FEDERICA ZAMBELETTI / KOOZ I feel that you’ll find some natural affinities as you talk, but to start us off: can we explore the relationships between architecture, shelter and home — and do so in the context of people who are unhoused. What have been your observations on how and where people find shelter in the cities where you live?

BRUNO SPAASLet me think… I came to know Anapneusis, a non-profit organisation in Antwerp — for which we eventually designed this housing for homeless people — years ago. So I got to know a bit about the homeless population in Antwerp over time. It was quite complex to grasp; typically, we see people on the street, and we believe that this is evidence of homelessness — but actually that’s a very small portion of the total number of technically homeless people.

In Flemish, we make a distinction between the homeless and the truly rootless. These are people who have no fixed address; further still, they may have no connections, no family, no friends, no work, nobody actually caring about them. For instance, issues arise when people have been in prison for a long time, or perhaps they were associated with drug addiction or prostitution — the result is that the majority of people have to find ways to manage. They hook up with boyfriends; they crash on couches; they end up in all kinds of situations to have some kind of a stable connection, which is really difficult to find. Almost every programme proposes that individuals should be capable of turning their situation around within a certain timeframe — say, six months — so this is the longest they can provide shelter or support. After six months, people are supposed to be independent again, but they fall into the same traps…

ALEXANDER HAGNER I see it in much the same way. Our office has been working for more than twenty years on this topic; for us, it starts with the first group you describe — the ones you see out on the streets or underneath bridges and bushes, trying to survive in Vienna’s public spaces. I was born in the countryside in the south of Germany and brought up in a small village with no visible homelessness. I was confronted with homelessness for the first time when I came to study in Vienna. At that time, I was quite unhappy about my own situation, my own privilege as a student. It might be below freezing but I could go home to my small student accommodation, while in my own neighbourhood there were people who could not. I decided that when I'm a big architect, I will build houses for homeless persons. At that time, I didn't know that architects don't earn that much money!

Almost accidentally, I came across an opportunity to enter a competition in 2002, designing a small neighbourhood specifically for chronically homeless persons. This is my own term of reference, indicating those who are not accepted even within homeless communities. These people are living completely on the edge, they are not part of our society, let's say at all. They deal with a total lack of any contacts, social networks or possibilities to move forward in their lives. The village or neighbourhood was intended for people who are moving towards the later periods of life, such that they can remain there for the rest of their days. This comes with a notion of acceptance; they don’t have to change. It's just about trying to give people a low threshold alternative in terms of finding a home. On this topic of home: it's not about housing. It's not about shelter. It's about thinking of a place that someone would call his or her home. A priest (the initiator of the project Pfarrer Wolfgang Pucher) had this idea. He did this nine years ago in Styria, another part of Austria, and there it worked. So he thought, what worked in Styria could work in Vienna too. I read about this project in the newspaper, and approached him directly, as a small architectural office, offering our help. He responded that he needs anyone and everyone. So we said, good, then let's start.

Over quite a long time, I learned a lot about homelessness. As you describe, Bruno, the variation is so broad; unhoused people and their concerns are much more individual, let's say, than those we might imagine, like looking for where to get dinner or sleep on a particular night. We know that Vienna is known for its social response to community issues, but we realised that it's not a question of the quantity of offered places, but rather a question of quality, of diversity, of whether the offers Vienna provides for unhoused people actually fit to their needs? Can people out in the street accept those offers? We figured out that in a lot of these places, there is no alcohol allowed, there are no dogs or animals allowed. There are so many regulations, soft regulations — but also in terms of architecture. Often these provisions are centred within the context of community housing, but in many cases, we might be talking a lot about people who are not able to socialise or get along very immediately with others. There are many handicaps in such places that oblige certain people to stay out on the street.

