Case Library

Developed by One Small Thing in collaboration with Snug Architects, Hope Street represents a groundbreaking effort to reimagine supportive spaces for individuals affected by cycles of crime and incarceration (Snug Architects, 2023). One Small Thing is dedicated to transforming the justice system through impactful, small-scale interventions. The organization delivers gender-responsive, trauma-informed programmes in both prison and community settings, shifting the perspective from blame to empathy. Their mission focuses on understanding individuals' experiences rather than labelling them, fostering a compassionate and healing process. Design and Objectives Hope Street's design comprises two main structures: a public-facing hub and a residential building, connected by a therapeutic garden. The public hub includes a coffee shop, consultation rooms, a therapy suite, offices, and communal living spaces. The residential building offers eight shared flats for women and their children, as well as additional therapeutic and communal areas. The design is intended to evoke a homely atmosphere, using materials such as buff brick, green zinc, and vertical oak to create a warm, welcoming environment. Large windows, skylights, and biophilic patterns enhance the calming ambiance and strengthen the connection to nature. Consultation and therapeutic spaces are designed to ensure privacy while maintaining an open, inviting feel (Snug Architects, 2023). From the street, the two-story CLT building, clad in brick, appears as a cluster of three houses, making the larger structure feel more relatable and human-scale. Every detail, from the rounded wooden front door handle to the interior elements, has been thoughtfully designed to avoid any institutional feel. A secondary entrance facilitates discreet transitions from police custody into a warm, inviting intake room. The interiors are characterized by spaciousness and intimacy, with abundant natural light and soft, home-like finishes. The Hope Suite, a counselling room, features an exposed wood structure that adds warmth to the double-height space, which has been compared to a chapel for its calming and spiritual atmosphere. The main lounge's fireplace serves as a visual focal point and a gathering space for residents. Acoustic design was prioritized to ensure privacy and comfort during sensitive conversations (Snug Architects, 2023). The building operates 24/7, but instead of using harsh security features like CCTV, the design focuses on natural surveillance and spatial planning, allowing for privacy while fostering a sense of freedom and safety. Deep CLT walls give a sense of security, while large windows maintain openness and connection. Shared spaces are positioned near the street, while residential units—eight shared flats that house up to 24 women and their children—are safely set at the back of the building. The balconies overlook a serene courtyard, providing residents with a peaceful outdoor space that connects them to nature (Snug Architects, 2023). Design Features and Trauma-Informed Solutions Creating Positive First Impressions The design immediately communicates safety and welcome. By dividing the buildings into smaller, house-like structures rather than large blocks, the environment feels domestic rather than authoritarian. The use of buff brick, green zinc, and oak connects the building to its surroundings, fostering a sense of belonging. Building Trust Through Non-Institutional Design The architecture of Hope Street intentionally avoids institutional characteristics. Snug Architects chose soft textures and biophilic elements like natural light and plants to create a home-like atmosphere that fosters calm and trust among residents. Empowering Through Space The design includes individual living spaces, each with secure access, to reinforce autonomy. Shared spaces, such as the therapeutic garden, offer opportunities for both solitude and community, which are essential for trauma recovery. Therapeutic Gardens and Natural Healing The therapeutic garden, designed in collaboration with Harris Bugg Studio, is a key feature of Hope Street. Its design, inspired by the structure of a birch tree, symbolizes hope and provides secluded areas for reflection as well as communal spaces for building relationships. This connection to nature is integral to reducing stress and enhancing mental well-being. Fostering Autonomy in Residential Spaces Each resident has her own secure living space within the shared flats, which helps foster a sense of control and autonomy. The flats are designed to mirror typical community living spaces, complete with kitchens, lounges, and private bedrooms. Accessibility was prioritized, with ground-floor flats designed for wheelchair users and family-friendly accommodations. Affordability and Integration Supported by various funding mechanisms and land use policies, the project was able to reduce costs and ensure timely completion. One Small Thing collaborated closely with local authorities and funding bodies to secure financial support and navigate planning regulations. The strategic location within a residential community, rather than a remote area, underscores the commitment to integrating residents into society and facilitating access to essential services and amenities. Supportive policies, including expedited development reviews and density bonuses, enabled the delivery of high-quality, affordable housing tailored to residents' needs. Commitment to Sustainability Hope Street is poised to achieve the highest BREEAM 'Outstanding' rating, reflecting One Small Thing's dedication to environmental responsibility. The project features exceptional thermal insulation, air source heat pump technology, maximized natural daylight, and a cross-laminated timber frame, which all contribute to reducing environmental impact. Impact and Future Implications According to Lady Edwina Grosvenor, founder of One Small Thing, Hope Street embodies a commitment to humanity through its mission and design. It provides access to trauma-informed specialists addressing mental health, domestic violence, and substance abuse, along with personalized support programmes. By reducing unnecessary incarceration and minimizing maternal separation, Hope Street aims to prevent crime at its roots and reduce intergenerational trauma. After a twelve-week stay, women can transition to one of the organization’s eleven Hope Houses for continued community support and reintegration. Hope Street illustrates the potential of architecture to play a vital role in healing. By integrating trauma-informed principles into its design, the project offers a replicable model for justice systems worldwide to create spaces that heal rather than harm. As Alex Scott-Whitby noted, “We hear of the architect as being a doctor of space, and this is an example of architecture that is healing people.” This project sets a compelling precedent for future trauma-informed renovation and construction efforts, particularly in supportive housing. By embedding trauma-informed principles into architectural design and service delivery, Hope Street provides a blueprint for creating spaces that support the healing and rehabilitation of vulnerable populations.

In Europe, the push for energy-efficient housing has led to widespread use of financial incentives such as grants, loans, and tax rebates to encourage homeowners to undertake retrofits. These measures aim to reduce energy consumption and improve the environmental performance of residential buildings. Governments across the continent have adopted various programs to support these efforts, offering significant financial aid to make energy-saving improvements more accessible to homeowners. In addition to subsidies, some countries implement energy taxes to further promote efficiency and fund sustainability initiatives. At the European Union level, comprehensive strategies are being developed to enhance the energy efficiency of buildings, including proposals for new regulatory frameworks and financial incentives. This multi-faceted approach reflects a growing recognition of the importance of sustainable housing in achieving broader environmental and economic goals. Subsidisation of housing retrofit, through grants and loans, as well as tax rebates are commonly used across Europe to incentivise the energy-efficient retrofit of the housing stock (Castellazzi et al., 2019). Following this trend, the Dutch government has put in place a series of grants and subsidised loans to incentivise retrofit. First, the “Subsidie Energiebesparing Eigen Huis” is a grant programme covering up to 50% of retrofit costs when at least two energy-saving measures improving EPC levels have been implemented. Dutch homeowners can also apply for the Investment Grant for Sustainable Energy Savings (ISDE) in the case of single measures such as solar boilers or heat pumps (Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy, 2019). Since 2022, 0% interest loans are also available to low-income households from the National Heat Fund. On the stick side of retrofit incentivation, the Netherlands implements a regressive form of carbon taxation on individual households (Maier & Ricci, 2024). Research by the Dutch National Bank has also alluded to the strong impact of energy taxation on lower incomes and the inelasticity of energy consumption. Havlinova et al. (2022) have found that the introduction of stronger forms of energy taxation in heated energy markets can impinge on lower incomes resulting in regressive distributional impacts. At the EU level, the Renovation Wave is actively promoting this approach to housing retrofit through its proposal to include buildings in the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) together with the implementation of retrofit subsidies(2003/87/EC). As a result, while owner-occupied housing is undertaxed, the tax burden on energy consumption at the household level is poised to increase. Retrofit subsidies usually come to join fiscal systems favouring owner occupation. These forms of direct subsidisation of housing retrofit coalesce with increases in the fiscal burden on energy consumption. According to Haffner & Heylen (2011), the housing taxation structure favours owner-occupation with a mortgage through large deductions in income tax. In the Netherlands, imputed rent, the main form of housing taxation is calculated on the basis of a notional rent value and then added onto box 1 which comprises labour income. All other income from investments is taxed under box 3 at a different rate. Haffner & Heylen (2011) have analysed the lack of tax neutrality in this system and propose to include the taxation of housing assets under box 3 as a tax-neutral benchmark. In the context of housing retrofit, the favourable fiscal treatment of homeownership comes to join generous subsidies for owner-occupied housing retrofit with no maximum income threshold offered by the Dutch government. A green tax  is a viable alternative to incentivise retrofit in a more progressive manner. The Dutch approach to incentivising housing retrofits exemplifies a broader European commitment to enhancing energy efficiency through a combination of financial incentives and regulatory measures. While generous subsidies and tax incentives significantly benefit homeowners, particularly those with mortgages, the regressive nature of energy taxation presents challenges for lower-income households. Research indicates that increased energy taxation disproportionately impacts these households, underscoring the need for more progressive solutions. The EU’s Retrofit Wave, along with the proposed inclusion of buildings in the ETS, reflects an ongoing effort to balance these measures. In the context of housing retrofits, a shift towards green taxes could provide a more equitable framework, ensuring that the financial burden and benefits of energy-efficient improvements are more evenly distributed across different income groups.   (This text is an excerpt from : Fernández, A., Haffner, M. & Elsinga, M. Subsidies or green taxes? Evaluating the distributional effects of housing renovation policies among Dutch households. J Hous and the Built Environ (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-024-10118-5 )

