PROMISED LAND, RETHINKING TYPOLOGY AND CONSTRUCTION OF AFFORDABLE HOUSING

‘Promised Land’ focuses on collective habitation not as an idealist projection, but as a structural re-consideration of the entire housing production process: from land procurement to home ownership, from construction to typology. ‘Promised Land’ is not a solution to the current housing crisis, but an attempt to consider what it is to build affordable housing today in post-welfare Europe. Our research focuses on three cities — London, Brussels and Helsinki — where the lack of affordable housing is becoming a pressing problem. In each of these cities we have team up with a local actor: a housing co-operative in London, a community land trust association in Brussels and homeless housing association in Helsinki. In collaboration with these actors we have developed three pilot projects that can be built in multiple versions and on different sites which are unused public or private land. In different ways, these pilot projects attempt to withdraw housing from the market and compose a body of knowledge that furthers non-commercial housing initiatives, bringing together diverse responses to regulations, necessities, and problems regarding affordable housing. The table displays the designs for three pilot project plus interviews with the representatives of the housing associations with whom we have collaborated. The wall displays twentyfour applications of the ‘pilot projects’ in London, Brussels and Helsinki.