Tracing Transitions

Tracing Transitions addresses current housing problems in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg as well as aspects for a possible transformation of the situation in the future. Habitation, provision of residential property, and socially sustainable housing are essential issues of our time. Shelter is a fundamental human need and an internationally confirmed human right. In Luxembourg, the preconditions for satisfying this need have become more and more unstable.

As a small nation in the heart of Western Europe, Luxembourg is truly a land of specifics. Being a sovereign state, Luxembourg’s location and policies have simultaneously generated a continuous yet porous border region with its neighbours Belgium, France and Germany. Luxembourg’s niche strategies have enabled her to achieve international significance in a globalised world and considerable economic success bearing no relation to the size of the country. But Luxembourg’s wealth, attractive job opportunities, and socio-economic policies also put pressure on the housing market. The mechanisms for the provision of housing are dominated by ownership and free market economy. These models are increasingly unable to satisfy the need of significant parts of the population for affordable and adequate housing. Many people turn in reaction to neighbouring regions in search of housing, constituting the phenomenon of the Grenzgänger – frontier commuters and highly mobile labourers. This situation entails a range of problems like the danger of real estate bubbles in these regions, unbalanced programming in urban areas, and excessive environmental pollution through traffic.

Making of 1Its geography and economic development, the competitive and high-priced property market, population growth and demographic change have turned Luxembourg into a complex and adversarial area of tension. Tracing Transitions looks at interventions that aim to gradually diffuse the current situation. These interventions present alternatives: they are options for the realisation of housing solutions that stand in contrast to ownership or built-to-rent models; they offer different living configurations as answers to demographic changes; they question traditional and known housing types; and they make use of Luxembourg’s biggest resource for the implementation of housing – vast former industrial areas, remnants of Luxembourg’s past as an iron and coal nation. Tracing Transitions seeks indicators that signify a possible change in the production and social sustainability of housing. It is primarily a story about processes, events, and the consolidation of networks and not about full blown design solutions and neat buildings. Architecture becomes instead part of activism. And Tracing Transitions is part of architectural communication – to communicate the challenges in the production of conditions for realising the ‘good project’.