  Community-led housing projects The Can70 project exemplifies the significance of community-led housing initiatives, where residents actively participate in the decision making from initiation and planning to development. By engaging in the initial design and subsequent development stages, residents gain a profound sense of ownership. This involvement ensures that the project aligns with the values and aspirations of the dwellers. The community has established a governance structure to facilitate their participation, emphasizing consensus within the general assembly. This structure is composed of five commissions -community, governance, economy, architecture, and external affairs- which play pivotal roles in ensuring effective project management and community engagement. While residents take the lead, they still require resources, public support, and technical assistance to bring the project to fruition. The cooperative Sostre Civic has guided them in navigating legal, economic, and communication aspects with the public sector. This collaborative effort underscores the importance of synergy between community-driven initiatives and external expertise. Care and mutual support The community has recognized the importance of incorporating care and mutual support into their co-living model. Their goal is to live in an environment where their members actively support one another, creating a safety net that enhances well-being and quality of life. Through organized activities, informal interactions, and shared responsibilities, care will become an integral part of their daily lives. This way of living together contrasts with the institutionalization of senior care in nursing homes, which the members of Can70 aimed to avoid. Maintaining their autonomy while being part of a supportive community was a key motivation for the group. A significant aid in researching the connection between housing and care was the two-year effort to write the "Guide of Care in the Coliving of Elderly People." This project was supported by a grant from the Department of Elderly People of the City Council of Barcelona. Initially awarded for one year, the grant was extended for a second year. The group systematically explored what care means to them, and the resulting guide is available for everyone to consult, aiding new groups in similar endeavors. Innovative living forms The project integrates innovative architectural design and spatial distributions. The building features a spectrum of spaces ranging from private to public, enabling residents to utilize them in diverse ways. The publicly accessible areas of the building connect it with the neighbourhood, communal spaces foster socialization among the building’s inhabitants, and semi-private spaces act as thresholds between public and private realms, giving rise to a smaller nuclei of cohabitation within the building. Since residents plan to live there for the rest of their lives, an important decision was to have single-person units, even for couples. In that way, the person who loses a partner will not have to change their living unit and can continue living in their familiar environment. The group incorporated many apartments using the cluster typology, 4-5 private units of 30m² —each with a bathroom, bedroom, and small kitchenette— around a shared space of 50m², equipped with a kitchen, dining area, and small living room. This layout facilitates easier mutual care within smaller groups. It was also decided to include some conventional 45m² apartments for those who prefer less shared living arrangements. Finally, the building includes various communal spaces, including a shared kitchen, a reading area, and a day centre. An important feature is a semi-open communal space on every floor next to the vertical communication areas, enabling residents to socialise on each floor and seamlessly integrating communal spaces throughout the building. Relationship to urban environment The objective of the community has been to create a housing project integrated within the neighbourhood. Since the project is being developed on public land, one requirement of the city council for granting the land to the cooperative was to include public spaces on the ground floor. The group embraced this condition, having already envisioned areas open to the community. The building's ground floor will feature spaces accessible to the public during specific hours, including facilities for physiotherapy, potentially hydrotherapy, a day centre, and care services. Additionally, there will be activities open to the neighbourhood, such as discussions and presentations on well-being and elderly care, as well as storytelling sessions for young children. This approach ensures that the project's social impact extends beyond its residents, fostering social bonds and connections within the local community. Environmental and social sustainability From the outset, the group prioritized the project's environmental sustainability, which was evident in the decisions concerning the building's bioclimatic design, construction system, energy efficiency, and shared resources among residents. In collaboration with the architects, Peris+Toral, they chose compressed earth blocks for construction, a material that maintains a stable internal temperature and minimises the need for mechanical cooling or heating systems, thus reducing the environmental footprint of the building. Initially, the group considered using a wooden construction system (CLT), inspired by projects like La Borda in Barcelona. However, rising material cost of wood necessitated a plan change showcasing the group’s flexibility and commitment to find a sustainable solution. Sustainability is also reflected in the project’s various shared resources. The community plans to share daily meals in the communal dining area on the ground floor. Additionally, the clusters of the housing units will include a shared kitchen for four to five residents living together, allowing them to share groceries and take turns cooking. Furthermore, residents will also share laundry facilities. These decisions collectively enhance the project's overall sustainability and foster a strong sense of community. Societal impact Can70 will achieve a significant societal impact by envisioning and materializing an alternative model for ageing in the community. The group has created a co-housing project based on autonomy and mutual support among residents, demonstrating the crucial role of community participation in all project phases. This innovative approach highlights the benefits of co-living arrangements for the elderly, where shared responsibilities and collective decision-making contribute to a higher quality of life and increased well-being. In addition to providing a successful model for communal living, the project has also contributed to transform the current legal framework. Can70 has been the first senior project to be incorporated under the grant-of-use scheme, setting a precedent for future initiatives of older communities. This legal recognition paves the way for developing similar projects, allowing the scaling up of senior co-housing.

Housing affordability has many interpretations and definitions. Across the European Union, the most common indicator used to measure housing affordability is the price-to-income ratio. According to Eurostat (2023), if a household spends more than forty percent of its disposable income on housing, the household is overburdened with housing costs. Throughout the EU, from 2010 and 2018, the average rate of housing experiencing overburdening rate is approximately ten per cent, although there are significant fluctuations among Member States. Housing affordability is a complex issue influenced by local housing prices and income levels. It cannot be measured on a national level in absolute terms, given the variation in housing costs and incomes across different localities. For instance, housing may be deemed unaffordable in major Croatian cities, whereas it may be more accessible in smaller mainland towns due to a lower demand. Both homeowners and tenants in Croatia are struggling with an excessive burden of housing costs due to their low income and the low energy efficiency of their homes. Furthermore, housing prices are influenced not only by housing supply and demand but also by the cost of financial capital, such as the interest rates. When interest rates are lower and financing is more affordable, both individual and institutional investors are incentivized to invest in real estate, particularly in Croatia where the equity market is underdeveloped, and alternative investment options are limited. This phenomenon contributes to market speculation and drives up housing prices, especially for units designated for short-term renting during tourist seasons rather than long-term rentals. As a result, despite an increase in the supply of housing units, there is no corresponding decrease in housing price level. According to Caturianas et al. (2020), “evidence also shows that secondary property ownership is widely used in many EU Member States as an investment, to supplement absent or low second-tier pension arrangements by those who are inadequately covered by such arrangements.” These developments supported the financialization and commodification of housing markets. What is even more important for countries like Croatia, due to its dependence on tourism, is the following argument: “evidence also shows that foreign investment increases local house prices and reduces the rate of home ownership in the area, especially in places where housing stock reacts more slowly to housing price changes” (Caturianas et al., 2020). The current housing market in Croatia is overheated, as stated by the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB, 2022). One of the main reasons is the state withdrawal from the housing market, leaving it now subjected to speculative investments. Although this has not yet been addressed in the literature, public discourse in Croatia suggests that the housing units currently on the market are priced unrealistically high by sellers and that a price correction is likely in the near future. Therefore, measures to improve housing affordability should not be universal. For example, increased investment in social or public rental housing in the continent's rural towns would not increase the quality of life of residents, thus other solutions must be sought. Given the lack of national housing strategies and top-down approaches, we examine the emerging bottom-up approach of cooperative housing as a possible solution. Collaborative housing in EU One possible direction of housing policy development in Croatia could be towards collaborative housing options. Collaborative housing is an umbrella term for various collective self-organised forms of housing, such as co-housing, cooperatives and other collaborative housing forms (Czischke et al., 2020). What these models share is a strong emphasis on user participation, fostering reciprocal relationships among residents, and promoting mutual respect and solidarity within the community. Financing for these forms usually comes from crowdfunding and alternative financing sources. Often, collaborative housing projects have a target group of residents, e.g. young or the elderly (Czischke, 2018). A housing cooperative is a model where a property is owned and operated by an association, with members of the association residing in it. Members do not own the dwelling outright but instead own a share of the association’s assets and have the right to use one of its properties (Norden, 2024). Usually, the housing cooperatives use resources pooled from future residents and construct housing. In some models, a cooperative owns the buildings, while the land remains under the ownership and oversight of the local government. This arrangement helps prevent market speculation and ensures that the housing units remain affordable over the long term. In times of housing crisis, countries such as Italy, Switzerland, and France promoted cooperative housing as a housing option, thereby giving it credibility and legitimacy. However, Croatia inherited a negative connotation associated with the term cooperative housing from the socialist era and still needs to break away from this dependence. Compared to Western countries where collaborative housing is emerging, it is not well-developed in Central and South-Eastern European countries. The housing market in these countries is characterised by low quality dwellings and poor energy efficiency, with a 20-30% rate of housing deprivation (Pósfai & Jelinek, 2022). However, Pósfai and Jelinek (2022) identify two specific obstacles hindering progress in the cooperative housing sector: (1) loan maturities are too short, and (2) the underdeveloped financial market does not support the expansion of activities. Thus, one potential solution is catalytic capital that would bridge the gap of missing long-term financing. One form of this type of financing is a complementary loan. The enabling institutions must be intermediary organisations that collect and structure capital, which they then lend to the end user, while also supporting them in utilising the investment more effectively. The broad target population for collaborative housing in Central and Eastern European countries primarily includes young people seeking to move out of their parents' home, elderly individuals with low income who live alone, single parents, and tenants facing financial difficulties in paying the rent (Pósfai & Jelinek, 2022). On the other hand, the narrow target group consists of “financially relatively stable, but still unable to solve their housing problems. The potential demand of this group signals a niche in the housing finance market” (Pósfai & Jelinek, 2022). The main goal for this target population is not necessarily homeownership but rather securing stability and affordability in housing. Co-operative housing pilot project in Križevci, Croatia Thus far, the co-operative housing in Croatia is in its infancy, limited to pilot projects aimed at understanding the necessary regulatory and financial frameworks needed for cooperative housing to gain popularity and credibility, particularly within niche markets. The pilot project in the city of Križevci started in 2021 and is a joint project organised by Open Architecture cooperative, cooperative for Ethical Financing, the European cooperative MOBA housing SCE (European Cooperative Society) and the city of Križevci. Over the past five years, these partner organisations have worked together to find a suitable model for cooperative housing in Croatia. The cooperative model in Križevci involves local governments providing land for long-term use through building rights agreements. The main objective of this initiative is to demonstrate the feasibility and necessity of housing cooperatives in the Croatian context, responding to high demand and growing interest from local governments and citizens alike. The housing is being developed on former military facilities. In 2003, the military vacated the site, and by 2007, the municipal administration had taken over management of the area. They transformed it into a high school, a retirement home, a municipal library, a technology park, and an observatory. The city plans to grant the housing cooperative the use of the former barracks for a period of 50-75 years, during which the cooperative will be responsible for investing in its reconstruction. The project aims to provide 36 apartments, 260 metres squared of common areas and 240 metres squared of coworking space. The project has two main objectives: first, to establish the necessary legal, financial and organisational conditions for housing co-operatives in Croatia; and second, to prepare a cooperative pilot project. Through these efforts, the project aimed to lay a foundation for sustainable and community-oriented housing solutions, rooted in co-operative principles and local development. Moreover, the project team developed a proposal for a general model of cooperative housing in Croatia, laying the groundwork for broader implementation across the country. Below is he list of the most important activities and most valuable outputs that were the result of this project. The most important activities undertaken during the project included: - Organising numerous educational events with guests from successful European housing co-operatives - Hosting public presentations and stands on cooperative housing with local and international speakers in cities such as Zagreb, Karlovac, Pula and Zabok - Analysing the current residential property market and the current legal frameworks - Preparing presentation materials outlining the cooperative housing model - Presenting the cooperative housing model to interested parties in various towns, including Koprivnica, Split, Rovinj, Pazin, Labin, Pula, Zagreb, Prelog and Zabok These efforts aimed to educate, engage and inspire stakeholders across Croatia about the benefits and feasibility of cooperative housing, promoting a sustainable and community-oriented approach to housing development. The most important outputs derived from the project were: - Conducting a feasibility study to explore funding options for the reconstruction of the building. - Organising educational and participatory events with interested citizens and future tenants, including six workshops on the following topics:  - Introduction to cooperative housing  - Establishment and operation of housing co-operatives  - Defining the statutes for the housing co-operative  - Participatory design in collaboration with the future tenants and the city in the development of a design and conceptual plan for the residential building These initiatives aim to ensure the successful establishment and sustainable operation of the housing co-operative and involve the future tenants in the planning and design process to create a community-oriented housing solution. In an interview with Goran Jeras, the managing director of the Ethical Finance Cooperative in March 2024, we discussed the primary obstacles to establishing a housing co-operative. He highlighted that one of the main challenges is the short-term nature of available loans, typically lasting two to three years, which are designed for financing projects focused on rapid construction and sale of housing units. To facilitate the development of cooperative housing, Jeras emphasized the importance of local governments providing land or buildings for refurbishment. He proposed that improving conditions for cooperative development could involve creating an institution or organization dedicated to managing and overseeing project financing and implementation. Additionally, Jeras suggested a potential solution from a top-down approach: delaying the payment of VAT (which is twenty-five percent) for construction, thereby reducing the initial project costs.

