing associations to have a profound impact on people's lives, not only on those they serve directly, but also on the functioning of the wider community in which they operate. In this context, the degree of engagement with housing practice and the contribution that the research project can gain from the collaboration with Clarion can never be equated with research conducted within the strict confines of a mono-disciplinary enquiry.   Several practitioners at Clarion and partner organisations were interviewed about their approach to creating social value and the methods they use to measure and assess their impact on communities. At the same time, participant observation and interviews were conducted with the inhabitants of the estates to triangulate and obtain a comprehensive picture from the top-down and bottom-up. All of this has a particular interest in the long-term impacts of regeneration and development and the intangible outcomes associated with residents' well-being. But it is not just researchers who benefit from collaborating with industry partners. The position of a research secondee allows you to have something that sometimes becomes scarce in 'real-world' practice -time. Time to analyse, time to problematise and time to construe.   A researcher's inquisitive lens can help mentors see things from a different angle. Often practitioners' embeddedness in the real world prevents them from seeing the obvious, and sometimes the obvious is also the hardest thing to prove. Both the mentor and the mentee need to display a range of transferable skills to navigate changing contexts and engage in meaningful discussions with the variety of stakeholders involved. This is where the knowledge transfer takes place. These experiences are the bottom line of transdisciplinary housing research projects such as RE-DWELL, where it is first crucial to develop a comprehensive and shared appreciation of the problem at hand in order to come up with actionable innovative solutions. This is often referred to as the development of common ground between investigators, a must-have for the co-production of knowledge.   These reflections stem from the experience of conducting research in such a context and underpinned the course of the investigation while on my secondment at Clarion. The support of Dr Elanor Warwick has been fundamental to navigating this new scenario. Her extensive experience in deconstructing the boundaries between practice and academia, and the fact that she has been very much involved in the evolution of my PhD helped to make my time with the organisation highly productive. Broadening my understanding of the practical aspects of research in industry and the intrinsic constraints and demands of the sector.   Currently, data collection is still in progress. The journey has been bumpy and is likely to continue to be so. This is part of the contingent nature of fieldwork. As some experienced community consultation researchers within the RE-DWELL network avow, delving into the confines of people's lives and experiences is an undertaking that requires tact and dexterity, rightly conferred by experience and perseverance. In the meantime, I will wear a pair of field boots of stubbornness and determination and continue to try to uncover the lived experience of life in between the buildings.  

Imagine you are standing at the top of a residential block in a large open park, slightly raised above the ground, with playground equipment catering to various age groups: climbing frames, monkey bars, zip lines, swings… the lot. Walking down the pedestrianised centre of the road, lined with benches and trees (not the norm in arid Barcelona), you arrive at a nine-storey residential building occupying the triangular corner plot. The surrounding buildings occupy a lesser height, so the yellow façade is immediately visible, seamlessly rendered over cork SATE (external wall insulation). Approaching from the street, this is what you would see: at eye level, a west-facing facade with natural limestone wrapping the entire first two storeys; tilt your head upwards, you are looking at yellow-render on the top right two-thirds of the remaining wall, terracotta brick on the top-left third, and the edge of the apartment’s balconies; next, walk around the chamfered the corner, the first two storeys of limestone continues, but, glancing upward again, full balconies are visible on both sides, in the centre of the wall is a central panel of unobstructed glass, and the rest of the wall is terracotta brick; continue your stroll around the building, you are now looking at the south-west facing wall, you see the same material pattern as the west-facing facade, but mirrored. The building is tonally harmonious and the effect is soft and warm—accentuated by the sunshine outside.    The building is called Bloc Els Mestres (The Teachers Block). It was built around 1956 to house the teachers of the adjoining school. The school, the teachers’ residencies, and the expansion of two housing estates were some of the first buildings to occupy the sparsely populated Sabadell Sud location. The site is near Sabadell Airport. By 1984, the expansion had caught up to Bloc Els Mestres and it was no longer isolated between fields but surrounded by residences to the North, West and East. By the year 2000, it was nestled in at all sides. By 2018, however, Bloc Els Mestres sat vacant, neglected, and in major need of renovation.    Today, two structurally sound wings fan out either side of the bright central stairwell, with two approximately 100m² four-bedroom apartments per floor —one in each wing (1st – 8th floor). The ground floor belongs to the community. The south-east building orientation allows light to stream through the square windows that punctuate the longest façades; slightly cantilevered balconies also benefit from this orientation. The apartment interiors are a simple white, giving tenants a wide scope to personalise and redecorate.   HOUSEFUL: Innovative circular solutions and services for the housing sector   The Catalan Land Institute—Institut Català del Sòl (Incasól) are the main landowners and developers of social housing in Catalunya. But while they own the land, the buildings themselves are managed by their sister organisation—Agència de l'Habitatge de Catalunya (AHC). Social housing retrofit—or rehabilitación in Castellano—is therefore overseen by the AHC. A lesson I learned quickly after starting my secondment in social housing retrofit… at Incasól. Graciously, introductions were made at the AHC, the owner (unusual) and manager (usual) of Bloc Els Mestres and partner in the HOUSEFUL project.   Bloc Els Mestres has undergone a major retrofit as part of the EU funded HOUSEFUL project (2018-2023) – integrating innovative circular solutions and services into the retrofit of four pilot projects in Spain and Austria. More information can be found here. An ambitious project in sustainable retrofit, physical building upgrades have been combined with smarts systems, reuse, and tenant inclusion through technical systems operation learning and feedback sessions, enhancing social sustainability by ‘consultation’ (Arnstein, 1969) and ‘collaboration’ (Oevermann, 2016). It is now occupied by social housing tenants, who rent the homes directly from the building owner (AHC) at a discounted rate.   I attended two site visits to Els Mestres during my secondment at Incasòl, one included a feedback session with key stakeholders: AHC, Aiguasol, WE&B, Sabadell Council, Saneseco, the Social Association, and Fundació EVEHO – a group who temporarily place young people in HOUSEFUL to aid in their move to Spain.   Bloc Els Mestres feedback session takeaways:   Barrier 1: How to visualise the benefits of the HOUSEFUL solutions. Solution1: Create a report to present the solutions to building owners, manager, and public authority. Place an information board at the building entrance (outside) and inside the building, with a QR code taking people to the website with constantly updated information.   