Collective Grounds

This comparative history of early collective housing outlines the development of urban working-class estates in four European cities – London, Paris, Amsterdam and Vienna – focusing on the evolution of inner city residential configurations between the 1860s and 1930s. Collective Grounds investigates the interplay between social interests, political ideologies, and technologies that led to the spatial and morphological definition of housing. The shared concern with hygiene drove different interpretations of ‘health’ in different urban articulations, from the open corners of spaced-out London squares to the geometric indentations of the Parisian housing blocks; however, market and capital demands placed housing under a common logic of standardisation. Variations in political and cultural outlook opened up the scope of significant local differences: in Victorian London, the insular, standardised estates of the Peabody Trust and later LCC; in Paris, the propagation of institutionalised dwelling types (HBMs) in courtyard configurations along the ceinture périphérique; in Amsterdam, the dissolving of individual estates into a collective urbanism; and in Vienna, the ambiguously monumental Gemeindebauten expressing a new social-democratic order through the traditional courtyard typology. The comparison and visual analysis of in-depth case studies articulates common themes that open the scope of an alternative architectural theory of collective housing. By synthetising the discussion of centralised reform policies, urban pattern and housing expertise in a comparative manner, Collective Grounds reconceptualises the notion of housing as a discursive formation, creating a framework for future studies on its history and theory.

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Tom Avermaete, Prof. Dr. Vittorio Magnago Lampugnani