Strengthening Construction Quality and Knowledge Sharing The City of York's procurement strategy for the Duncombe Square project, as well as other housing sites across the city, focused on two key objectives: ensuring high-quality construction and facilitating knowledge exchange about sustainable building practices. These objectives exemplify the council's commitment to its housing delivery programme. To achieve housing quality, the council engaged a multidisciplinary design team led by the esteemed architect Mikhail Riches, known for his work on Norwich Goldsmith Street and association with the Passivhaus Trust. This team was supported by RICS-accredited project managers, clerks of work, and valuers to uphold stringent standards. The project used two complementary approaches to improve the construction and delivery of large-scale Passivhaus projects in the UK. The first approach involved training to advance sustainable construction skills for existing staff, new hires, and students aged 14 to 19, led by the main contractor, Caddick Construction (Passivhaus Trust, 2022). The second approach is sharing knowledge with a broader audience by organising multiple tours during the different construction phases. These tours were designed for developers, architects, researchers, and housing professionals. They showcased Duncombe Square as an open case study, allowing industry peers to learn from and engage directly with project and site managers, reinforcing the project's role as a model for York’s Housing Delivery Programme. Duncombe Square Housing Design The design principles of the Duncombe Square project aim to integrate functionality and encourage healthy and sustainable lifestyles. The principles embody the essence of Passivhaus design while ensuring aesthetic appeal. It features low-rise, high-density terraced housing to optimise land use and foster a sense of community. The terraces are strategically positioned close together to maximise solar gain during the winter hours of sunlight, ensuring compliance with the rigorous Passivhaus standards while accommodating a maximum number of residences. The design ensures that each home benefits from natural light and heat while aligning with the Passivhaus energy efficiency and ventilation principles. The facade design and colour scheme connect with the local architectural identity of traditional Victorian terraces, with a modern twist that cares for indoor environmental quality. It features high ceilings, thick insulated walls, and a fully airtight construction. The design incorporates traditional materials such as brick, enhanced by modern touches of render and timber shingles that blend harmoniously with the local surroundings. The site plan design reflects a neighbourhood concept that extends beyond the energy-efficient and modern appearance of the houses. Duncombe is designed as a child-friendly neighbourhood, prioritising walking and cycling with dedicated cycle parking for each home. Vehicle parking and circulation are situated along the site's perimeter, ensuring paths are exclusively for pedestrians and play areas. Additionally, shared 'ginnels' provide bike access, enhancing mobility and creating safe play areas for children. This emphasis on pedestrian access enhances community interaction and outdoor activities. The thoughtful landscaping incorporates generous green open spaces at the development's core, complemented by communal growing beds and private planters. These features are intended to be aesthetically pleasing while also encouraging community engagement.   A Construction Adventure For the main contractor, Caddick Construction, this project represents a distinctive adventure - from procurement to construction to Passivhaus standards - that deviates from traditional British construction practices. Recent UK housing developments often employ "Design and Build" contracts, where the contractor assumes primary responsibility for designing and constructing the project. However, the architects led the design process in this case, necessitating frequent collaborative meetings to discuss detailed execution plans. During a site visit to the project site in York in September 2023, the contractor’s site manager explained the challenges of constructing and applying Passivhaus standards on a large scale. Unlike traditional construction, Passivhaus demands meticulous attention to detail to ensure robust airtightness of the building envelope. Moreover, building to these standards involves sending progress images to a Passivhaus certifier, who verifies that each construction step meets the rigorous criteria before approving further progress.   The chosen construction method for this project is off-site timber frame construction combined with brick and roughcast render. Prefabricated timber frames mitigate risks for contractors and expedite the construction process. The homes' superstructure employs timber frame technology, ensuring durability and longevity. A key priority in the construction process is preventing heat loss and moisture infiltration. This involves: Envelope Insulation: Airtightness is crucial for minimising heat loss. Therefore, the façade installation included airtight boards, tapes, membranes, timber frame insulation, and triple-glazed windows. Indoor airtightness is tested at least four times throughout the construction process to guarantee that residents will live in an airtight house. Foundation and Floor Insulation: Three layers of insulation between the floor finishing and foundation prevent heat loss, enhance thermal efficiency, and control moisture penetration, protecting against groundwater leakage.   Households’ Health and Wellbeing Households' health and wellbeing are foundational pillars in the development of the Duncombe Square project. In addition to the robust energy efficiency benefits of Passivhaus standards, this initiative underscores high indoor air quality through Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery (MVHR) units, which improve air quality and help mitigate issues like dampness and mould in airtight houses. To improve outdoor air quality, the design strategically reduces car usage by fostering a pedestrian-friendly environment with expansive green pathways that purify air and encourage outdoor activities. Amenities such as bike sheds with electric charging points and communal "cargo bikes" are also included. Central to the project is a vibrant communal green space that facilitates relaxation, play, and social interactions—vital for mental and physical health. The scheme enhances residents' wellbeing by ensuring proximity to local amenities, promoting a healthier, more active lifestyle without reliance on vehicles. Extensive pedestrian and cycling paths, alongside wheelchair-friendly features, highlight the project's commitment to inclusivity and a healthy living environment. The design harmoniously integrates with local architecture and includes public amenity spaces that prioritise safe, child-friendly areas and places for social gatherings, fostering a strong community spirit.   When compared with the framework for sustainable housing focusing on health and wellbeing developed by Prochorskaite et al., (2016), the Duncombe project excels in incorporating features such as energy efficiency, thermal comfort, indoor air quality, noise prevention, daylight availability, and moisture control. Moreover, it emphasises accessible, quality public green spaces, attractive external views, and facilities encouraging social interaction and environmentally sustainable behaviours. Its compact neighbourhood design, sustainable transportation solutions, proximity to amenities, consideration of environmentally friendly construction materials, and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions perfectly encapsulate the framework's objectives for providing sustainable housing focused on health and wellbeing. Affordability From a housing provider's perspective, the delivery team faced challenges in achieving a net-zero and Passivhaus standard that is affordable and scalable for large housing developments. For instance, construction costs are subject to pricing risks as contractors raise their prices amid market uncertainties, thereby increasing overall project expenses. Integrating Passivhaus principles is believed to have helped control these costs by simplifying building forms and reducing unnecessary complexities. Residents' housing affordability is expected to be positively influenced by three key factors: tenure distribution, adherence to Passivhaus standards, and the development's central location. The tenure distribution includes 20% of units for social rent and 40% for shared ownership, offering affordable options for both renters and prospective homeowners. Passivhaus standards further reduce costs by lowering energy consumption through features like PV panels and energy-efficient air-source heat pumps, earning the development an A rating for energy performance and cutting utility bills for residents. Additionally, the central location decreases mobility-related expenses, with easy access to local amenities reducing the need for car use. Together, these factors help promote a sustainable lifestyle and lower overall living costs for residents.  Sustainability: Environmental, Social, and Economic Lens Environmental sustainability involves two key aspects: (1) reducing resource consumption and (2) minimising emissions during use (Andersen et al., 2020). Duncombe Square's initiatives to reduce resource consumption include: The dwelling's superstructure utilises low-carbon materials, such as FSC (Forest Steward Council) certified timber framing, which ensures it is sourced from sustainable forestry. Using recycled newspaper for insulation to minimise environmental impact. Monitoring the embodied energy of construction materials, including accounting for the energy used in their extraction, production, and transportation. Sourcing 70% of subcontractors and supplies within 30 miles of the site, as per Passivhaus Trust guidelines, to reduce emissions from long-distance transportation. To minimise environmental impact during use, the project incorporates: Air-source heat pumps for heating and solar PV panels on roofs, enabling net-zero carbon energy usage. Water butts for collecting rainwater for gardening purposes. Permeable surfaces, rain gardens, and Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SUDS) to reduce surface runoff in public areas. Economic sustainability is at the forefront of providing affordable, energy-efficient dwellings that do not impose long-term financial burdens on residents. The project offers affordable dwellings in terms of housing costs, non-housing costs, and housing quality. It also contributes to the broader economy by promoting sustainable building practices and creating future jobs through on-site training programmes. Caddick Construction prioritises the local sourcing of subcontractors and suppliers within 30 miles of the site, thereby reducing transportation costs and supporting the local economy. Social sustainability is integral to the project, featuring designs that promote community interaction and provide safe, accessible outdoor spaces. The development includes communal green spaces, such as plant-growing areas and a central green space for natural play, enhancing residents' quality of life. Prioritising pedestrian pathways and extensive cycle storage encourages a shift towards sustainable transport options, reducing reliance on cars and promoting healthier, more active lifestyles.

Efforts to target renovation subsidies, particularly in areas with households at risk of energy poverty, have gained prominence across Europe. However, the way in which policymakers and governments design and implement the targeting process varies greatly. Targeting energy poverty is rather difficult because it is a multifaceted issue and you have to identify which households both have limited means and high needs of energy due to their personal circumstances or the energy inefficiency of their home (Dubois, 2012). This case study zooms in on a peculiar example of such targeting: the Dutch Volkshuisvestingsfonds (VHF), in which national government asks municipalities to proof both that their housing stock is of substandard quality and that these dwellings are located in deprived neighbourhoods. This way, the fund tries to combine boosting the energy transition as well as aiming for ‘levelling up’ targets. Background Recognising the pressing need to address issues of liveability and housing quality, the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations (BZK) initiated the VHF in 2021 (Ministerie van BZK, 2021). The fund’s creation was influenced by rising concerns about housing conditions in socio-economically disadvantaged regions, where private homeowners and investors are facing significant barriers to maintaining and upgrading properties. A possible rationale is to avoid a downward spiral where the physical quality of a neighbourhood declines, prompting middle-income residents with more resources to leave, which in turn further worsens the overall quality of life in the neighbourhood (Andersen, 2002). Consequently, the primary goals of the VHF include the retrofitting of existing housing stock, demolition and reconstruction where necessary, and the enhancement of public spaces in neighbourhoods that are deemed relatively deprived. The fund aims to support private landlords with insufficient financial capacity and to a lesser extent housing associations. Policy design and delivery The VHF's design emphasises a targeted approach, where municipalities must demonstrate the substandard quality of their housing stock and the socio-economic deprivation of these neighbourhoods. Priority is given to urban renewal areas and regions facing population decline (see Figure 1). Municipalities are then allocated resources based on the severity of these conditions. Specific consultancy groups are appointed to assist municipalities in preparing their bids, ensuring that applications are robust and meet the stringent criteria set by the fund. The bid evaluation process involves a detailed scoring system that considers several factors: the extent of housing quality improvement, the anticipated socio-economic benefits, the energy efficiency gains, and the sustainability of the proposed interventions. Once a municipality's bid is approved, the funds are disbursed to the municipality, which then channels the money to the ultimate beneficiaries (hence, primarily private landlords with limited means). These beneficiaries must use the funds for approved renovation projects, with strict monitoring to ensure compliance and prevent misuse. In its first round in 2021, the fund distributed approximately €412.6 million, financing projects aimed at upgrading around 22,000 homes. As of summer 2024, the fourth round is open, now allocating €114 million. One of the unique aspects of the VHF is its dual focus on energy efficiency and socio-economic uplifting. By linking housing improvements with broader ‘levelling up’ goals, the fund addresses both the physical infrastructure and the social dynamics of neighbourhoods. This way, it could be seen as a preventive measure that addresses the risk of self-reinforcing decline in which a neighbourhood’s physical quality degrades, leading to the exodus of middle-income residents. To do this, the VHF employs a data-driven approach to target and allocate funds. Municipalities are required to provide detailed data on housing conditions and socio-economic indicators. This data is used not only to evaluate the bids but also to monitor the progress and impact of the funded projects, which holds the promise of transparency and accountability, making it easier to measure the success of the interventions and to make necessary adjustments. Finally, the VHF encourages collaboration between the national government, municipalities, private firms, private landlords, and other stakeholders, making it a comprehensive public-private endeavour. Challenges in implementation Despite the innovative design and promising objectives, several critiques have emerged regarding its implementation. The official evaluation commissioned by the ministry noted that one significant concern is the high administrative burden placed on municipalities, which makes the application process complex and resource-intensive (Eringfeld et al., 2022). This complexity can disadvantage smaller municipalities or those with less capacity, exacerbating regional inequalities. Additionally, they claim there is a need for a more permanent flow of financial resources to ensure the sustainability of improvements and to fund new projects continually. The report also highlights challenges in measuring the long-term impact of funded projects, particularly concerning socio-economic benefits and energy efficiency gains, necessitating more robust mechanisms for impact assessment. Another critique centres on stakeholder engagement, with some municipalities struggling to involve private landlords and residents effectively in planning and implementation. Regulatory challenges further complicate efficient project execution, particularly compliance with EU state-aid legislation. Moreover, there is concern that subsidising private landlords with public money may have a regressive impact on income and wealth distribution, as it ultimately provides a housing value premium to private landlords (Fernández et al., 2024).