Barrier 2: Language – not all residents were raised in Spain, and therefore speak and read Spanish or Catalan. Solution2: Consider different dimensions of accessibility. Audio translations, an instruction manual for technical components that is easy to comprehend, beautiful, and visual.   Barrier 3: The water system needed a lot of space and maintenance; constant analysis of the treated water was also needed - the tenants association asked for removal. Solution 3: It was finally agreed with the tenants’ association to install the water system temporarily, in order to evaluate it.   Barrier 4: A “circularity agent” should be allocated to teach tenants how to use complex technical systems. Solution 4: A ‘president’ of the residents could be trained to take this role, in-house expertise and earning a social place in the building.   Barrier 5: Safeguarding future tenants use of technical systems. Solution 5: Contract states the obligation for new tenants to receive technical training regarding how to use the dwelling.   Going forward with my own research, it is important to keep in perspective that conflicts will arise when tenants are involved in decision-making processes. As a result of this, it is important to foresee these potential conflicts, plan possible solutions, and manage expectations.   A huge thanks to Pere Picorelli at Incasòl and Cristina Cardenete, Esther Llorens, and Anna Mestre at AHC for their help, time, access, and guidance.   References:   Arnstein, S. R. (1969). A Ladder Of Citizen Participation. Journal of the American Planning Association, 35(4), 216–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366908977225 Oevermann, H., Degenkolb, J., Dießler, A., Karge, S., & Peltz, U. (2016). Participation in the reuse of industrial heritage sites: The case of Oberschöneweide, Berlin. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 22(1), 43–58. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2015.1083460

The provision of affordable and healthy homes in England is a complex matter involving factors from different walks of life. As an Egyptian/Portuguese and having won the ESR4 post in RE-DWELL, to be a researcher and PhD candidate in The University of Sheffield, I am exploring the English context with a fresh eye. In addition, as an architect, I have always been biased towards architecture to have the power to change things, and in particular how people live and feel in their homes.  But since I have been learning more and more about transdisciplinarity, I have noticed that this attitude is gradually changing; it is not only about architecture ... You know, the only constant in life is change! but what made that change?  Let us talk about it in a story.      Recently, I travelled to Zagreb in Croatia for the RE-DWELL workshop on policy and financing for affordable and sustainable housing which is a key research in the "Transdisciplinarity" of RE-DWELL research. But, what is this word "Transdisciplinarity" that has become fashionable in research lately? In RE-DWELL we are 15 researchers from different fields of knowledge such as architecture, industrialised construction, retrofitting, finance, politics, mobility, community participation and social sciences. We meet almost every 6 months for workshops and summer schools and continuously train in research methods and transferable skills to understand transdisciplinarity better and better. But why? Because our plan is to create a transdisciplinary framework for affordable and sustainable housing by the end of this project. Again, why a transdisciplinary framework! Is it because you want to add a fashionable term?   Nope! there are a lot of things (research, news, etc.) that show how complex it is to build sustainable and affordable homes. If you stay away from what's happening in the real world, you might get the idea: Hey guys, it's not that complicated, we have videos of sustainable materials everywhere, why do not you just do it?    But! the more I expand the perspective to understand how the provision of affordable and healthy homes for low-income communities on a large scale is challenging, the more I discover new challenges and new factors "the devil's in the detail". It is also becoming clearer to me that it is not just the responsibility of the architects. In fact, there are too many factors and challenges that I learn about through my ongoing interviews that tie the hands of architects. That is why transdisciplinary research is necessary!   Similar to the world of architecture, researchers can propose a great solution to something, but when it hits the ground, it gets a shock and break! And this is what is called the gap between research and practise. This gap, by the way, poses a problem for many researchers. In some cases, practitioners are not interested in working with researchers because they think we are in LaLa land! Here comes the importance of research that digs in to preceive the real world context. It is also important how the researcher communicate the research and its impact to others. This why we are now in the RE-DWELL Transferable Skills TS4 on Communication, Engagement, and Impact led by Lorraine-Farrelly from The University of Reading and Adrienne Csizmady from Hungarian Academy of Sciences.    Fortunately, on RE-DWELL project as ESRs, we are collaborating with non-academic partners who are keen to work with researchers to better understand tricky issues and exchange knowledge with us while we develop the transdisciplinary framework for affordable and sustainable housing. And here comes the reason for: Why transdisciplinarity?   Transdisciplinarity is a paradigm of thinking where the biases of each discipline are set aside to focus on understanding or solving a particular problem. Hence, this paradigm is adopted by RE-DWELL. As Marja Elsinga from TU Delft during the workshop discussed with us, it is not something new!   Simply put, transdisciplinarity is about "Being Humble" and recognising that everyone is on a continuous learning journey and no one knows everything. The term "Being Humble" was shared with us by Leandro Madrazo while reflecting on Ashraf Salama's publication on transdisciplinarity. But for me, it really simplified what transdisciplinarity means, which in many situations was confussing. "Being Humble" means that we should listen, question others and ourselves, reflect, share and be open to change. And this is similar to what Salama referred to transdisciplinarity as a “Mutual Learning” process between various disciplines.   "Being humble" came back to my mind during Ana Vaz Milheiro session when she told us a story of architects in Portugal who designed houses a long time ago thinking they had a good design, but people did not like it and did not want to buy or rent it. And another example of some flat buildings that for architects may not seem to be of good design, but whose inhabitants expressed that they loved them and liked living in them. These are examples of how the monothematic mindset can sometimes not predict what will really work on the ground for the end users "the residents".    Getting this real-world essence into research via interviews is one of the most common research methods in a transdisciplinary research. "How much does it cost to build an affordable and healthy house and maintain it for years?" This is the question I am currently eliciting answers for, through a series of interviews to understand the different factors that influence this and then develop a life cycle costing model to estimate these costs. So far, I am finding that interviews are interesting opportunities to talk and share knowledge. And the best part for me is this "wow" moment when I discover factors I have never thought or came across before.   