Southopolis design workshop (organized by Nelson Mota and Ana Rosa Chagas Cavalcanti)

Southopolis was organised under the auspices of the International Social Housing Festival.
Southopolis is a game that tackles the challenges of designing affordable housing in the context of the global urban South. The aim of Southopolis is to address the issues related to designing an affordable housing complex that is attuned with both the demands and needs of cities in the South Hemisphere, according to the resources and capacities of local communities.

The game can put the players in contact with conflictive situations in the design decision-making process, and promote creative proposals to cope with these challenges. The participants will get to know some actors that may play an important role in the design of low income dwelling in the global South. Furthermore, there is a simulation of situations that generates common awareness of the complexities of the design process. While playing Southopolis, the participants will get familiar with some of the key issues related to the design of affordable housing in the global urban South within a holistic approach.

​More info here

My essay "Dwelling in the Middle Landscape: Rethinking the Architecture of Rural Communities at CIAM 10" was recently included in Re-Humanizing Architecture: New Forms of Community, 1950-1970, a book edited by Ákos Moravánszky and Judith Hopfengärtner, published by Birkhauser in December 2016.
This is the first volume of a series dedicated to investigate architectural production in the aftermath of the Second World War.

From the publisher:
​A divided Europe was much affected by a period of reconstruction. This was influenced by the different political systems – in the socialist East and in the capitalist West, the focus was on cohesion in society and its cultural and architectural expression. In parallel to the rapidly progressing industrialization of the building industry, debates on the humanization of the built environment were led on both sides with great intensity. The volume shows how, on the back of existentialism, new monumentality, and socialist realism, quite similar concepts and strategies were developed in order to find answers to questions relating to adequate structures for new forms of community and identity.

The participants in the "No Cost Housing Conference" (including myself) contributed to the production of a joint "Oerlikon Declaration" on housing for all.
This document was prepared in advance of the Habitat III conference in Quito, 2016.
​The Oerlikon Declaration can be downloaded here.

From 2 until 4 June 2016, the Fourth International Meeting of the European Architectural History Network (EAHN) will be held in Dublin.
Myself and Tom Avermaete we will chair the session "Housing and the Grassroots: Rethinking Production and Agency in the Architecture of Dwelling".

The papers that will be delivered at our session are:
– Arne Korsmo and “Hjemmets Mekano”, by Espen Johnsen, University of Oslo.
– Knowledge Formation by Architects and Workers in Assisted Self-help: Recalling the Fractured History of Portuguese Experiments from the Dictatorships to Political Democracy, 1950-1980, by Tiago Castela, University of Coimbra and José António Bandeirinha, University of Coimbra.
– Berlin’s Building Groups—A Bottom-Up Initiative in a highly Professionalized Environment by Florian Urban, Glasgow School of Art.
– Architecture in Utopia? Agencies of design in Zurich’s alternative housing by Irina Davidovici, ETH Zurich
– The Battle for the City: 1970s architects between 'luttes urbanines' and 'renovation urbaine' by Isabelle Doucet, University of Manchester

Click here to download the proceedings of the conference.