In other words, if you want to address as many chronically unhoused people as possible, one idea would be to offer various kinds of what might become home. This was our idea, believing that architecture could play a big role in thinking about these kinds of homes. Where is it located? How is it built? How is the entrance? What are the materials? We thought that if you want to address — through architecture, through design — people who have social problems, you need to bring more to the plans, to their reality — because there's a deficit, there is something you have to make level at first before you can start. Yet if you think about social projects, at least the ones I know, they don't look nice, they don't smell nice; they are not inviting for anyone — neither as a user, nor as someone who might work there. I think the reason why we are a bit more acknowledged for our work in connection with homelessness, for example, is that we turned that logic around. We said we need to bring more of everything to these designs, because we are addressing people who are at a disadvantage and we need more to bring everyone to an equal level. That's what I mean.

KOOZ Alex, I discovered your work through the documentary film made with the CCA. Two things stood out: one was around how one makes oneself feel at home. It is worth noting the sense of precarity; if the police come by, your shelter could be destroyed or you might be in a position where you have to rebuild your home every day — which is an incredible amount of effort. Secondly, there’s an assumption of home as being tied to four walls and a roof, as opposed to designing for people who don't see ‘home’ as an enclosed space.

BSI completely agree. Home is not a more or less temporary place where people can live. What is really important is that it’s a place where they are accepted as they are. I think this is a really important point; in our society, we are mostly accepted not because of who we are, but what we are. In almost every situation, it's not about who we are, but rather what we do, what we have achieved, and so on. At ‘home’, of course, you want to be accepted for who you are, but that’s not a given condition, I would say. Of course, this notion is not restricted to homelessness, but when it comes to homeless people, they are not accepted at all.

Anapneusis manages several community centers that provide shelter to homeless individuals, many of whom have a history in institutions. This is done based on a cohousing model where residents share common spaces, which is important for breaking their isolation and promoting their social integration. When I visited one such community centre for the first time, I noticed that everybody had their curtains closed during the day. The housing was situated in nature but still the windows were closed, everything was closed. I really didn't understand why somebody would choose to sit in a dark room, and this became really important for me; in terms of architecture, how can we create a condition such that people won't close the curtains — a place where they will feel private and safe with open curtains? In the design we made, each studio looks away from the garden. They share but don't look at the garden, which gives them privacy. The only place where they would look at the garden is if they all come together in the shared space at the centre. It seems so simple, but it turned out to be really important for our tenants. As Alex said, typically, architects will make sure that everybody looks at the garden, because it's nice and you would want to look at. This was a challenge for me: how can we make these studios look away yet still feel part of the shared garden? And what happens in twenty or fifty years — would the studios be used by other people? We don't know how society will evolve to ensure that this remains a sustainable project.

AHI would like to come back to the point about heterogeneity and how different people really are. We have also noticed that a lot of the small houses, in the ex-homeless village I mentioned earlier, do close their windows — but not all of them. There are a few who don't. There are always different ways of using things, and that’s what we try to involve in our designs. This heterogeneous condition is what we want to make space for. There are some who tell us that this is perfect, made for them perfectly. Another person might say, oh, I would never live here, but that one is great for me. Our lesson, learned over twenty years, is to create a lot of different situations, as what fits for one doesn't fit the other at all.

There is this idea of ‘Housing First’. I think it is a very important movement or step in dealing with homelessness; I'm sure that for more than 50% it's a good idea. But there are a lot of others for whom entering that kind of system is the wrong way. They can't get along with it. Our understanding is the more people you want to address, the more different kinds of projects you ought to provide — with different levels of privacy, connection or disconnection from people. These are big differences for people who have had hard experiences in their lives. I think the worst thing to do is to prescribe the same treatment for everyone — or to do nothing. These are wrong ways of treating a disadvantaged demographic in our society.