The Broadwater Farm Estate The estate, built in the full swing of modernism, is a paragon of the movement’s defining characteristics. The building density is notably high compared to the surrounding single-family terraced houses. There is a clear separation between vehicles and pedestrians, with platforms and deck accesses. The ensemble comprises twelve high-rise precast concrete blocks and towers, which extend over a public-owned site of 18 hectares, which is unusually large by today’s standards. Facilities were also provided for residents, offering them the essential amenities. Upon completion in the early 1970s, the estate comprised 1,063 flats and was home to between 3,000 and 4,000 residents. As was the case with numerous other modernist housing estates across the country,  Broadwater Farm was significantly affected by the seminal work of  Alice Coleman, Utopia on Trial (1985) on the concept of “defensible space”.  Proponents of this theory posited that design had a deterministic impact on crime rates and social malaise in low-income urban communities. Although Coleman's study faced harsh criticism from academics for its questionable methodology and oversimplification of complex social problems (Cozens & Hillier, 2012; Lees & Warwick, 2022), her recommendations led to the implementation of a multi-million-pound government-funded programme for remedial works in thousands of social housing blocks nationwide; known as the DICE (Design Improvement Controlled Experiment) project. Broadwater Farm was targeted by the programme after it attracted considerable attention following the serious riots that occurred at the estate in 1985 (Stoddard, 2011).  A number of initiatives were undertaken with the objective of regenerating and improving the quality of the built environment, with the earliest works beginning in 1981. Under the DICE project, a significant number of the overpass decks that connected the estate on the first floor were demolished on the grounds that they were conducive to the formation of poorly lit and isolated areas that were facilitating criminal activity and anti-social behaviour (Severs, 2010). In the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, new fire safety regulations and inspections have been introduced, resulting in two blocks of flats being deemed unfit for habitation (BBC, 2022). The Large Panel System (LPS), which was commonly used in the 1960s, has been identified as the primary cause for the demolition of the Tangmere and Northolt blocks due to the significant risk of collapse in the event of a fire. These essential repairs will be part of the largest refurbishment project ever undertaken in the estate. It will comprise a combination of retrofitting, redevelopment and infill, resulting in an increase in the number of housing units and a significant enhancement of the urban layout and public spaces across its 83,000 sq. m.   The Urban Design Framework (UDF) is a comprehensive document that sets out a series of actionable and tangible improvements for the estate. Produced by Karakusevic Carson Architects (2022) and commissioned by the Haringey Borough Council, the UDF serves as a masterplan for the ongoing regeneration of the estate. This document is the result of an extensive stakeholder involvement process. It proposes a series of five urban strategies that, taken together, provide a blueprint for holistic regeneration. These strategies account for the short, medium and long-term development of both the estate and its community. Given the substantial size of the complex, the scale of the surrounding neighbourhood, and the intricate web of relationships within it, long-term planning holds significant importance. These aspects were emphasised through the proposed interventions that enhance the connections between the dwellings and the urban context. The impact of the estate on the surrounding area and the need for a cohesive urban landscape are addressed through designs that integrate the estate into the city fabric, rather than isolating it. The improvement plan includes the construction of new residential units through the redevelopment of the blocks earmarked for demolition and the refurbishment of the remaining blocks. The architectural firm has developed a "bank of projects," a comprehensive repository of proposed interventions arising from engagement with the community as well as a site analysis,  which is organised around five core principles: streets, open spaces, ground floors, character, and homes. Resident engagement The inhabitants were actively involved in the creation of the UDF. A series of community engagement events, held between 2020 and 2021, provided a platform to gather the voices of residents and enabled planners to better understand their aspirations and needs, identify the key improvements required, and initiate the design process that would incorporate their views into the masterplan. This process was complemented by the establishment of the Community Design Group (CDG), formed by residents and community members who not only expressed a desire, but also demonstrated the capacity, to assume a more active role in the design process.  In addition, the council has set up a website that documents and displays the schedule, events, latest news and updates on the ongoing regeneration process. This website provides comprehensive information for residents, the general public, and any interested parties seeking to gain insight into the current status of Broadwater Farm. Placemaking strategy In contrast to pervasive narratives about the flawed design of council estates, the spatial qualities and existing sense of belonging within the community were identified as the starting points for the placemaking strategy. The original configuration of the estate was conceived around community facilities and courtyards, which have been retained, augmented, formalised, and linked by a circuit of pedestrian and cycle paths. The deficiencies of the original design, such as the anonymous and segregated ground floor, have been addressed by establishing a network of public spaces that prioritise human scale and facilitate movement throughout the estate. These new public spaces facilitate social interaction, providing areas of activity complemented by indoor amenities and spaces for local retailers. In this way, the ground level becomes an anchor for diverse activities aimed at enhancing the sense of security. The masterplan revolves around five principles which in turn incorporate a series of strategies: 1. Safe and Healthy Streets: The improved design shifts away from 'streets in the sky' to enhance street accessibility. It promotes intermodal transport with a new bus route into the estate and the addition of cycle lanes. The road network within the estate has been simplified to be more efficient and encourage walking. A "green" street connects key community facilities and green spaces. Overall wayfinding is enhanced through better street lighting, improved block entrances, and designated car-free areas. Part and parcel of reactivating the ground floor is creating opportunities for new activities through a redesign aimed at more efficient parking solutions to meet current needs. 2. Welcoming + Inclusive Open Spaces: Although the estate features several courtyards and open areas, residents have expressed a feeling of being in a “concrete jungle”, as noted in the community brief. The proposed improvements focused on enhancing the existing courtyards to ensure accessibility and facilitate various activities. In addition, a new community park is planned at the heart of the estate as part of the redeveloped area, designed to be a versatile and welcoming space for current and future residents alike. A hierarchy of shared and public spaces has been redesigned to create a seamless transition into and out of the estate. This seamless and unified experience of the public realm is enabled by specific elements such as play areas and seating that allow people of all ages to socialise and interact in an informal yet purposeful manner. Workshops were conducted with specific population groups, including young women and girls or older residents, to ensure that the future estate will be as inclusive as possible. Key topics such as perceived safety in the communal areas, activities and sports facilities, as well as overall design considerations, were discussed during these sessions.  3. Ground Floors with Activity: A significant design flaw in the existing estate was the poorly lit areas adjacent to the garages that dominated the ground floor of the blocks — a common design feature in residential architecture of the time. Residents involved in the process pointed out the importance of increasing the sense of security when moving around these areas. A street-based design that activates the ground floor by enabling a greater variety of activities was central to the strategy. Alongside a clearer street layout and improved block entrances, bike racks, bin storage, and opportunities for non-residential and community uses were proposed to benefit both residents and the wider community. By repurposing areas previously used mainly for car parking into active spaces and by enhancing frontages with residential, commercial or community spaces, clear thresholds and boundaries are created to promote permeability and smooth transitions. Community facilities and local businesses are strategically located at corners and key activity nodes, facilitating passive surveillance and overlooking the public realm. The choice of materials also contributes to opening up the ground level; glazed lobbies and entrances connect indoor communal areas with adjacent outdoor spaces visually. Similarly, secondary entrances to existing blocks will be used to balance their function and prevent the creation of hidden or less frequented areas. Improved public lighting, new signage and a control system complement these strategies.  4. Broadwater Character & Scale: The architectural style known as Brutalism played a significant role in popularising the 'problem estate' narrative in Britain. This style was embraced by many of the country's modernist architects, leading to its prevalence in the social housing built during that period. Characterised by the predominant use of concrete, this style was celebrated by critic and advocate Reyner Banham for its memorable image, a clear exhibition of structure and honest expression of the material (Boughton, 2018). The monumentality and stark aesthetics of Brutalism provided an ideal setting for experimentation in the vast estates that were built during the latter half of the 20th century. These characteristics are evident in the design of Broadwater Farm. Broadwater’s design framework acknowledges the latent potential of the existing architecture while addressing issues of materiality, building height, the links and spatial relationships between the infilled and redeveloped areas and the connection between the estate and its surroundings. The boundaries of the estate were revised to address the issue of it being perceived as an isolated entity, which was a common problem with many modernist estates. This was due to the fact that they were often of a particular size and density, which set them apart from their neighbours. In order to create a seamless transition with the surroundings, clear entrances to the estate are proposed, new materials are used that better match those of the vicinity, and a massing strategy is employed to avoid abrupt transitions in building heights. The character of the estate was approached in a manner reminiscent of Kevin Lynch’s (1964) five elements of the city —paths, edges, districts, nodes and landmarks—, with particular emphasis on their importance in establishing a sense of place and enhancing the legibility of the urban environment. The proposal has engaged in a meticulous study of the local context, re-signifying existing elements such as the Kenley Tower, which has been retained as the tallest mass in the ensemble, in order to maintain its landmark character.     5. Good Quality Homes: The new blocks, arranged in courtyards that reflect the existing pattern of the estate, will replace the Tangmere and Northolt blocks. They will occupy a privileged position at the heart of the estate and offer an opportunity to transform the overall look of the scheme. These new blocks, complemented by infill development on nearby sites, will result in the creation of 294 new residential units, representing a net increase of 85 homes. The new dwellings, comprising three and four-bedroom family homes, will be managed by the council and rented out at social rates. A significant proportion of residents who participated in the public consultation highlighted the necessity for larger and more spacious accommodation, particularly for large families. In response to these demands, the design of the new flats incorporates larger and more flexible spaces as a key feature. Those who previously resided in the demolished blocks will be given priority for the new homes. Furthermore, the introduction of new parks, public spaces, workspaces and a new well-being hub, which will house a doctor's surgery and other services, will help create a more active and dynamic ground floor, with activities that enhance the sense of place and welcome pedestrians. The architects have conducted an analysis of potential infill solutions to activate the ground floor, including the addition of one-bedroom flats that fit into the structural grid of the existing blocks. This in turn addresses the need to create a community that includes people of all ages and family types. Management & Maintenance The UDF exemplifies how regeneration projects can address current needs while allowing for future adaptations. This people-centred project fosters a sense of ownership through participation, which is crucial for the sustainability of the intervention. Stewardship is key, especially for the new collective spaces being created. Instead of a deterministic design approach, the framework considers what types of spaces can enhance the overall quality of life. It integrates social, economic, and environmental aspects that define the living and working experience in the area. These considerations are captured in the “Strategy for a Sustainable Neighbourhood.” The bank of projects is a repository of proposed interventions within the project,  illustrating the considerable interest in the long-term effects of the regeneration project and the substantial potential for future development. This section of the framework underscores the necessity for the formulation of a phased, structured and comprehensive planning and delivery strategy that allows for flexibility and input from existing and future residents. Consequently, management and maintenance are regarded as integral aspects of the design, alongside other tangible elements of the built environment. With an approach strongly focused on creating social value and reducing the disruptive effects of regeneration. The architects have worked with the community to develop a masterplan that emphasises the use of existing assets, minimises demolition and establishes a hierarchy of priorities to maximise the positive impact in the long term.

