During the talk Alternative Living: The Housing Cooperative / Squatting as a Spatial Practice we will zoom into the current situation in Rotterdam and what we can learn from the test cases and case studies abroad.

ARIE LENGKEEK is a programmer, urbanist, curator, and board member of Het Rotterdams Woongenootschap, a new housing co-op for Rotterdam. Lengkeek is also (co)author and initiator of the books Streetwise Rotterdam (2015) and operatie wooncoöperatie (2022). operatie wooncoöperatie focuses on the community economy and positions the 'housing cooperative' as a third alternative between renting and buying. Not the individual question "how do I want to live?", but the joint shaping of the question "how do we want to live together?" is leading. Housing is a fundamental right, not a commodity. Citizens can shape it together. operation housing cooperative tells the history of our housing; why the cooperative disappeared from the picture and how the housing crisis came about. It documents ten extraordinary projects from Vienna, Zurich and Munich and explains how such projects can only come about through conscious choices from local government. It works toward an optimistic, offensive, applicable and feasible proposal: out of the housing crisis through communal ownership.

During the talk with René Boer we will zoom in on the project Architecture of Appropriation, this research, archival project, series of exhibitions and publication acknowledges squatting as a spatial practice with a large impact on the urban landscape, and recognizes the resulting spatial constellations as an architectural style. It brings the expertise of the squatting movement together with the insights of architects, activists, scholars and lawyers, to discuss approaches to researching, archiving and representing such spaces in the institutional framework of an archive and museum, and establish forms of reciprocity and solidarity within the project. Architecture of Appropriation was presented in an exhibition at Het Nieuwe Instituut and at the 11th São Paulo International Architecture Biennale. The final publication (free pdf) forms the basis of a new acquisition policy for the archive.

RENÉ BOER works as a critic, curator and organizer in and beyond the fields of architecture, art, design and heritage. He is based between Amsterdam and Cairo and is a driving force behind the Failed Architecture platform. In recent years he developed a wide array of exhibitions, public programs and research projects, often with a focus on spatial justice, urban imaginations and queer tactics.

Book your ticket HERE

PHOTO: Collection Nieuwe Instituut Rotterdam

To make it possible for everyone to join the talk, we offer an additional workshop for children. They will be working with the theme of the exhibition under supervision (or outside, if the weather permits).

Interested?
Please send an e-mail to info@a-tub.org which includes your ticket and the age of the child(ren) who will be attending.

PART OF THE EXHIBITION

22.04.2023—18.06.2023
HOUSING
a case study by REMCO TORENBOSCH