Building Together & Otherwise – Housing strategies of feminist movements

The feminist planning movement of the 1970s and 1980s in West Germany—particularly in the Kassel area—produced a number of communal residential and commercial buildings. This research project examines how feminist design approaches rooted in the new women's movement were materialized in architecture and urban planning projects and what significance they have for today's multiple crises—climate change, financialization of housing, and social inequality. 

Kassel plays a key role in this context that has been little researched to date. Influential women such as Margrit Kennedy, the initiator of the Bauwelt special edition 31/32, Inge Meta Hülbusch, Inken Baller, and Ruth Becker—author of the seminal work Frauenwohnprojekte 2009 (Women's Housing Projects 2009)—taught and worked at the University of Kassel; on the other hand, housing projects relevant to the research project emerged from the context of FOPA e.V. (Feminist Organization of Women Planners and Architects), founded in Kassel in 1983.

The central research questions are therefore: How did feminist housing projects come about and how would such projects still be possible today? Which aspects contribute to the success and resilience of specific projects? Where did these projects fail? 

The research project will also examine the movement's discourses and forms of protest, its involvement in political processes, gender-sensitive financing methods and alternative forms of ownership. What influence did and do ownership structures, self-organisation, administrative structures and alternative financing methods have on the projects?

A symposium is planned for spring 2026, as well as a catalogue and the discursive anchoring of the topic at the University of Kassel and beyond.

Building Together & Otherwise – über Wohnbaustrategien feministischer Bewegungen

Duration: 2025-2026

Funded by: „Dimensionen der Kategorie Geschlecht – Frauen- und Geschlechterforschung in Hessen“ vom Hessischen Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung, Kunst und Kultur

Project team: Prof. Dr. Gabu Heindl und WM Bettina Nagler, with student assistant Laura Lender