In terms of privacy, specifically, I think this is so important — that feeling of security and privacy. What we found is that there is some ambivalence and gradually a shift from wanting to be completely private for my own, to wanting to come into contact with people. So in the new neighbourhoods or villages we are designing, residents have two entrances. You can enter your space through a terrace shared with two other houses — a neighbourly group — but on the other side each resident has a private garden and their own house; if you don't want to see anyone, you can use a second, private entrance. We saw people who didn't want to talk to anyone in the first two months, but after a while, they were even starting to take responsibility for their neighbours’ spaces — things are always growing and developing. It's important to be quite sensitive. We think about the connecting points: how do you come to your space? How do you leave it? What do you see? What don't you see? We also saw that the windows were closed, but after three months, they were open. So if there's the chance that with support, community building can happen between tenants themselves, without necessarily being in the same situation as each other. That's what I like.

BSThis reminds me, again, of the Anapneusis project: there are a few studios and one community space, but where the community space also serves another address with more studios. Everyone can use it in different ways; there are fixed days when people can visit, and there’s no restriction on the time you can stay there. People can live there indefinitely; they don’t have to leave after one year or three years. They can stay as long as they want, but they are helped and supported by social workers to help them live independently, to find a job, pay rent and so on. We also decided not to work on a building that was closed, connected by staircases, exactly because of what you said.

What we created was actually four studios, each with their front door, accessed by the terrace. You go up to a shared terrace — somewhat too big, actually, for what is needed. The idea is to create the opportunity for the inhabitants to meet if they want, or they can go straight away to their homes. We couldn’t quite provide two entrances, but the space in front of the door is sunny, oriented towards the west — it almost invites people to smoke a cigarette or to sit and talk with their neighbours — and again, it grows and develops. Recently I learned that the terrace is well-used, which is really nice to hear — and as you say, every studio is completely different. There are only four, but each of them has its own design. Especially because each home was specifically designed, it was so nice when the tenants almost automatically chose each one for themselves. When it comes to architecture, it's important to allow people to make choices. If I were to design a project with six apartments, for example, I would like to be happy live in any of the six, ideally — meaning that I would like to give priority to everybody else to choose first; even if I come last, I would like to ensure that I still would be happy — that's what I wanted to create.

AHThere’s this idea that we make community projects, yet in reality we are often trying to make a home for someone who doesn't want to see anyone else. For us, it was so important to always present every decision involving the term community as an offer, never as a requirement. There should be no pressure where you have to take part in community, because if you don't feel self confident — if you don't feel well in your skin — and you need to participate in a community project, what do you do? You pull yourself back into yourself. How can that person feel ready to be part of a community?

I’m thinking of our project VinziRast-mittendrin, which did not address the chronically homeless, but rather those who have determined that they might like to take part in society. This project brings together a community of students and homeless people who live together in a house, running a restaurant together. This was a student-led idea from over a decade ago, located in a house in the middle of Vienna, which didn't have a garden. We had a roof terrace, so we thought about the vertical access, how to go up and down, and how one enters the house itself. How can one enter the apartments — which are shared, but with single rooms within them. And we decided to do all the vertical access outside. So we put a new elevator outside and we have laubengänge (access balconies) — an arcade or deck access situation. There are two existing staircases, and we made a new one. So now for thirty people, we have four ways (including the elevator) to come up and down outside the house. This means you can easily make choices; if you see someone with whom you had some stress the day before, you can easily take another way. It's not about luxury; it’s about removing pressure through spatial design.

So we developed this way of doing community projects, always proposing community as an offer, and allowing for the possibility that someone can be by him or herself — at least at the beginning. After a while, the level of contact depends on the persons in the house and how much pressure there is. This was the basis for the decision to have an open roof terrace — to take the cover off the pot, so to speak. We thought that this house must be open, at least on the roof; there must be a large space for everyone, with a large outdoor terrace. The students who had the idea for this project formed links with the homeless community over the course of the Occupation movement and other student protests. Of course there were many conflicts; there were problems with alcohol and drugs; there is the stress of managing a community. So we thought about how to offer a pressure-free space, to alleviate the stressful situations that might arise from working and living together.

