WiSe 26/27 LEER:REUSE

Project development usually means finding an empty site, assigning it a function and developing it.
What if we question this order and dissect its elements? Vacancy is spatially, politically and
economically produced. An empty plot, an abandoned building or an inaccessible parcel is not
simply an absence of activity or value. It can reveal how land ownership, speculation, planning
regulation and exclusion work. Kassel has about 260.000 m² of vacant space, yet not one square
metre of it is easily available for longterm non-profit use.

If one follows current planning debates, temporary uses are often presented as the first steps toward revitalizing vacant properties. But what happens when the period of temporary use is over? How can vacant properties continue to be used collaboratively in the long term for the common good?
Inspired by debates that have taken place over the past two semesters—particularly during field trips—a group of teaching assistants has come together to create a space for this discussion through this seminar this semester. In this seminar, these debates will be continued and enriched through best practices and literature reviews.

Construction sites are political spaces. It is there that decisions are made that affect the lives of others it is also there that economic and sociopolitical interdependencies between architects, clients, and construction workers come together. Surprisingly, these relationships are often treated as completely separate from one another in today’s discourse. As planners we primarily discuss procedures, permits, and construction costs. Much less often do we ask: What impact do these decisions have on the people who actually build these structures? What resources are required for this? Who extracts them, how, and where? After all, buildings do not arise on their own. Between design and completion lie thousands of hours of labor and enormous quantities of materials, which are often sourced from the so-called Global South. It is planning decisions that consume resources, human labor, time, and raw materials—with tangible consequences. 

Rome is more than postcard motifs and antiquity. The Italian capital is a site of fierce spatial conflicts and political struggles over housing. While social housing accounts for only 3%, more than 10,000 people live in squatted buildings. Amid urban austerity policies and speculative vacancy, spaces of collective resistance emerge: self-organized housing, commoning, and activist spatial appropriation counter the status quo with alternative practices.

On this excursion, we will investigate the dynamics of informal vacancy activation and post-capitalist spatial production on site. We will visit model projects in peripheral neighborhoods like San Basilio and historic working-class estates in central Ostiense, explore contested spaces and initiatives like Spin Time Labs, and informal urban ecosystems such as Lago Bullicante as sites of resistance against privatization. The aim is to discover tools for a critical, politically engaged spatial practice through direct exchange with local actors.

In this seminar we will address the absurdity of housing vacancy in times of housing crises, as well as work with ideas for alternatives to the status quo of vacant property. The work in the seminar will consist of reading about the drivers of housing vacancy; typologies of vacancy most suitable for housing; ownership of vacancy and our own relation to it. We will read texts on housing vacancy, speculation and alternative governance as well engage in other forms of learning through film, data mapping, examples of architecture of appropriation, discussions and experience. Students will have a chance to approach the issue of vacancy through theory, economy, materiality, typology, and their own relation to the phenomenon. They will work on ideas about transforming vacancy into socially useful property by using different graphic, textual and group work approaches to this issue. Seminar will include joint discussions on how can we approach vacancy from the stand point of housing rights vs private property rights through creative forms of organizing and deliberation.

This seminar covers the legal, organizational, and economic fundamentals of housing cooperatives. As part of a practical simulation, students work in groups to develop their own cooperative project.
The first part focuses on the founding phase and the drafting of the cooperative’s bylaws. The second part focuses on developing a business plan for ongoing operations. Topics such as financing structures, economic viability, and organizational processes are addressed in detail. The goal of the seminar is to provide a solid understanding of the economic feasibility and management of alternative housing models.
The seminar is led by Sabine Conti of innova eG. She has been advising cooperative housing projects in German-speaking countries for many years and brings her practical experience directly to the supervision of the students’ semester projects.

An independent studio offering students’ own proposed topics for Bachelor’s students in the final semester prior to their Bachelor’s thesis, which will tie in directly with the studio.
The focus must be on the theme of renovation or transformation, whether this involves the preservation of vacant buildings through repurposing and renovation, circular building management or urban repurposing strategies.