COHOCITY

COHOCITY will develop a comparative approach to contemporary housing projects developed in The Netherlands and in Brazil since the early 1990s, to examine how social and economic policies affect design-decisions, but also how design-decisions can affect policies. This project will analyse the extent to which contemporary housing design in these two countries has been able to promote alternative configurations to the dominant approach that governed the relation between housing and the city since the neoliberal turn.

One of the key challenges of current housing policies and design approaches is reinforcing the value of housing as a social right rather than a commodity. This challenge is global. Both in countries of the global North, like The Netherlands, or in countries of the global South such as Brazil, there is an ongoing debate to overturn the negative effects triggered by neoliberal housing policies, that have spread all around the world since the early 1980s. This debate has brought about a tension between human-centred and market-centred housing policies. This project aims at examining how this tension affects design-decisions, but also how design-decisions can affect policies.

 To achieve this goal, this project will develop a comparative approach to contemporary housing projects developed in The Netherlands and in Brazil since the early 1990s. This project will analyse the extent to which contemporary housing design in these two countries has been able to promote inclusive social and spatial paradigms, offered as alternative configurations to the dominant approach that governed the relation between housing and the city since the neoliberal turn. This project will conduct a theoretical reflection and a critical analysis of current housing design and production in The Netherlands and Brazil to investigate the emergent socio-spatial phenomena related with them.

This research will establish a critical benchmark for contemporary design strategies concerned with the development of inclusive and resilient urban housing. Furthermore, this project will support the collaboration between FAU-USP and the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment at TU Delft to foster further joint initiatives to develop a research project and an educational program focused on a comparative analyses of innovative housing approaches in the global North and the global South.