BSThat’s really interesting. I've seen projects where combining different types of inhabitants, like students and family apartments, which can either work well or be problematic. Students with ex-homeless people is an interesting combination — it sounds great on paper, but I'm always curious to know if such experiments work.

AHSome people said that we're making a human experiment. But this was not the idea. Of course, the students had the initial idea, so I’m out of the picture on this one! In any case, VinziRast has been running since 2013 and it's still running. At the beginning, we asked ourselves whether we should split apartments for ex-homeless persons on the first floor and place those for the students on the second floor or something like that. Ultimately we decided that we really needed to start with the maximum accommodation we could achieve for this project. We started with mixed shared apartments — so two students with one ex-homeless person or vice versa — and this model remains in place. It was really the best decision because essentially, the idea of the project was to try to make a place where all these preconceived prejudices can disappear. Prejudice is the worst thing in our society. I think that if groups are disconnected, if there is no possibility of at least seeing each other, maybe even talking to each other sometimes, we will lose empathy — and empathy, for me, is so important in society, especially in urban society. So the fact that this place is still working is incredible — it’s an ambassador for giving different groups a space to meet and to come into exchange, and a reminder to try and do as much as you can to remove pressure and respect that people are different. So as you said, after a while, it doesn't matter whether someone is studying or whether they were homeless, it's just: do I like Max or do I not like Max? It doesn't matter what Max is doing. At this place, it seems to work like that, and I'm so happy. I mean, it has its ups and downs, but so do regular shared apartments. I'm so happy that it exists, and I'm wondering why there are not a lot more projects like this, after more than ten years. Because it works. It works. I like it so much.

BS Especially because homeless people have also had certain experiences. Some have very bad experiences in terms of trust; for example, they might stay with another person for a while, but then their money is stolen, or if they succeed in getting their own apartment, and then try to help others, they encounter the same problem. Many people have big issues with trust, because it has been completely ruined. That's why they become so anxious and even develop psychological issues. You have to learn how to deal with these people, who might be really great company one day, and horrible on the next day. They might become verbally aggressive, for example, and suddenly everything is shut down. So it's really nice to hear about these students, because I imagine that as young people, they are able to be open minded. They're probably open minded to ex-homeless people, to try to understand how it is that people ended up in this situation. This is really nice to hear, it sounds great.

AHIt's exactly as you say, on this topic of trust. For example, we figured out that with people who are dependent on drugs, students can’t manage to support them. If they are dependent on alcohol, the students tend to feel that they can handle it but with drugs, it gets harder. When I say ‘we’, it's not only our architectural office — I am a member of the association that runs the project as well. So we decided after a while that we really do need to take care about the backgrounds of all people living in this project, if we want to avoid bringing in danger.

We also need to be very careful about the balance of residents. Sometimes student interest dips; at these times, when there's a place free, we have considered offering the extra spot to another homeless person because they need it. But we saw that if one group becomes bigger than the other, if there is no balance, then even fewer students would be interested — likewise if there are too many men or fewer women. If you think about it, you will clearly understand that there are some rules you have to keep in mind if you want to give the people living there the opportunity to create a community in the house.

I always mention these 27-30 people who live in this house. This is the optimal level of occupation that we figured out. This is an important point, because so many social projects addressed 200 or 500 people; in Munich they just opened a building complex for 700 people. As you mentioned, people with certain mental problems feel stressed when they are in extreme situations for a long time. We know this from the stories of migrants, people in transit, people who are excluded, out of work… One of the things that most of us bring with us is the fact that as children, most of us were socialised in school classrooms. School classrooms usually amount to about twenty to thirty people. We all have it inside of us to find our way in such a group, because we grew up with that. So we should never do projects which are bigger like that, and we can use that understanding as an advantage in any project. If we want to house, for example, 120 people, then we need four complexes to divide it again. I don't believe in large projects, because I think small projects like this should be placed all over town — so that again, there's the chance to be part of the town, rather than the townspeople and the outlaws, or whatever. There are different reasons that we need to be conscious about the sizes of projects. A lot of people might say, so what if you made a project for 27 people — it’s nothing. But that's not true. We need a lot more of these small projects in different kinds of situations.