The researcher immerse in a non-academic experience of engaging with the subject is another powerful method of a transdisciplinary research. For this reason, I am now joining South Yorkshire Housing Association, who are one of the non-academic partners of the RE-DWELL project. They provide affordable housing and also look after the wellbeing of end users through their LiveWell team. I will be working closely with SYHA Development team for 3 months adopting a transdisciplinary mindset. I will be open to learn and share knowledge with them while putting aside my own professional biases.   Speaking of biases, in the workshop Montserrat Pareja-Eastaway opened the discussion of how it is difficult in many cases nowadays, an in particular in housing related-studies, to say that “I have a specific discipline”.  Many of us in RE-DWELL are continously gaining experience that is correlated with various fields. That's why she is ecouraging that we need to replace the word discipline with area of knowledge. For example, in my own research, I am cooking up the work of cost consultants, sustainability consultants, architects and housing providers in one pot to produce new knowledge and share with the world.   So as you can see, transdisciplinary is like a conversation and a way of thinking – my favourite to say: it is also like cooking - where new knowledge is created through genuine integration - mixing - of knowledge of academics and non-academics from various fields, where own biases disappear and the main focus is on a certain subject. The results then will be hard to say: Oh! it is this specific discipline that produced it.    In the end, I hope you enjoyed reading and learned something new about transdisciplinarity as I did in Zagreab Workshop: “Being Humble” is not only important in dealing with people in our daily lives, but also in the way we see our own field of knowledge. Let's put our biases and egos aside and work together to make the world a better place.    Thank you for reading and Good Bye!   

Near the end of 2022 I had the chance to complete my first secondment of two months at La Salle, in Barcelona. This was a great opportunity to understand how the municipality of Barcelona, architecture firms and industry partners are developing more flexible and sustainable housing solutions that can accommodate new family structures and different ways of habitation.  Furthermore, it became the perfect occasion to reconnect with the state of the industry in my home country, increase my network of contacts and work hand-in-hand with my co-supervisor Nuria Martí.      Within the Spanish territory, Barcelona is the city leading change with innovative housing solutions, promoting the creation of non-hierarchical and resilient distributions, and incentivising the use of industrialised construction through public competitions. This change of paradigm is not only increasing the current affordable housing stock, but is integrating new actors in the decision-making process through participatory practices.    The main goal of my secondment was to develop a case study assessment methodology that would combine a taxonomical classification of the building systems and highlight the design strategies for each of the building layers (structure, façade, access and circulation, services and internal dividing elements). Ultimately, correlating these criteria with the type of customisation offered in the domestic space. Besides helping me establish the parameters to compare and classify the housing case studies, the interviews to practitioners also shed some light on some of the challenges ahead.   Support and infill   Habraken’s (1961) critical response to mass housing proposed an approach in which a dwelling should encourage adaptation and become an instrument to empower the user. This approach took into account different needs and time horizons dividing the building into 2 groups: the long-life components that constitute the communal structure, and the short-life components that respond to individual needs and can be modified without hindering the overall integrity of the system. This concept is strongly related to what Steward Brand (1995) proposed with his ‘Shearing layers of change’, which emphasized these layers to be differentiated according to their particular lifespans. Building upon the mentioned authors, Bernard Leupen (2006) suggested that it is precisely the permanence of the frame (known as support in the Open Building movement) that enables the generic space to be altered, extended or used in a variety of ways. More recently, Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider (2007) conveyed the idea that “the most productive approach to prefabrication for flexible housing is probably not one that invents new systems from scratch, but one that assembles existing prefabricated elements in an adaptable manner.”   My research is therefore using a set of case studies to analyse the design strategies, construction system and level of industrialisation per building layer, identifying those that belong to the support, and defining the type and degree of customisation offered to the infill.   Non-hierarchical spaces   Due to the increasing variety of family structures and the pressing need to design resilient dwellings that can be adapted to future needs, recent housing developments in Barcelona are proposing non-hierarchical distributions. Spatial polyvalence is essential to enable the flexibility for user customisation (Hertzberger, 1991). Flexibility has become a prerequisite for today’s collective housing solutions and, moreover, it is a strategy that promotes gender equality in distributions. Gender equality seeks to break with the traditional role division in the domestic space and promotes the involvement of all family members in the household tasks, for example by bringing the kitchen to a visible and central position as opposed to secluded and closed-off (Montaner et al., 2019).   An example of a non-hierarchical, flexible and gender-equal solution is the award-winning 85 social housing units in Cornellà by Peris + Toral Arquitectes which proposes a matrix of connected rooms that allow the user to inhabit the space in multiple ways. The 3.6 x 3.6 module promotes porous distributions, non-linear circulation, and adaptability throughout time. This is also the case in the Illa Glòries by Cierto Estudio, which I was lucky enough to interview while on my secondment. Aiming to create versatile homes that can be adapted to the tenant’s changing needs in a simple and reversible way, the connections between adjacent spaces are multiplied while the corridors are removed. A central room ‘rótula’, makes it possible to create diagonal visual connections and increase the circulation possibilities while conferring independence to the surrounding rooms. This matrix of non-hierarchical rooms creates a dynamic housing aggregation system, where the limits of the flats have the potential to vary and different layouts are possible.   Industrialised public housing   In order to promote the use of industrialised construction methods, the IMHAB (Institut Municipal de l’Habitatge I Rehabilitació de Barcelona) has created several public housing competitions where the architect, the consultants and the construction company had to work collaboratively from the early stages of the design. Some of the objectives the IMHAB sought to achieve through these public competitions were the acceleration of the production processes, the reduction of the carbon footprint, the increase of the quality of the buildings and shortening the execution time. The resolution of the proposals shows a growing interest in the use of engineered timber components such as CLT or glulam. The design teams highlighted several benefits in using this material as the reduction of the embodied emissions, the lower costs of foundations due to a lighter structure, or the increased precision when prefabricating components with computerised numerical control (CNC). Additionally, companies as 011h are collaborating with design teams to digitalise their kit of parts in such way that the data can be utilised throughout the entire process of design, manufacturing and assembly. This high level of digitisation requires a greater coordination between stakeholders on early stages of the design and could become a tool to provide mass-customised dwellings at an affordable price.   