An economic, social and environmental challenge The architects Marta Peris and José Manuel Toral (P+T) faced the task of developing a proposal for collective housing on a site with social, economic, and environmental challenges. This social housing building won through an architectural competition organised by IMPSOL, a public body responsible for providing affordable housing in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. The block, located in the working-class neighbourhood of Sant Ildefons in Cornellà del Llobregat where the income per capita is €11,550 per year, was constructed on the site of the old Cinema Pisa. Although the cinema had closed down in 2012, the area remained a pivotal point for the community, so the social impact of the new building on the urban fabric and the existing community was of paramount importance. The competition was won in 2017 and the housing was constructed between 2018 and 2020. The building, comprised of 85 social housing dwellings, covers a surface of 10,000m2 distributed in five floors. Adhering to a stringent budget based on social housing standards, the building offers a variety of dwellings designed to accommodate different household compositions. Family structures are heterogeneous and constantly evolving, with new uses entering the home and intimacy becoming more fluid. In the past, intimacy was primarily associated with a bedroom and its objects, but the concept has become more ambiguous, and now privacy lies in our hands, our phones, and other devices. In response to these emerging lifestyles, the architects envisioned the dwelling as a place to be inhabited in a porous and permeable manner, accommodating these changing needs. This collective housing is organised around a courtyard. The housing units are conceived as a matrix of connected rooms of equal size, 13 m², totalling 114 rooms per floor and 543 rooms in the entire building. Dwellings are formed by the addition of 5 or 6 rooms, resulting in 18 dwellings per floor, which benefit from cross ventilation and the absence of internal corridors. While the use of mass timber as an element of the construction was not a requisite of the competition, the architects opted to incorporate this material to enhance the building's degree of industrialisation. A wooden structure supports the building, made of 8,300 m² of timber from the Basque Country. The use of timber would improve construction quality and precision, reduce execution times, and significantly lower CO2 emissions. De-hierarchisation of housing layouts The project is conceived from the inside out, emphasising the development of rooms over the aggregation of dwellings. Inspired by the Japanese room of eight tatamis and its underlying philosophy, the architects aimed for adaptability through neutrality. In the Japanese house, rooms are not named by their specific use but by the tatami count, which is related to the human scale (90 x 180 cm). These polyvalent rooms are often connected on all four sides, creating great porosity and a fluidity of movement between them. The Japanese term ma has a similar meaning to room, but it transcends space by incorporating time as well. This concept highlights the neutrality of the Japanese room, which can accommodate different activities at specific times and can be transformed by such uses. Contrary to traditional typologies of social housing in Spain, which often follow the minimum room sizes for a bedroom of 6, 8, and 10 m2 stipulated in building codes, this building adopted more generous room sizes by reducing living room space and omitting corridors. P+T anticipated that new forms of dwelling would decrease the importance of a large living room and room specialisation.  For many decades, watching TV together has been a social activity within families. Increasingly, new devices and technologies are transforming screens into individual sources of entertainment. The architects determined that the minimum size of a room to facilitate ambiguity of use was 3.60 x 3.60m. Moreover, the multiple connections between spaces promote circulation patterns in which the user can wander through the dwelling endlessly. In this way, the rigid grid of the floor plan is transformed into an adaptable layout, allowing for various spatial arrangements and an ‘enfilade’ of rooms that make the space appear larger. Nevertheless, the location of the bathroom and kitchen spaces suggests, rather than imposes, the location of certain uses in their proximities. The open kitchen is located in the central room, acting as a distribution space that replaces the corridors while simultaneously making domestic work visible and challenging gender roles. By undermining the hierarchical relation between primary and secondary rooms and eradicating the hegemony of the living room, the room distribution facilitates adaptability over time through its ambiguity of use. In this case, flexibility is achieved not by movable walls but by generous rooms that can be appropriated in multiple ways, connected or separated, achieving spatial polyvalency. Degrees of porosity to enhance social sustainability The architects believed that to enhance social sustainability, the building should become a support (in the sense of Open Building and Habraken’s theories) that fosters human relations and encounters between neighbours and household members. In this case there was no existing community, so to encourage the creation of such, the inner courtyard becomes the in-between space linking the public and the private realms, and the place from which the residents access to their dwellings. The gabion walls of the courtyard improve the acoustic performance of this semi-private space. P+T promote the idea of a privacy gradient between communal and the private spaces in their projects. In the case of Cornellà, the access to most dwellings from the terraces creates a connection between the communal and the private, suggesting that dwelling entrances act as filters rather than borders. Connecting this terrace to two of the rooms in a dwelling also provides the option for dual access, allowing the independent use of these rooms while favouring long-term adaptability. Inside the dwelling, the omission of corridors and the proliferation of connecting doors between spaces encourage human relationships and makes them indeterminate. This degree of connectedness between spaces and household members is defined by the degree of porosity chosen by the residents. At the same time, the porosity impacts the freedom to appropriate the space, giving greater importance to the furnishing of fixed areas within a space, such as the corners. Reduction as an environmental strategy The short distances defined by the non-hierarchical grid facilitated an optimal structural span for a timber structure. Although, the architects had initially proposed a wall-bearing CLT system, the design was optimised for economic viability by collaborating with timber manufacturers once construction started. This allowed the design team to assess the amount of timber and to research how it could be left visible, seeking to take advantage of all its hygrothermal benefits in the dwellings. It is evident that the greater the distance between structural supports, the more flexible the building is. But the greater this distance, the more material is needed for each structural component, and therefore the greater the environmental footprint. As a result of this collaborative optimisation process, two interior supporting rings were incorporated to the post and beam strategy, which significantly increased the adaptability of the building in the long term as well as halving the amount of timber needed. The façade and stair core continued to use wall-bearing CLT components, bracing the structure against wind and reducing the width of the pillars of the interior structure. The building features galvanised steel connections between columns and girders, ensuring their continuity and facilitating the installation of services through open joints. Additionally, the high degree of industrialisation of the timber components, achieved through computer numerical control (CNC), optimised and ensured precise assembly.  This mechanical connection between components permits the future disassembly if necessary, thereby contributing to a circular economy. To meet acoustic and fire safety requirements, a layer of sand and rockwool was placed on top of the CLT slabs of the flooring, between the timber and the screed, separating the dry and the humid works.  The environmental approach focuses on reducing building layers, drawing inspiration from vernacular architecture. However, unlike traditional building techniques which rely on manual labour, P+T employed prefabricated components to leverage the industry’s precision and reduce work, optimising the use of materials. This reductionist strategy enables them to maximise resources, cut costs, and lower emissions. As a result, the amount of timber actually used in the construction was half the amount proposed in the competition. Moreover, they minimised the number of elements and materials used. For example, an efficient use of folds and geometry eliminated the need for handrails, significantly reducing iron usage and lowering the building's overall carbon footprint. The dwellings in Cornellà have garnered significant interest, receiving 25 awards from national and international organisations since 2021. Frequent visits from industry professionals, developers, architects, tourists and locals, demonstrate how this exemplary building, promoted by a public institution, may lead the way to more public and private developments that push the boundaries of innovation in future housing solutions.

La Lleialtat Santsenca is a community managed municipal facility aiming to the promotion of culture, neighbourhood and cooperation. The space aspires to be a place of reference in the neighbourhood, hosting initiatives and activities open to everyone that promote community life through participation, strengthening the social bonds and creating networks and partnerships (La LLeialtat Santsenca, n.d.).   The historic context The original building, designed by the architect Josep Alemany i Juvé, was constructed in 1928 to host the Cooperativa Obrera La Lleialtat Santsenca, which was founded in 1891 and was one of the oldest working-class cooperatives in the neighbourhood of Sants. The building embodied the spirit of solidarity among the working class and became a hub for social exchange and socio-political activity, housing a food shop, a bakery, a café, a boardroom, small theatre and library, along with storerooms and administrative offices. (From Workers’ Cooperative to Civic Center, the Lleialtat Santsenca Building in Barcelona, n.d.).   During Franco’s regime, the building was expropriated and reopened in 1941 under Falangist management. In 1950 the cooperative was merged with another cooperative called La Flor de Maig and the building was used as a nougat factory -on the ground floor- and dance hall called Bahia -on the first floor-, becoming a musical landmark for the entire city of Barcelona during the 50s and 60s before eventually shut down by the Barcelona City Council in 1988. In December 2009, after years of abandonment, the building was reclaimed by sixty neighbourhood entities, who came together to recover it as a public asset (Somerville, 2020).   The coordination of the neighbourhood groups to reclaim this heritage asset occurred as a result of a long tradition of grassroot movements against urban regeneration plans, especially mobilised in the neighbourhood of Sants, such as the “Save Sants” in the 1970s (originally referred to as “Salvem Sants”). The 2008 crisis yield a renewed wave significantly directed towards the topic of alternative economies through neighbourhood-based associativism  (Somerville, 2020). In this breeding context, the neighbourhood of Sants retained a very active character, aiming to recover iconic, often industrial sites of heritage back to public use and social benefit, reviving the original principles of support and solidarity of the working-class populations.   The building renovation In 2012, BIMSA (Barcelona d’Infraesreuctures Municipals) launched a competition for the renovation of the building, that was won by the architectural studio H-Arquitectes. The renovation was based on three fundamental principles: highlighting the historic value of Lleialtat Santsenca; maintaining and reusing the maximum possible original building and materials; and embracing the collaborative processes driven by neighbourhood organisations of reclaiming and recovering the building. The restoration involved demolishing unusable elements while preserving structural bodies, creating a large central atrium for light, ventilation and visibility and incorporating features for sustainability, such as passive climate control, solar capture and minimal mechanical air conditioning. (Centre Cívic Lleialtat Santsenca 1214 - H ARQUITECTES, n.d.).   The legal context Along with a very active social movement towards associativism, Barcelona has a well-established history of public facilities managed by citizens’ associations. This has been facilitated through public-community collaboration that are established and protected by Article 43 of the “Carta Municipal de Barcelona” which states that:   “Non-profit citizen entities, organizations, and civic associations may exercise municipal competencies or participate on behalf of the City Council in the management of services or facilities whose ownership belongs to other public administrations. The civic management of municipal competencies can be used for activities and services that can be managed indirectly, is always voluntary and not-for-profit, and is awarded by public tender when there are several entities or organizations with identical or similar characteristics.” (Diari Oficial de La Generalitat de Catalunya, Carta Municipal de Barcelona, 1999, p. 219).   The principle of civic management has been further strengthened by the creation of networks of associations throughout Barcelona, such as the Plataforma de Gestió Ciutadana[1], which since 2009 is committed to protect and promote all the associations that manage or aspire to get involved in the management of a public facility. Another network of community-managed spaces is Xarxa D’espais Comunitaris (XEC) that coordinates different projects to promote transparency and mutual support through generating meeting points, training and self-organisation (XES - XEC, n.d.).   The community management Within this context, the space is managed by a nonprofit organisation, called Coordinadora d’Entitats per la Lleialtat Santsenca, consisted of neighbours, associations and collectives of Sants that share the values of cooperation, community action, respect and freedom. The sixty neighbourhood collectives are incorporated according to their scope in three lines of action: neighbourhood, culture and cooperation. The management model follows a democratic and transparent structure that consists of the Fòrum de la Lleialtat, a collective decision-making tool open to all neighbours and local organisations that wish to participate, as well as operating commissions responsible for community action, economic management, technological support, programming, communication and memory (La LLeialtat Santsenca, n.d.).   The services Lleialtat functions as a community center, offering various services organised from and in response to local needs. To begin with, the space itself is offered to neighbourhood collectives, either for regular use, in the annual cost of 50€, or for the organisation of special events, such as gatherings, celebrations and concerts, in an affordable cost. The flexibility and adaptability of the space makes it suitable to accommodate any kind of activity. The available spaces offered to the collectives include open-plan and multi-purpose rooms equipped with sound protection, seating and tables, lighting and presentation equipment; a big atrium that serves as an exhibition space as well as the seating area of the Lleialtat café; meeting rooms; a computer room; an auditorium; a terrace; a dance room; (La Lleialtat Santsenca, 2020) and a sustainable mobility vehicle (La LLeialtat Santsenca, n.d.).   As far as the individual neighbours are concerned, the space offers a café, a computer support space, a bank of resources, as well as the daily program organised by the collectives, such as art classes, theatre courses, dance lessons, guided tours, exhibitions and presentations, along with projects for sustainable consumption (La LLeialtat Santsenca, n.d.).   ---------- [1] See https://casaorlandai.cat/lassociacio/gestio-ciutadana/plataforma-de-gestio-ciutadana/

