The Open House:
Experiments in Collective Living
with Cathy Hawley
Royal College of Art ADS 1 (2024-25)
Experiments in Collective Living
with Cathy Hawley
Royal College of Art ADS 1 (2024-25)
This year we will explore new approaches to collective housing.
In response to contemporary threats of material scarcity and social precarity, architecture has been increasingly framed in terms of preparedness, resilience and relief. Indeed, the mounting catastrophes we now face have eroded the idea of architecture as an aesthetic, cultural practice, to reveal a discipline that is rooted more in mere survivalism.
Housing is about survival, drawing boundaries that protect us from a hostile world. And yet the home is also a cultural engine, a formative microcosm that both reflects and transforms society. The lives we lead now, and the spaces we live them in, are the product of architectural experiments, although these experiments have by and large led to unsatisfactory results. Increasingly disconnected from our neighbours and families, we are living through an epidemic of loneliness, with more and more people ageing alone. At the same time, the fantasy of ‘community’ the internet once stood for has given way to atomisation and political division.
It is clearly time for new experiments in living together. This year we will learn from architects and residents who are deeply involved in collective housing, questioning our preconceptions about privacy, ownership and communality. Together we will explore histories of shared domesticity, rebuilding our own studio as a living room; a salon for collective exchange. Most crucially, we will approach architecture as a site of critical interactions – across aesthetic experience, social formation, physical construction and political action – as we pursue new forms of individual and collective life.
In response to contemporary threats of material scarcity and social precarity, architecture has been increasingly framed in terms of preparedness, resilience and relief. Indeed, the mounting catastrophes we now face have eroded the idea of architecture as an aesthetic, cultural practice, to reveal a discipline that is rooted more in mere survivalism.
Housing is about survival, drawing boundaries that protect us from a hostile world. And yet the home is also a cultural engine, a formative microcosm that both reflects and transforms society. The lives we lead now, and the spaces we live them in, are the product of architectural experiments, although these experiments have by and large led to unsatisfactory results. Increasingly disconnected from our neighbours and families, we are living through an epidemic of loneliness, with more and more people ageing alone. At the same time, the fantasy of ‘community’ the internet once stood for has given way to atomisation and political division.
It is clearly time for new experiments in living together. This year we will learn from architects and residents who are deeply involved in collective housing, questioning our preconceptions about privacy, ownership and communality. Together we will explore histories of shared domesticity, rebuilding our own studio as a living room; a salon for collective exchange. Most crucially, we will approach architecture as a site of critical interactions – across aesthetic experience, social formation, physical construction and political action – as we pursue new forms of individual and collective life.
Live Project: Living Room
With Badweather
Where do we make our work? How do we share it? How wide are the tables? Where could a couch go? What is the view like here, how about over there? How do we sit when we talk as a group? What makes a convivial studio? How do we work with what we’ve got? Where do the materials go next?
We strongly believe that design is best learned through doing, and that designing collectively will help us begin to get to know each other, negotiating, debating, and working together to make a space of our own from found and upcycled materials.
We’ll be guided in this project by our friends Leo Sixsmith and Oli Brenner of the architecture collective Badweather. A relatively new practice, Badweather have worked mostly on ephemeral installations for nightclubs and music festivals, using a constrained palette of cheap, reusable and industrially produced materials.
Design Research: Homes Remembered
‘I have three frames of reference...my mother and father...my own experience… and the frame of reference of my children. The three are stuck together’ — Louise Bourgeois
The memories of our elders are always on the cusp of disappearing into the undocumented past. At the same time, understanding and engaging with other voices is central to the building of community. As part of our design research this year, we will explore memories of home and belonging, of connections across generations. Students will record an interview with an older relative or friend, documenting their experiences of shared domestic spaces. Each student will produce a brief oral history that distils a spatial memory.
An act of cultural conservation and intergenerational exchange, this fragment of oral history will be transformed into a large-scale physical model that is a precise reconstruction of the remembered space. The transcript/audio and model will be presented side by side in the WIP show. Interviewees will be invited to the opening to share our space, have a drink, engage in conversations, and reflect on each others’ models and memories.
Design Research: Seminars on Housing
“In each generation the attempt must be made to wrest the tradition from the conformism that is about to overwhelm it.” – Walter Benjamin
From Charles Fourier to Sophie Lewis, we will trace a history of ideas on communality, learning from traditions of collective action. Building on this, ADS1 will host a series of seminars on collective housing that connects the contingencies of architectural practice with methodologies and ideas for addressing the UK Housing crisis. The aim of these seminars is to generate and distribute knowledge that is valuable to students, architects, policymakers, and researchers who are seeking innovative approaches to collective housing.
The seminar series will invite local and international speakers into discussion with ADS1 and the students of the RCA School of Architecture at large. The aim is to mobilise architects, housing professionals, academics, and journalists to reflect on the politics and new approaches to housing production amid scarce resources and the urgent need for systemic change.
Exploring current practice in UK housing design, we will draw from international community-driven precedents, alongside the political and cultural structures and policies that underpin them. By inviting different stakeholders, we hope to broaden the debate both within the studio and the school, deepening the focus on collective housing policy and practice.
“In each generation the attempt must be made to wrest the tradition from the conformism that is about to overwhelm it.” – Walter Benjamin
From Charles Fourier to Sophie Lewis, we will trace a history of ideas on communality, learning from traditions of collective action. Building on this, ADS1 will host a series of seminars on collective housing that connects the contingencies of architectural practice with methodologies and ideas for addressing the UK Housing crisis. The aim of these seminars is to generate and distribute knowledge that is valuable to students, architects, policymakers, and researchers who are seeking innovative approaches to collective housing.
The seminar series will invite local and international speakers into discussion with ADS1 and the students of the RCA School of Architecture at large. The aim is to mobilise architects, housing professionals, academics, and journalists to reflect on the politics and new approaches to housing production amid scarce resources and the urgent need for systemic change.
Exploring current practice in UK housing design, we will draw from international community-driven precedents, alongside the political and cultural structures and policies that underpin them. By inviting different stakeholders, we hope to broaden the debate both within the studio and the school, deepening the focus on collective housing policy and practice.
Major Project: The Open House
Each ADS1 student project will propose an alternative structure for communal life. Beginning with the nucleus of a single shared space, we will closely examine the minutiae of everyday experience: small negotiations and celebrations; domestic habits and tensions; community, privacy and proximity. All of these elements will help us define and hone our spatial and social awareness. We will then expand our attention to the scale of the building, producing comprehensive architectural projects that develop a nuanced understanding of collective living, while also taking into account speculative strategies for housing delivery and designing for social justice.
What new paths might we chart for domestic architecture? From the room, to the house, to the street to the city, we will design at each of these registers. Addressing the home as a building block of both private and civic life, we will pose another crucial question: where does the collective project begin and end?
Plexiglass Sauna by Sam Chermayeff (2018)
Each ADS1 student project will propose an alternative structure for communal life. Beginning with the nucleus of a single shared space, we will closely examine the minutiae of everyday experience: small negotiations and celebrations; domestic habits and tensions; community, privacy and proximity. All of these elements will help us define and hone our spatial and social awareness. We will then expand our attention to the scale of the building, producing comprehensive architectural projects that develop a nuanced understanding of collective living, while also taking into account speculative strategies for housing delivery and designing for social justice.
What new paths might we chart for domestic architecture? From the room, to the house, to the street to the city, we will design at each of these registers. Addressing the home as a building block of both private and civic life, we will pose another crucial question: where does the collective project begin and end?