However, the slow adoption of digital technologies, limited wood suppliers, and the strict Fire Safety and Acoustic regulations in Spain, have become major barriers when using engineered timber in housing. To comply with the regulations, most of the projects had to incorporate wet screeds after the dry construction, hindering the possibility to disassemble the components for future reuse or recycling.   Flexible housing solutions   Flexibility is necessary to allow for the customisation of housing in the short term and ensure the adaptability in the long term. The way architects and industry professionals define the built environment impacts enormously on the transformation capacity that housing has to incorporate different needs over time. This flexibility is tightly linked to dimensions, design strategies and construction systems, and can contribute to a democratisation of design by integrating new voices in the process. Barcelona turned out to be an extremely useful secondment to understand how some of these strategies and construction systems are implemented in practice.     References   Brand, S. (1995). How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built. Penguin Books.   Habraken, N. J. (1961). Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003014713   Herman Hertzberger. (1991). Lessons for Students in Architecture. 010 Publishers.   Leupen, B. (2006). Frame and Generic Space. 010 Publishers.   Montaner, J. M., Buron, J., Mira, A., Valiño, V., Prats, M., Font, G., Ventura, N., & Palay, J. (2019). Flexibilidad e igualdad de  género en la vivienda.   Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2007). Flexible housing. Elsevier.

Clashing vulnerabilities   The globalization era resulted in the fragmentation of class structures, and regional and social inequalities grew. As a result, upward mobility is declining in most countries in Europe. More and more people are at risk of downward mobility, but they are classified as “not poor enough” to receive help and are pushed back of the queue for benefits, including housing.   Housing affordability is a primary driver of precarity, affecting both upward and downward mobility. A growing number of middle-income people have difficulty affording adequate housing in Europe, facing safety concerns, as they can only access unhealthy, low-quality, energy-inefficient, or overcrowded housing options. Their situation has become fragile partly because of the liberalized labor market, and partly because the system abandoned them as an outcome of the cuts in the welfare state. Meanwhile, the number of evicted and homeless people is also rising.   ”Clashing vulnerabilities” between marginalized people and increasingly downwardly mobile people should be managed, even though risks are being distributed differently, and it is hard to estimate how structural and individual factors influence the probability of becoming downwardly mobile.   I had my first secondment at BMSZKI (Budapest Methodological Centre of Social Policy and its Institutions). BMSZKI is the largest homeless service provider in the capital, also it is one of the largest social service providers in the country and the Central European region. They are making a great effort to ensure the highest quality of services for vulnerable people who turn to them for help, also they developed the methodology of needs assessment for homeless people and established a special professional network to solve issues (e.g: related to housing, health care, addiction). BMSZKI differentiates the profiles of their services based on the needs of homeless people and these services are adapted to the demands that arose.   This secondment demonstrated how “social practices” as a framework can serve transdisciplinarity. There is a certain knowledge that we cannot get from books or lectures. Personal experiences of the working people at particular institutes, or organizations are essential parts of the learning process. During my stay, I learned about the theory and practice of social work, and I had the possibility to have site visits, meeting with the leaders of different programs (FET, No Slum), and homes (Temporary home for families, K22). I had the chance to have individual and multi-person consultations to shape my understanding and the direction of my research.   I benefited from the fruitful discussions about how important it is to open services both for homeless and at risk people. To open the system from the bottom and the top. On the one hand, social/housing policy should lower the number of people who are homeless (living literally on the streets), and on the other hand, it should provide people in general with more opportunities to get a safe, affordable home. A policy that focuses only on the most serious problems or restricts itself to the poorest residents is clearly not sustainable. The question remains: How to find harmony between these two interrelated goals? They are non-contradictory public purposes, but they compete with each other in terms of resources and administrative capacities. There lies the challenge.   I would like to conclude this post with a book recommendation and a quote.   Book recommendation: Tell Them Who I Am: The Lives of Homeless Women by Elliot Liebow The author of this ethnographic research spent time with homeless women in the late eighties (after being diagnosed with cancer). Liebow tells us that these women were not homeless because they had mental health issues or addiction problems. (There are many women who are mentally or physically ill or who are having family issues or addiction problems who have homes.) They are homeless because they cannot afford a home, even when they have several jobs at the same time.   Quote about homelessness from Sharon Stone (from her speech presented at the Compass Community Services, Spring Forward 2009 luncheon, San Francisco, April 23, 2009), who is the co-founder of Planet Hope ( https://planethope.org ):   “I think so many people don’t really know what it is to be homeless, or how people get there. Many people hear the word “homeless” and they think of that guy cast in a movie who is kind of skinny and skanky and stinky and stands outside a bar begging. That’s not homelessness. That’s an idea. Homelessness is what happens when you’re one paycheck away from losing your home. When you have tried everything you’ve got. Everything. When you’ve leveraged everything, sold everything, sold your lawn furniture, sold your couch, taken your grandmother’s engagement ring to the pawn shop, given away your clothes, haven’t eaten, live on a dozen eggs for a week, fed your kids but you don’t eat, slept in your car, they’ve taken your car, you’ve lived in a pup tent, and now you don’t have that. Homelessness is when your government job is gone. Homelessness is when you’re a professor, and they don’t need you anymore at the school. Homelessness is when your dental group is cutting down and they don’t need that many dentists anymore. Homelessness is educated people. Homelessness is when you’re a wife, and your husband wants a younger one. Or a different one. And not you and those noisy kids… And when children — good children, not drug users — but good normal children just like yours are in the street, innocent, pure, lovely, beautiful children just like mine and yours are in the street for two weeks, 14 days, and they have nowhere to live, and not a mother who is a tiger, who stands over them and gets them to school and keeps her head together, or something happens to that parent — in 14 days they are prostitutes to live, because that’s the only way they can eat. And that is a governmental statistic. This is homelessness.”