BSIn Flemish, we have an expression: opportunity makes a thief. I don't know if this expression exists in English; it usually means that you leave your car unlocked, you invite the thief to steal your car, so to speak. But for me, it's really one of the most important principles of architecture, this saying — because it's about creating opportunities. When you force somebody to live in a certain way it doesn't work, but when you create the opportunity, it's a totally different situation. We did, for example, a really small project, where we were commissioned to do the renovation of a facade; we couldn't touch the interior. This was for a different co-living project, though another organisation working with ex-homeless people. Again, there were six people living in a very old house; on the ground floor, they had the shared kitchen and living area and through a hallway, a small ‘garden’ — which was a metre and a half lower down; in reality, it was a stinky, dirty little courtyard, enclosed by other buildings. The only thing we could do was to renew the windows, which would make the entrance towards the garden even smaller. So we asked if we could instead make a new door and a small terrace, so that the living area could become more liveable. It was usually empty because it was a dark, uninviting space. By opening up the living area with a little terrace — really in terms of architecture, it's nothing — it changed the use of the house completely. Certainly the living room is used a lot now, and people go outside. The door stays open in the summer; it changed the energy and feel of the place completely. It was only a minor change and it had to be very cheap, of course — but it works. That is, for me, an example of “opportunity makes a thief” – it’s about giving the chance for something to change. This is always on my mind, when I design something.

AH I like it very much because ‘Gelegenheit macht Diebe’ — that's the German expression for “opportunity makes a thief” — is quite a negative direction of thought, but to turn it around to bring opportunities, to bring good things out of people, I like it a lot. Your description of the small yard reminds me of the laubengänge, the deck-access we made for some housing. This is where circulation happens, right at the place where the community kitchens are. We made this space four meters deep so that it could act as a shared outdoor space, and now it's used so much, even in winter — and not only for smoking. If we would have followed other social projects, the deck would be 1.2 metres wide, all the way around; the minimum functional depth. But that's the point: if we want to give social projects a chance, we need to think about more and not less — about all that things are missing. Again, it’s about an architecture of missed opportunities; another way around is necessary.

KOOZ Thank you both for this conversation. It's beautiful to understand how you both view architecture and design as an infrastructure of generosity.

Bios

Alexander Hagner founded gaupenraub+/- in 1999, together with Ulrike Schartner, as an open office for architecture, design and urban strategies. Their work has since been widely recognised nationally and internationally, including efforts against marginalization and for an inclusive society. Simultaneously, Hagner holds the endowed chair for Social Architecture at the University of Applied Sciences Carinthia. Together with his students, he is trying to identify tools architects could use to improve sociability in an increasing inhomogeneous society.

Bruno Spaas Architectuur is an architecture office, initiated and led by Belgian architect Bruno Spaas and run by him and a small, dedicated team of architects. The office, founded in 2018, is based in Antwerp. Projects include a free clinic renovation for the city of Antwerp, a low-budget social co-living project for a local non-profit organisation and a complete interior design in an exclusive tower penthouse. By considering and questioning ecological matters as well as social and psychological aspects of how to live and work comfortably, Bruno Spaas Architectuur conceives projects which put human well-being first.

Federica Sofia Zambeletti is the founder and managing director of KoozArch. She is an architect, researcher and storyteller whose interests lie at the intersection between art, architecture and regenerative practices. In 2022 Federica founded KoozArch with the ambition of creating a space where to research, explore and discuss architecture beyond the limits of its built form. Prior to dedicating her full attention to KoozArch, Federica collaborated with the architecture studio and non-profit agency for change UNA/UNLESS working on numerous cultural projects and the research of "Antarctic Resolution". Federica is an Architectural Association School of Architecture in London alumni.