South Yorkshire Housing Association manages 6,000 homes to provide social and affordable rent housing for over 10,000 residents (SYHA, n.d.). The housing association is helping to lead the way in less conventional construction methods, utilising industrialised construction to deliver a portion of its homes. As a founding member of the Off Site Homes Alliance (OSHA, n.d.), SYHA is also part a framework and network of registered housing providers, local authorities, contractors, and strategic partners, dedicated to delivering high-quality, affordable housing produced using both 2D panelised and 3D volumetric approaches. The two semi-detached WikiHouses, with an approximate floor area of 70m², are situated in Sheffield, close to the city centre. They were delivered in collaboration with product design providers Open Systems Lab, architects Architecture 00, engineers Momentum, manufacturers Chop Shop, and assembly and installation were carried out by Castle Building Services supported by Mascot Management. The project is not only exemplary in reducing embodied energy in housing but also proves to be energy efficient, having earned runner-up in the Ashden Awards for Energy Innovation. Design WikiHouse aims to democratise housing with the creation of standardised and open-source designs incorporating industrialised construction, based on foundational principles such interoperability and a lean approach inspired by the Toyota Production System (WikiHouse, n.d.-a). WikiHouse provided SYHA with a “jigsaw of pieces” in the form of panelised components designed to be assembled around a framing system. The system was made from simple plywood construction, with no need for steel due to the proposed low building height. Timber is not only ideal for buildability and deconstruct-ability as a lightweight material, but it also possesses carbon sequestering properties. It should be noted the open-source product can be limiting for some adopters of WikiHouse as additional design, construction and installation services are not included. SYHA therefore needed to fill the gap between the product and delivery to their end-users. Manufacturing WikiHouse products lend themselves to self-build construction or utilisation of ‘micro’ factories. SYHA’s pilot used localised construction to manufacture the plywood frame using digital files, cut by CNC machining company ‘Chop Shop’, located just 1 mile from the site (Plowden, 2020). Cutting the pieces was a fast and efficient process, which was designed to minimise material waste. Chop Shop also assisted by storing the building parts until the site was ready for assembly due to the lack of on-site storage space. WikiHouse seems to be well suited to manufacture by a distributed network of small manufacturers. However, according to SYHA, there is potential for scalability with larger housing association schemes in future. In addition, the production strategy is ideal to unlock small, tricky sites within the housing association’s portfolio, facilitating the production of high-quality housing with high circularity potential. Transport and assembly The dimensions of the timber frames were small enough to be delivered to site using a transit van rather than a larger lorry, which proved to be more manageable and cost effective. Once on site, the prefabricated building parts were assembled “like a jigsaw” using a step-by-step manual, although SYHA felt the instructions could be enhanced in the future to improve delivery by a range of stakeholders (Plowden, 2020). The project programme was much shorter compared to a traditional build, the first home was manufactured and assembled in under a month. This process was even faster for the second home due to the experience gained from the first home, highlighting potential to improve efficiency for larger schemes in the future. As prefabrication and assembly are still unconventional, the transition between these processes may present additional complexity for the stakeholders involved compared to a traditional build. In the case of SYHA’s WikiHouse, Miranda found “the manufacturer saw its job as providing the cut pieces for the installer to install, they didn't appreciate that they were part of a manufacturing process with the installer”. She went on to highlight that manufacturers and installers are typically separate parties in the UK, with installers often being main contractors who aren’t used to off-site methods. The team also had to overcome issues with unexpected ground conditions which hadn’t been included within the original site survey, though this was unrelated to the construction system used. Building performance SYHA’s WikiHouse homes have so far proven to be warm and energy efficient, resulting in low energy bills for residents, owing to the high-level of insulation within the plywood structure and panelling. The building strategy ensures easy maintenance and access during the use phase without disturbing residents. This was achieved by incorporating exterior services coupled with dry construction techniques. As a result of their involvement in the whole process, SYHA is able to effectively manage disassembly for future maintenance and potential adaptations, as their Home Maintenance Team were able to observe how the WikiHouses were assembled. Legal Providing the design and detailing are correctly implemented, meeting UK building regulations is not an issue with the WikiHouse system, which claims its products will exceed the requirements of UK building regulations (WikiHouse, n.d.-b). However, it proved more difficult to obtain the building warranty for the SYHA pilot. All new products need to be warranted, which requires warranters to inspect the whole building process to guarantee the necessary requirements are met. SYHA’s WikiHouse utilised the Buildoffsite Property Assurance Scheme (BOPAS) (n.d.), which is a specialist warranty provider for buildings using industrialised construction, referred to as Modern Method of Construction (MMC) in the UK. Homes with BOPAS accreditation are readily mortgageable for a minimum of 60 years. Financial Using an off-site approach can be financially advantageous, as more time is invested upfront to plan, design, and manufacture. This shortens the time spent on-site and therefore reduces preliminary costs for the operation of the construction site. Although the project benefitted from a shortened timeline due to the industrialised approach, the WikiHouse system ultimately proved to be more expensive than a traditional build. According to Miranda, the cost of the completed homes was approximately 33% higher than a traditional build but she estimates if they were to build using WikiHouse again - taking on-board lessons learnt - the premium would reduce to 12% (Plowden, 2020). However, there is hope for the WikiHouse system to become a more financially competitive alternative to traditional build in the future. For this to happen, Miranda suggests improving efficiency of the assembly process, particularly with faster utility connections. Additional financial viability could also be achieved if the system were to be applied to larger sites. In regard to a life cycle costing approach, Miranda believes it is too early for SYHA to say whether the WikiHouse pilot will prove to be cheaper than a traditional build in the long-term.