An academic secondment developed within the RE-DWELL network represents a remarkable opportunity to expand the boundaries of local academic setups, to foster collaboration and exchange, and ultimately to sow the seeds of transdisciplinary research. In my case, I had the chance to spend these two months at the IUGA, Institut d'urbanisme et de géographie alpine, of Grenoble Alps University. This was not only the perfect excuse for me to finally pick up the diploma of my Master's degree I had done there a few years ago and could not get because of COVID, but also to be once again among geographers and urbanists in this contrasting conurbation, recently awarded green capital of Europe, surrounded by the Alps, traversed by hundreds of kilometres of bike paths and coloured by vivid street art murals.    The time there allowed me to refine but also problematise the conceptual and methodological framework of my research project. Oftentimes this can become one of the most challenging tasks in an investigation, and concepts such as theory, conceptual framework, methodology, etc. can be intimidating and difficult to handle. I decided to use some of the time I spent there and in view of a paper that I had to submit to the RE-DWELL conference, to re-imagine a possible different approach to assessing the social value of housing design through Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE).   In recent decades, architecture geographers have questioned the way buildings and urban spaces are studied. Focusing on their impact on society and on their users, they have used qualitative methods to conduct studies of life and everyday patterns of behaviour within spaces, providing a scholarship and expertise that could be used to better understand the impact of residential architecture through POE. The methodology of researchers such as Jacobs, who see buildings as "occupied performative events" (Jacobs, 2006, p.10), is particularly compelling. They view the process of meaning-making as one that is negotiated through socially mediated practises of everyday life. Accordingly, buildings are not static objects but living entities that are 'made' or 'unmade'. Therefore, a building is understood as such as long as its users and the systems that make it up reaffirm their relationships on a daily basis. Buildings and people are part of an assemblage where time also plays an essential role. In a way, this is not far from what Stewart Brand (1995) wanted to convey with the 'Shearing layers of change'. If buildings are made up of complex systems that are intertwined with their users, the methods needed to study them must be able to capture these intricate relationships, which cannot be explained exclusively from either a social or a technical perspective.   These authors used actor-network theory ANT to formulate their investigations. This methodological approach to the analysis of inhabited spaces allows for a very complex representation of the various relationships that can exist between systems and inhabitants within buildings. The so-called 'building events' are the vehicle used by Jacobs et al. (2010), Lees & Baxter (2011) and Rose et al. (2010) to go about the investigation of the built environment by looking at the feel of buildings, feelings in buildings and feelings about buildings in a very detailed way (Rose et al., 2010), complemented by ethnographic methods and participant observation. These methods enabled them to unpack very revealing accounts of the experiences of housing estate residents, in which architectural features of key spaces within the realm of the housing estate are catalysts for human emotions that transcend the boundaries of physical space. Narratives that provide complementary insights into the territorialisation of feelings and emotions and the impact of places on citizens' quality of life.   The way architects and other professionals involved in design do research on the built environment can benefit enormously by adopting systematic research methods in collaboration with academics. POE can become the backbone of the strategy that allows us to demonstrate the value we co-create and sustain learning loops within the praxis. And as this brief account shows, geographers can open up new avenues of collaboration through research that will hopefully yield a fuller picture of the relationships between people and the places they inhabit.   References. Brand, S. (1995). How buildings learn: What happens after they’re built. Penguin.   Jacobs, J. M. (2006). A geography of big things. Cultural Geographies, 13(1), 1–27. https://doi.org/10.1191/1474474006EU354OA   Jacobs, J. M., Cairns, S., & Strebel, I. (2010). More on “big things”: building events and feelings. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(3), 334–349. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40890991   Lees, L., & Baxter, R. (2011). A ‘building event’ of fear: thinking through the geography of architecture. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(2), 107–122. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2011.545138   Rose, G., Degen, M., & Basdas, B. (2010). More on “big things”: Building events and feelings. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 35(3), 334–349. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.1475-5661.2010.00388.X

Cooperative, community-led, or collaborative forms of housing appear as collective responses to the way we inhabit. At times they are perceived as experimentations in a certain socio-spatial context that seek to push the limits, question or re-interpret existing practices of inhabiting. As a phenomenon tends to reappear and grow in periods where the mechanisms in place for the provision and distribution of housing are not providing solutions (or adequate solutions) for all households. The main values that have been identified as drivers of such initiatives are: fostering a communal way of living, seeking affordable solutions through collective action, rethinking the ecological impact of housing, and addressing gender equality, as well as aging issues. The difference between cooperative housing and market or state-provided housing is that it attempts to overlap three aspects of housing that are usually separated: property, development of housing, and participation in decision-making (Lacol et al., 2018).   In the last months, I have been conducting my case study research in Barcelona, as part of my secondment, where there is a renewed interest in this form of housing. Since its initiation, starting from bottom-up collectives, and neighborhood movements, and growing towards more parts of society, the groups manifest for the right to housing, stressing the importance of the engagement of the inhabitants and the creation of non-speculative and long-term affordable housing. Currently, there is a collective effort in place, from the groups and the support organisations, to promote the model and make it more inclusive. A platform was created at the regional level, where all the cooperatives participate to discuss the evolution of the model. The values that the platform is highlighting as the core of the model, and the ones to reinforce and improve are (XES, 2019):   Non-profit and collective property The cooperatives use collective tenure forms, through long-term and secure access to housing but without the possibility of owning the property and making a profit out of it.   Community engagement and self-management The participation of the inhabitants in the decision-making is at the core of this model. As each group is different, with different priorities, resources, and skills, community engagement can take different forms.   Affordable and inclusive housing One of the key stakes of the model is affordability. The main mechanism for that was initially the grant of use of land, instead of buying it. However, as the model is evolving more mechanisms are being tested and implemented to include more people.   Replicability Collaboration and exchange of knowledge are being promoted among the groups. As practices are being shared and knowledge is being slowly generated, we can look at the lessons learned and understand the critical points.   Sustainability Most of the cases are opting for sustainable housing solutions, by focusing on low-carbon materials, the passive design of the building, and renewable energies. As we are in a moment, when energy and material prices are increasing because of inflation, we see how the trends of the material choices of the initial projects are changing towards locally produced ones.   References: Lacol, la Ciutat Invisible, & la Dinamo Fundación. (2018). Habitar en comunidad : la vivienda cooperativa en cesión de uso. Catarata. XES. (2019). Regulatory principles of cooperative housing in grant of use by the sector for cooperative and transformative housing of the social and solidarity economy network of Catalonia. https://decidim.xes.cat/assemblies/habitatge

To both critical and popular acclaim, the second season of White Lotus reached its paroxistic finale just before Christmas. Shouldn’t we all be thankful to be living under the benevolent rule of what many a cultural pundit has called peak TV?[1]  It’d just be too facile to praise the unforgettable performances of Simona Tabasco and Sabrina Impacciatore or the impeccable writing of Mike White. So it is not that I will be doing.  Following our European scholarly mandate, one should talk about housing (and the first Re-Dwell Conference taking place in Grenoble), and that’s what I shall be doing, after a quick detour. Beware spoilers await.   At one point in White Lotus’ last episode, Quentin, an English expat integrated in Palermo’s high society complains about the expenses he incurs to maintain his palazzo. Here is some visual reference as a suggestion for future research[2], throwing it out there for a case study.  Quentin’s lament is: “We’re here on earth such a short time but our houses live on, we must be good stewards”. [Spoiler alert] This would suggest a noble heritage preservation pursuit. However, the maintenance of his palazzo has led him to devise a ruse to kill Tanya, played by the household favourite Jennifer Coolidge, and partake in the inheritance of her wealth with his lover, Tanya’s own scheming husband! Far-fetched as it seems, I argue that at the heart of White Lotus lie a set of multifaceted housing and wealth inequalities issues.   As Martina’s and Joris’s research shows, experiences of housing unaffordability, exclusion and material deprivation are most acute among the young. However, what are the consequences of extreme (housing) inequalities for those who do not suffer them in their crudest form? Can one suffer the consequences of a polarising world from a palazzo? Indulge me in a perennial fascination with wealth and accompany me to another palace. This time located in Paris, 63 Rue de Monceau more precisely.   There, in front of the Parc Monceau stands the superb mansion Moïse de Camondo built for his 18th-century art collection and his family. Yes, in this particular order since the house was specially designed to house his collection of art-decorative artefacts first. Originally from Constantinople, Camondo became, together with his brother, the leaders of one of the most powerful banking dynasties of the Third French Republic.   While studying the financialisation of real estate, one can quickly fall under the impression that this is a recent phenomenon. However, speculation with real estate prices has been a defining feature of urban development. Camondo’s palace standing in the Parc Monceau was in fact built during a speculative frenzy on formerly public land. Zola described the mansion of one of his leading characters in his novel La Curee as follows: « Saccard venait de faire bâtir son hôtel du parc Monceau sur un terrain volé à la Ville. Il s’y était réservé, au premier étage, un cabinet superbe, palissandre et or, avec de hautes vitrines de bibliothèques, pleines de dossiers, et où l’on ne voyait pas un livre ; le coffre-fort, enfoncé dans 257 le mur, se creusait comme une alcôve de fer, grande à y coucher les amours d’un milliard. »   Although elaborating over Zola’s writing on housing speculation deserves much more academic attention, and in fact, it has directly inspired the work of the economist Piketty, let’s go back to Camondo. After his death, Camondo donated his house and art collection to the French State under the specific provision that it would become a museum in honour of his son Nissim, killed in WWI. During his lifetime, Camondo became a patron of the arts, donating to a number of Parisian museums and advocating for the integration of Jews French society even in the face of rampant anti-semitism. A few years after Camondo’s death his few descendants left alive were brutally assassinated in Auschwitz.   In his recent book “Letters to Camondo” Edmund de Waal, a far relative of Camondo explores the feelings of loss at the violent death of his ancestors and the state of prosecution they suffered:  “And I had to say why this moment mattered. That this was not waiting for someone to give us back what had been stolen, with violence, with terror. That breaking up, our dispersion, our diaspora. That fracture of the four Ephrussi children to four continents of the world, the suicide of their mother, their father a refugee, the murder in the labour camps of uncles and aunts. This wasn’t about art. It was what art carries. This was restitution: a bringing back of something taken.” ― Edmund de Waal, Letters to Camondo   The sentence we’re here on earth such a short time but our houses live on, acquires a new significance in the case of Camondo. His house is a testimony to the efforts to fit in of an outsider who was never accepted.  Houses themselves are integral to how we present ourselves, an embodiment of the times and our place in society. This is precisely why these mansions are scars, for those who were never allowed to belong, who were robbed and had their descendants killed. This bears questions about what kind of limitations societies focusing on luxury real estate put on integration.   And just like that… the long shadow of anti-semitism and the many other hatreds brought by the far right rise once again in Europe. One cannot help to wonder how much at odds with ontological security extreme inequalities are. Redistribution may cost us a few of the contemporary equivalent of 18th century Palermitan palazzi, maybe a couple of start-architects villas? Nevertheless, it is indispensable if we are to produce egalitarian and democratic urban environments.     [1] https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2020/jan/04/thought-wed-reached-peak-tv-just-wait-until-you-see-what-2020-has-in-store [2] https://www.architecturaldigest.com/story/the-white-lotus-sicilian-villa-episode-5