The review of this case study is structured to address aspects of architectural design, construction approach, and sustainability integration. The analysis draws on a range of data sources, including project design and access statements, sustainability statements, design drawings, planning applications, associated communications and archival records obtained from the planners, public records and the London Borough of Lambeth planning portal.   1. Design statement The project site stretches to approximately 0.86 hectares, 84 residential units at a density of 215 dwellings per hectare are planned to be housed on the site. The surrounding areas are characterised by the prevalence of historic conservation areas. The site is located on the western side of the Cotton Garden Estate and is known for its public park and distinctive 22-storey Ebenezer, Hurley and Fairford towers. To the north is the Walcot Road Conservation Area with its three-storey terraced houses. To the east is Renfrew Roadside, which contains several listed buildings, including the Magistrates Court, the former Lambeth Fire Station and Workhouse (later converted to Lambeth Hospital) and what is now The Cinema Museum (Mae, 2017). Figure 1 illustrates the location of the project within the urban fabric of London. In response to the unique characteristics and features of the site, the design team developed a comprehensive strategy to integrate the development. Firstly, the scale and massing have been carefully balanced in order to harmonize with the surrounding area. This is achieved through   the use of graduated massing and a deliberate emphasis on the incorporation of open spaces and parks (Mae, 2017). Secondly, the existing transport and vehicular access has been maintained to avoid creating new routes.  Thirdly, a car-free zone has been established, with the number of parking spaces on the site limited to eight, exclusively for residential units. Additionally, a number of bicycle parking bays have been installed to provide secure and convenient storage for cyclists. Fourthly, the "The Walk" concept has been implemented, offering a pedestrian route designed with human needs in mind, in an aim to promote connectivity between the site, parks, buildings, and existing public areas. This includes creating gateways and landmarks to enhance the sense of procession along the footpaths. Moreover, a balanced integration of soft and hard landscape elements was pursued to foster a sense of cohesive connectivity while preserving the site's architectural heritage (Mae, 2017). Figure 2 provides a comparative visual representation of the former site against the proposed design.   Figure 2 provides a comparative visual representation of the former site against the proposed design for Knight’s Walk. From a typological perspective, a total of 84 units have been developed, ranging in size from 54 square metres for the smallest units to 90 square metres for the largest. Phase one comprises 16 flats, including 10 one-bedroom flats, three two-bedroom flats and three three-bedroom flats. In contrast, phase two offers a broader choice with 15 one-bedroom flats, 38 two-bedroom flats and 15 three-bedroom flats. With regard to architectural design, three key design considerations were identified as being of particular importance (HDA, 2022; Mae, 2017). The primary concern was the accessibility of the site for its residents, with particular attention paid to the needs of senior citizens and those with special requirements. This emphasis is particularly pronounced in Phase One, where the majority of units have been designed to meet both the Building Regulations Part M (which provides guidance on access to and use of buildings, including facilities for disabled occupants and easy movement through a building), and the prescribed national standards for accessible spaces (Mae, 2017). Secondly, the efficient use of space was prioritised, with the use of simple and clean architectural lines to optimise the functionality within each unit and the circulation areas. Thirdly, the well-being of residents was a significant consideration, with each unit featuring a terrace overlooking the surrounding green spaces and parks. The overall distribution of flats in both phases is shown in Figure 3.   2. Construction In terms of construction methods, the project adopts a fabric-first approach that focuses on improving the properties of the building fabric, with the objective of optimising thermal performance, airtightness and moisture management. This approach is intended to reduce the necessity for additional mechanical or technical solutions, thereby achieving enhanced energy efficiency and comfort (Eyre et al., 2023). In addition, project planners have incorporated supplementary measures to improve construction processes (Mae, 2017). These include using a reinforced concrete structure in locations prone to thermal bridging, while avoiding cores as the primary structural support system. Furthermore, a strategy to rationalise the building’s "form factor" ensures a coherent visual progression of the building mass whilst mitigating thermal impacts such as overheating on the overall building envelope. Secondly, a balanced glazing ratio has been implemented to reduce direct thermal impacts, with the additional benefit of providing resistance to thermal mass. The use of light-coloured materials also serves to reduce the heat island effect and thermal conductivity between the exterior and interior of the building. Finally, the use of a cantilevered method, particularly in building extensions, reduces thermal bridging while improving the overall aesthetics of the structures.   ​​​​​​​3. Sustainability and energy Several methods to promote sustainability have been integrated into the building’s envelope. The project follows the three-point model known as the "energy hierarchy", which is based on the principles of "Be Lean", "Be Clean", and "Be Green". “Be Lean” emphasizes the planning and construction of buildings that consume less energy. "Be Clean" focuses on efficiently providing and consuming energy, while "Be Green" aims to meet energy needs through renewable sources (Muralidharan, 2021). 3.1. Energy and carbon strategy In line with energy hierarchy models, the project's energy strategy focuses on the building envelope and incorporates high-performance standards recommended by Passivhaus to optimise building mass and thermal boundaries. In addition, provisions have been made to future-proof the buildings by providing provisional spaces for future connection to planned district and central heating systems. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions centre on establishing accurate baseline emissions using the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP), implementing passive measures such as natural ventilation and high-efficiency appliances, and reducing reliance on fossil fuels for electricity generation through the use of photovoltaic cells as a secondary energy source. As a result, the buildings have achieved a 35 per cent reduction in carbon emissions compared to local regulations and similar developments (Mae, 2017; TGA, 2017). 3.2. Overheating strategy Managing the risk of overheating has become an essential consideration in the design and construction of housing in the UK (Sameni et al., 2015). The quality of the indoor environment in any dwelling, particularly in summer, is vulnerable to excessive solar heat gain which is accentuated by the lack of rapid ventilation measures. To mitigate these challenges, the project's overheating strategy minimises internal heat generation through energy-efficient design and reduces heat gain through careful orientation, shading, windows, and insulation. Passive ventilation measures, such as natural cross-ventilation and fixed external shading, are also utilised. In addition, primary heating pipework is carefully planned to minimise losses, particularly when installed within the dwellings (TGA, 2017). 3.3. Policy and standards The project has been developed in accordance with a complex network of interrelated policies and standards at the national, regional and local levels, in addition to mandatory national sustainability guidelines. Notably, Building Regulations Part L, which sets out specific requirements for insulation, heating systems, ventilation and fuel use, and aim to reduce carbon emissions by 31 per cent compared to those of previous regulations. Knight's Walk introduced a new layer of mandatory requirements, designated as "regional" guidelines. These guidelines are specific to the Greater London area and serve as a reference for all developments. In addition to fulfilling the national and regional regulations, the project had to comply with the requirements set forth by the local councils. Furthermore, the developer's requirements, known as Lambeth's Housing Design Standards function as a clarifying framework, outlining the pertinent policies at the national and regional levels. As a result, the project has comfortably achieved an energy rating of B (based on the Standards Assessment Procedure calculations), with the potential to progress to an A rating. The project has developed a multi-level sustainability strategy and architectural language that considers climate, environment, and local needs, focusing on energy and carbon reduction. These strategies include encouraging active travel, increasing biodiversity and implementing adaptations to mitigate the effects of climate change through a drainage strategy and incorporating SuDS and tree planting. In addition, each flat has been fitted with mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, providing a constant supply of fresh, filtered air even when the windows are closed. All apartments are also equipped with energy-saving electrification systems to minimise electricity consumption (HDA, 2022).   ​​​​​​​4. Reflections The section highlights both the successful aspects and the potential areas for improvement identified in the previous sections by addressing the following questions: What methodologies were deployed within Knight’s Walk that can be classified as exemplifying ‘good’ practise? The comprehensive assessments conducted by the designers, covering a wide range of intervention areas, facilitated the formulation of a responsible phasing strategy that mitigated the social, economic, and environmental risks associated with large-scale development projects. The early provision of alternative, well-built housing for tenants who were displaced has fostered robust collaboration between developers, designers, and local communities. The project was developed in accordance with widely recognised accessibility standards, including compliance with Building Regulations Part M. A comprehensive assessment framework was employed to measure the quality of outcomes in line with national, regional, and local policies. In order to facilitate the adoption of improved energy efficiency strategies, consultation was undertaken with specialists versed in Passivhaus design standards. As a result of this consultation, it was determined that no additional standards were required. These strategies included the implementation of passive measures, such as massing, orientation, and material selection, complemented by high-efficiency mechanical ventilation systems, photovoltaic cells, energy-efficient appliances and well-insulated façade designs. As a result, the project achieved a Class B environmental performance during the operational phase and a diminished average national CO₂ emission for residential buildings by 80 per cent. The project's carbon production averaged 0.7 tonnes of CO₂ per year, with primary energy consumption ranging from 42 to 58 kilowatt hours per square metre (kWh/m2) (DLUHC, 2021). What are the potential weaknesses inherent to Knight’s Walk? Notwithstanding the robust practices that were put in place, several risks were identified, particularly in relation to the design approach that was selected. Although the fabric-first approach is regarded as a fundamental tenet of sustainable construction, it has not been without its detractors. A significant concern is the long-term variability in the performance of fabric-first buildings, which is contingent upon factors such as maintenance practices, occupant behaviour and climate fluctuations. Inadequate construction quality or maintenance practices can result in the deterioration of energy efficiency gains over time, underscoring the need for continuous monitoring and maintenance (Eyre et al., 2023). This could consequently result in a considerable increase in operational costs, thereby jeopardising the objective of housing affordability over the long term. Furthermore, buildings with high insulation using the fabric-first approach may be susceptible to overheating during the warmer seasons in certain climates, particularly if passive cooling strategies are inadequately integrated into the design (Eyre et al., 2023). This can lead to additional energy consumption for cooling purposes and counteract efforts to achieve highly efficient energy.

Overview The impetus behind the creation of Baupiloten was the growing concern within German architectural associations about the education offered at architecture faculties. At the turn of this century, architectural education in Germany was severely criticised on the basis of its perceived distance from the “practical necessities of the profession”, with students training only in abstract projects that would never be built (Hofmann, 2004, p. 115). The founder and leader, Susanne Hofmann, has been involved both in practice and academia/research and is a firm believer that intertwining these two pillars offers much broader opportunities for students to learn through direct exposure in reality-based conditions, thus bridging the gap between architectural education and professional practice. In the spirit of restructuring prevalent architectural curricula, the Studienreformprojekt at TU Berlin set forth the following goals, which Baupiloten set to accomplish (Hofmann, 2004, p. 117):        Develop a connection between practice and research-oriented learning through building projects Provide opportunities to explore the interdependences between the design and building process Enhance interdisciplinary connections between the different fields of expertise that can be found in TU Berlin Foster the project motivation and responsibility of students by allowing them to be a part of every stage, from the conception to the construction stages Encourage students to test their ideas in a real, tangible project Participation and atmosphere Participation of non-experts One of the core tenets of Baupiloten is the recognition of user knowledge as equally important to that of the “experts”. Users possess a specific kind of experiential, contextualised expertise on spatial arrangement, which, as Hofmann posits, becomes an invaluable source of information that can only be tapped into through real, active inclusion in the design process (Hofmann, 2019). Therefore, participation becomes a central focus in the Baupiloten approach, creating impactful and meaningful designs whose components can be traced back to the actual needs and desires of the people they design for. While participation has often been criticised on the basis of responsibility and accountability diffusion, superficiality and risks of manipulation and tokenistic practices (Miessen, 2010), Hofmann argues that participation can (1) amplify creativity and invention, both through the multiple perspectives entering the discussion and through the need for creative solutions to facilitate the dialogue (e.g. discussion game design). It can (2) reduce costs and shorten the timeframe, as visions for the desired interventions are jointly shaped, so that time and cost estimations can be measured and planned with fewer amendments during the process. It can (3) promote social cohesion, through the co-existence and interaction of diverse groups. Finally, it can (4) ensure architectural quality of the finished product by securing a clear correspondence between the final design and the user needs (Hofmann, 2018). While the clear-cut binary of “expert” and “layperson” slowly dissolves, flexibility becomes even more crucial when it comes to the role of the architect; facilitating and moderating skills arise as equally crucial during the process, and effective communication becomes the key to a successful process. This does not mean that space design and production should no longer be the core competence of an architect, but rather that it needs to be expanded and renegotiated to fit the needs of a diverse project team (Hofmann, 2019). Therefore, one of the focal questions that Baupiloten seeks to answer is how “can communication between citizens, architects, authorities, business, social movements – everyone – be facilitated without a loss of quality?” (Hofmann, 2018, p. 117) Perception of atmospheres as a means of communication Within Baupiloten, “atmosphere" is understood as the subjective perception of a space's emotional and sensory qualities, which significantly influences user experience. This concept extends beyond mere aesthetics, encompassing the interplay of light, sound, texture, and spatial arrangements to create a cohesive emotional impact. Baupiloten utilises this understanding of atmosphere to facilitate the communication of design intentions and foster a collaborative co-design process. By articulating the desired atmospheric qualities, designers can convey complex ideas and emotions that are otherwise challenging to express through conventional architectural drawings or technical specifications. Atmosphere articulation becomes a central tool in the co-design process, engaging users and stakeholders in the creation of a shared vision for the space. Through workshops, mock-ups, and immersive simulations, participants experience and respond to the proposed atmospheres, providing valuable feedback that informs the design development. This collaborative approach ensures that the final design resonates with users' needs and preferences, creating spaces that are not only functional but also emotionally engaging. By focusing on atmospheres, Baupiloten bridges the gap between technical design and human experience, fostering a more inclusive and participatory design process that enhances the overall quality and impact of the built environment (Hofmann, 2019). Methodology and learning objectives Methodology Baupiloten follows a 4-stage methodology aimed at kickstarting the dialogue and subsequent collaborative design process among participating stakeholders (Hofmann, 2018): Team-building: raising awareness and building a common ground for communication through dialogue and other interactive activities. Users’ everyday life: observing and recording daily activities. “Wunschforschung”: researching the needs and desires of the users in a systematic manner. Feedback: optimising the design according to comments received by the participants. This methodology includes three broad, equally important categories of participating stakeholders: Users: the “citizen experts”, bringing the knowledge of the everyday life to the table Clients: the individuals or entities who commission the project and define the financial constraints that the design and construction must adhere to. Architects: professionals and experts whose role is to facilitate and moderate the interactions, optimising their level of involvement to meet the process’s requirements. Projects begin with students developing parallel designs. After a few weeks, the ideas are scrutinised to identify which concepts should be further refined, and students proceed to create and discuss various versions, ultimately selecting the final concept. Once a project is deemed convincing, it is divided into distinct packages for each student to develop independently. These design packages are intended to be sufficiently challenging yet comprehensible enough for the students to carry out successfully. Overall, projects are divided by planning stages, potentially spanning through multiple semesters, and their schedule is aligned with the academic year to ensure professional management and relevance to real-world contexts. Instead of presenting related topics and themes as abstracted theory within the project (e.g. building regulations, lighting design principles, structural engineering, etc.), students are encouraged to learn experientially, through on-demand contextualising knowledge from related fields and topics as they progress on the project at hand (Hofmann, 2004). Learning objectives The learning objectives are separated into two main categories, as follows (Hofmann, 2004): Fostering professional competences related to the different stages of a project Developing design skills Training in designing from concept to construction detail Learning about cost-calculation and budgeting Developing self-reflexive and assessment skills and methods Enhancing interpersonal, communication and teamwork-related skills Cultivating management skills Learning how to interact with the various stakeholders involved in a project (clients, public authorities, craftsmen, manufacturers and building contractors) Learning how to prepare and give effective presentations Training in performing at and leading client meetings Notable projects Erika Mann Elementary School (or “the snuffle of the silver dragon”) The Erika Mann Elementary School in the Wedding area of Berlin. When the phase 1 of the project was initiated (2003), Wedding had a high unemployment rate and a significant migrant population from non-German-speaking backgrounds. Baupiloten was tasked with initiating a collaborative design process, aiming to enhance the school premises with additional learning and living environments. The aim was to improve the quality of life within the school and make it an important hub for the whole neighbourhood. Operating under the principle of “Form follows kids’ fiction”, the school students engaged with Baupiloten students and tutors in a series of design workshops spanning two phases: the first taking place in 2003 and the second in 2008, following the extension of the school’s operating hours to all-day. These workshops resulted in a proposal featuring a series of interventions designed to contrast the rigidness of the school’s hallways by creating “fantastical and poetic worlds, culminating in the fictive "Snuffle of the Silver Dragon"”(ArchDaily, 2009). Kotti 3000 Kotti 3000 (alternatively, Neighbourhood 3000), is an interview tool and game specifically designed to encourage participation from people, such as migrants, whose voices, opinions and desires are often overlooked. In this game, the players begin with a map of the neighbourhood. Through discussion and interaction, they can place a wide range of pictogram stickers on it. Each pictogram represents a type of urban equipment or function and “costs” a varying amount of points (e.g. cinema=300 points, vegetable garden=100 points). The overarching goal is to collaboratively “spend” the 3,000 points available to the participants on different types of interventions based on their needs and desires (Baupiloten, n.d.; Khafif, 2024).