The New Housing Precariat in Europe   Insights from My Secondment at MRI During my one-month secondment at the Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI) in Budapest, Hungary, I gained invaluable knowledge about the housing needs and challenges in Hungary, which has significantly contributed to my doctoral studies. Although my stay was brief, it was theoretically and methodologically crucial for advancing my research on the theory of the precariat and housing regimes.   About the Metropolitan Research Institute Founded in 1989, the Metropolitan Research Institute (MRI) is an internationally and nationally recognized scientific think-tank dedicated to housing, social problems, and urban development. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to work with MRI, which has enriched my academic journey and provided me with critical insights into housing issues.   Focus of My Research During my time at MRI, I primarily worked on the literature review for my doctoral thesis, focusing on the theory of the precariat and housing regimes. The fruitful discussions and collaborative environment at MRI were instrumental in helping me draft my conference paper on "Clashing Vulnerabilities for the Right to Affordable Housing," which is now evolving into a book chapter. This chapter explores the new meanings of risk society, provides an overview of how the housing precariat has changed over the last decades in Europe, and offers a new typology of the housing precariat with an emphasis on clashing vulnerabilities.   Addressing the Limitations of the Regime Approach Another significant outcome of my secondment was addressing the limitations of the regime approach to housing studies. These limitations include: - Oversimplification - Static categorization - Focus on formal systems - Lack of recognition that housing policy is interconnected with other policy areas (welfare, urban planning, employment) - Neglect of cross-cutting issues (gender, race, class) - Overlooking individual agency, local governance, and community initiatives While the regime approach is a useful framework, it should be complemented with other perspectives. It is also necessary to investigate individual-level factors through life course cases, as there tends to be inadequate attention to micro-level dynamics. When exploring how housing policy impacts the middle class, both macro and micro-level analyses are essential. Conclusion My secondment at MRI was a transformative experience that provided me with deeper insights into the housing precariat in Europe. The support and guidance I received were instrumental in advancing my research and understanding of housing issues. As I continue to develop my work, I aim to contribute to the broader discourse on housing precarity and advocate for more comprehensive and inclusive housing policies that address the needs of all vulnerable groups.

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, used the word ‘crisis’ ten times in her latest State of the Union. As one of her distant predecessors, Jean Monnet, once said that “Europe will be forged in crises”[i], I could hardly think of a more interesting time to be seconded in Brussels. Whether crises relate to housing, climate, energy, cost-of-living, or the war in Ukraine, they necessitate representatives to go beyond their own interests and come together in a constructive matter. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to take a closer look at this political dance during my secondment at Housing Europe.   Brussels comes with a unique dialect, often ridiculed and currently under scrutiny after a study (Rauh, 2022) showed that it baffles anyone except technocrats who use it on a day-to-day basis. Frankly, I did not have a clue what a ‘trilogue meeting’ consisted of before starting here, but now I have become fascinated by this closed-door negotiation process between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council (i.e. national governments). In the past few weeks, I have tried to follow talks on the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) revision and the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) extension for Housing Europe.   Once you find your way through the EU’s web of acronyms, it is rather engaging to read through related documents and visit relevant events. They allow you to identify trends that will be further developed across the continent in the years after. While discussions about the promise of ‘one-stop-shops’ and ‘energy communities’ are not new, recent emphasis on these terms in European corridors suggest that a surge of policy incentives is to be expected in the near future. Another ubiquitous term, at least since last year’s surge in gas prices, lies at the heart of my research: energy poverty.   During Housing Europe’s annual Renovation Summit, held last week, energy poverty was even designated as one of the most pressing issues of our time by Alessia di Gregorio, deputy head of Social Economy at the European Commission. She urged member states to both monitor it continuously as well as address it with adequate retrofit policies. Marcos Ros Sempere, an MEP who serves as EPBD ‘shadow rapporteur’, referred to energy poverty alleviation as one of the main pillars of the Renovation Wave, emphasising the need to allocate funds to “the people who need it most”.   It strengthens me in my belief that national governments and other stakeholders (such as housing associations and energy suppliers) need to monitor which residents are most at risk. Not only because the revised Electricity Directive (Article 29 in Directive 2019/944 for EU insiders) and upcoming Social Climate Fund require them to, but because recognitional justice is a prerequisite for distributional justice. The only way to make the ‘just transition’ more than another empty shell is by identifying the disadvantaged, having them participate in the legislative process, and drafting policies that genuinely benefit their livelihoods.   [i] The original quote was "L'Europe se fera dans les crises et elle sera la somme des solutions apportées à ces crises" which would translate into "Europe will be forged in crises, and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises" (Monnet, 1976).   References   Monnet, J. (1976). Mémoires. Paris: Fayard.    Rauh, C. (2022). Clear messages to the European public? The language of European Commission press releases 1985–2020. Journal of European Integration, 1-19.

ESG risks being one of the most (over)used acronyms of this decade. Hailed as “the” solution to climate change or dismissed as greenwashing, it is also becoming important to review its relevance for social housing. This has precisely been the focus of my research at Housing Europe, framed within the RE-DWELL project, funded by the European Commission. Last week, I was invited to the 83rd session of the UNECE Committee on Urban Development to discuss the role of green finance in enabling the development and renovation of social housing. You can follow some of the points I raised at this event on a blog I wrote for Housing Europe in the link below: https://www.housingeurope.eu/blog-1733/the-role-of-green-finance-in-enabling-the-development-and-renovation-of-social-housing

Nowadays, it feels almost impossible to speak about sustainability and not refer to the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), developed under the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Agenda brings together economic, environmental and social stands of solutions to holistically address global challenges, based on the principle of “leaving no one behind”. The goals are set out in 169 targets and are formulated within five pillars: people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership.   Committed to the Agenda, the UN member states adapt their national and local strategies not only for the implementation of measures that contribute to the achievement of the developed goals and targets, but equally significantly for the monitoring of their progress in this direction. In this regard, countries and municipalities develop mechanisms to recontextualise the global targets and report their annual progress.   Placing people as a key pillar for sustainable development denotes that the measures and monitoring should exceed the macroeconomic indicators and look into mechanisms that care for how individuals’ life change for the better. Measuring the effects of such mechanisms at a local level can be a challenging matter, as they entail parameters that are in general consensus difficult to quantify. In this context, in my 4-month secondment at the Department of Housing and Local Development at the Municipality of Lisbon I explored the contribution of the ongoing BIP/ZIP participatory budget in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in Lisbon.   Participatory Budgets  Participatory budgets are mechanisms for democratising public funds in the sense that they enable the active participation of citizens in the decision-making of how national or municipal resources are spent. Among the main effects of participatory budgeting discussed in the research community are the modernisation of public administrations through transparency and accountability, the efficiency in tackling cross-disciplinary challenges, such as inclusivity and inequalities through the collaborative ways of urban governance they introduce, as well as the reorientation of public expenditures towards least advantaged populations. Doing so, the structures and processes they provide are particularly relevant for the discussion on sustainable development and according to the UN Habitat’s Report (2020) they are considered as accelerators for achieving the SDGs.   BIP/ZIP Portugal is seen as a paradigmatic case in disseminating participatory budgets issued by municipal agendas (Falanga & Lüchmann, 2019), counting more than 270 active programs in its mainland[1]. The BIP/ZIP Program in Lisbon that I am also researching as a case study beyond the limits of my secondment, was launched in 2011 as the first participatory budget implemented in a European capital city. The project annually funds bottom-up initiatives developed by local partnerships with the objective to promote social and territorial cohesion in priority areas.   During the four months that I was hosted at the Municipality of Lisbon, I was lucky enough to have access to the secondary data of the program and enrich my dataset with qualitative and quantitative information. Looking at the program’s data in correlation to the SDGs, I was able to draw direct and indirect links to specific goals and targets and deliver a preliminary data-driven methodology to measure the impact of the program for the city of Lisbon. Even at this early stage of the methodology, I could safely assume that after ten years of implementation, BIP/ZIP has a significant contribution on achieving the SDGs in Lisbon, so the emerging question is if it is taken into consideration when measuring the city’s progress towards achieving the SDGs.   To make a long answer short, my research showed that the program both at a strategic level and at the micro-scale of each project, is not really accounted in Lisbon’s SDG progress monitoring[2], which indicates that further effort should be made in integrating social indicators into the measuring processes.     Acknowledgements The end of my secondment was celebrated with a presentation of the results and a very engaging discussion with members of the Department of Housing and Local Development and the BIP/ZIP Division. For this as well as for all the support and hospitality during my stay at the Municipality, I would like to thank Filipa Roseta, Vasco Moreira Rato, Gonçalo Armindo and Isabela Teixeira da Mota, as well as members of the BIP/ZIP Division Maria Antónia Victória, Teresa Tome and Monica Alfredo.   ------- Notes [1] More information on http://portugalparticipa.pt/Monitoring/?tipo=816f6188-3bac-4dac-92af-3c0892b3018a&keyword=&district=&estado=   [2]  For more information on Portugal’s SDG monitoring process with information at municipal level, please visit ODS Local at https://odslocal.pt/   ------ References Falanga, R., & Lüchmann, L. H. H. (2019). Participatory budgets in Brazil and Portugal: comparing patterns of dissemination. Policy Studies, 41(6), 603–622.    UN-Habitat. (2020). Exploring the Role of Participatory Budgeting in Accelerating the SDGs: A Multidimensional Approach in Escobedo, Mexico.