Innovative aspects of the housing design/building The Deep Energy Retrofit (DER) involves four blocks with new lifts, ground floor apartments made wheelchair accessible, 81 one-to-four-bedroom flats, double glazed windows with aluminium frames and trickle vents, and re-opening closed balconies as private outdoor spaces for residents. A ground source heat pump acts as a collective heater via 200m deep piping in 25 boreholes distributing heat to each home through individual Kensa ‘shoeboxes’. The ventilation, heating, and thermal performance were designed together to allow each strategy to complement the other: insulation depth was limited, the ground source heat pump has a certain performance, and walls were made airtight. The landscaping includes a new communal garden, natural stone hard landscaping, and soft landscaping that directs rainwater to the garden. A play trail will wind through the estate, transforming the spaces between building entrances into inviting, people-friendly areas. These will feature new trees, attractive landscaping, and enhanced facilities for bin and bike storage. The sunken garden has been updated and is a focal point for communal activity and respite. New cycle infrastructure also aims to encourage an increase in cycling as transportation. The estate office boasts a sedum roof and will be used by maintenance staff and whenever housing officers require offices on site. Construction characteristics, materials and processes The DER occurred while the four buildings were unoccupied. Floor plans were amended to accommodate new lifts and a greater household mix. The construction system adds the following to existing brick masonry walls: 50mm wood fibre internal insulation; 5mm reinforced lime plaster coat; double glazed windows with timber frames, aluminium fascia, and trickle vents. Where closed balconies existed, these were opened to provide some private outdoor space. Where they did not exist, prefabricated external metal balconies were fixed to the façade. The maintenance regeneration was retrofitted with residents in situ with external façades designed to look identical to the DER. While it was preferable not to move, this was a challenge because residents have had to live with scaffolding for almost 2 years, impacting natural light and noise. During particularly disruptive periods or vulnerabilities, residents could temporarily move into vacant apartments on site. A phased approach was taken, largely block by block, where replacement of kitchens, bathrooms, boilers, and electrics occurred simultaneously on a property-by-property basis. This may mean more tenant disruption but minimises the duration of inconvenience to each home. Window replacements are being undertaken in conjunction with the external works to each block, including roof replacement, lightning conductors, pointing and brickworks repairs, and pest control measures. This maximises utilisation of the scaffold to the block, which represents a significant part of the costs, helping to achieve better value for money overall. Improvements were also made to the communal areas, door entry systems and lifts. The phasing of the 11 occupied blocks was developed to enable the scaffold to be removed in time for the landscaping works to be carried out. Although it was preferable to avoid any relocation, this proved challenging given that residents had to live with the presence of scaffolding for almost two years, which resulted in disruptions to their natural light and noise levels. During periods of particularly disruptive construction activity or when specific vulnerabilities were identified, residents were able to temporarily relocate to vacant apartments on site. The project was delivered in a phased manner, with each block undergoing replacement of kitchens, bathrooms, boilers, and electrics simultaneously. This approach may result in greater disruption for tenants, but it also serves to minimise the overall duration of inconvenience to each residence. To meet Secure by Design (SBD) requirements front doors to each block will have a metal core and timber facades. Existing windowsills are at a height of 990mm. Bars at a height of 1,100mm are, therefore, added to the window internals to adhere to modern building regulations. The fence around the sunken garden will be replaced by a metal fence at a 1,100mm height. Energy performance characteristics The objective of the DER is to enhance energy performance, with a baseline of 208 kWh/m²/year and a predicted reduction of 38% to 111 kWh/m²/year.. The following measures have been taken to improve thermal performance: enhanced airtightness; 50mm wood fibre internal insulation; 5mm reinforced lime plaster coat; double glazed windows with timber frames, aluminium fascia, and trickle vents. A new ground source heat pump with individual ‘shoeboxes’ in each apartment facilitates low and constant heat through large, low service temperature radiators. After six years unoccupied, the DER buildings will become occupied in late 2024. Therefore, the actual improved performance is currently unknown. The maintenance strategy improved energy performance through the following improvements: triple glazed windows with timber frames, aluminium fascia, and trickle vents; brickwork repairs to improve airtightness; adding loft insulation; and replacing boilers with new hybrid boilers. Involvement of users and other stakeholders The DER turned 159 flats, mostly studios and 1-2 bedrooms, into a mix of 81 one-to-four-bedroom flats accessible by lift. This new mix was chosen to meet the demographic needs of existing residents. Residents are integral to the Sutton Estate. Clarion’s regular printed Sutton Estate newsletter, the ‘Chelsea Chat’ was distributed to all homes across the estate in the initial stages of the project and continued until 2021. All back issues are still available online. Through the pre-application design evolution process, two Design Update leaflets, plus a questionnaire, were produced to provide residents with the opportunity to engage. Six interactive events were held throughout the pre-application process, consisting of regular online residents’ workshop, a stakeholder walkabout and a public exhibition. A design steering group was generated from within the residents to discuss designs, gain feedback, and is now used to update on construction and share concerns. For example, there was concern over many households simultaneously cooking and showering at the same time, therefore the strategy was stress tested. Communal events are also a key component to the estate’s philosophy. These include: a resident gardening club; pantomine, monthly senior lunches; trips to the seaside and other housing estates; various training events, such as media and chairing meetings; and outdoor events in the sunken garden, such a fish and chip van. Apprenticeship schemes have been implemented for gardeners, adding further social value. Relationship to Urban Environment Two of the street-facing blocks rent their ground floor to commercial shops and cafés. The residents have been historically integrated into the wider neighbourhood through shared amenities such as laundrettes, and a Tenants Association that previously organised neighbourhood fêtes. With rising costs, however, replacing affordable services with new amenities, the integration of Sutton Estate residents within the wider neighbourhood is diminishing (personal communication, 2024).

In 2003 Urban Centre Bologna was formed to communicate with citizens how the city was changing regarding a new mobility masterplan and other urban planning strategies promoted by the municipality. In 2014, the city council passed the “regulation on public collaboration between citizens and the city for the care and regeneration of urban commons,” which allowed citizens and private organizations to sign collaboration pacts with the city in order to improve public space, green areas, and abandoned buildings. In 2017, Bologna’s government launched a participatory budgeting process, inviting citizens to submit proposals for projects that would engage residents and reimagine the urban commons (Cities of Service, 2024). As an evolution of these efforts, the Fondazione per l’Innovazione Urbana (FIU) was founded by the city of Bologna to promote "relationships between local government, universities, firms, the tertiary sector and citizens" (FIU, 2024). The goal has been to produce better communication instruments and to foster social equity, cultural innovation and the transition to climate neutrality by identifying the most effective methodologies for citizen participation in local urban regeneration stratefies. The FIU uses different tools to foster citizen participation and collaboration with other local stakeholders and academic/research organisations in decision-making processes. It is structured by different research centres and departments working with the underlying regulatory framework titled the Urban Innovation Plan, linked with the Participatory Budget, which connects public policy with collaborative governance/co-production methods.       By using the Urban Living Lab methodoly, the aim was to stimulate and guide experimentation and innovation projects in the regeneration of spaces and buildings of public interest. The FIU organised District Laboratories (FIU, 2024) and used participation and co-production to reveal priorities and lead to participatory budgeting for making improvements to public spaces, organising events to accompany and strengthen the transformation of public spaces, collaboratively and based on local needs (D’alena et al., 2018). For the year 2023, the city provided a budget of three million euros (five hundred thousand euros per neighbourhood) to fund the proposals born out of the visions of active citizens. Proposals were submitted online or at neighbourhood workshops scheduled in the evenings on specific days. After this first stage, the co-design phase finalised the proposals with the support of municipal technical staff and finally the voting phase outlined the six winning projects to be undertaken (Bologna Comune, 2024). The proposals include cultural, artistic and material interventions for regeneration of urban spaces, the enhancement of green areas or public gardens and in general to promote the right to urban public spaces which are open and collaborative. In this strategic experiment pioneered by the city of Bologna, the principles of the urban commons are able to be institutionalised by political advocacy groups and active citizens who are grounded in the territory of their respective community, while also able to reach the level of municipal process. This has been possible due to the municipality guaranteeing the conditions for intermediaries to have access to several financing tools that facilitate network building opportunities and the up-scaling of local actions.

Background The soaring housing shortage in the Netherlands has prompted national and local governments to come up with innovative solutions to cater for the ever-increasing demand. The Flexwonen model is a response to the need to provide homes quickly and to foster circularity and innovation in the construction sector. The model is crafted to meet the housing needs of people who cannot simply wait for the lengthy process of conventional housing developments or cannot afford to remain on the endless waiting list to be allocated a home. Flexibility is its main characteristic. This is reflected not only in the design and construction features of the housing buildings, but also in the regulatory frameworks that make them possible. The faster the units are built and delivered, the greater the impact on people’s lives. This dynamic approach, which adapts to existing and evolving circumstances of homebuilding, relies on collaboration between stakeholders in the sector to streamline the procurement and building process. All of this is accompanied by an integrated approach to placemaking, exemplified by the partnership with a local social organisation, the involvement of a community builder, the provision of spaces for residents to interact and get to know each other, the project's target groups and the beneficiary selection process. Flexwonen can have a significant impact on municipalities and regions that are severely affected by housing shortages, especially those lacking sufficient land and time to develop traditional housing projects. Due to its temporary nature, homes can be built on land that is not suitable for permanent housing. This streamlines the building process and allows the development of areas that are not currently suitable for housing, both in urban and peri-urban zones. After the initial site permit expires, the homes can be moved to another site and permanently placed there. Recent developments in construction techniques and materials contribute to raising the aesthetic and quality standards of these projects to a level equivalent to that of permanent housing, as the case of Oosterdreef in Nieuw-Vennep demonstrates. Nevertheless, this model, propelled by the government in 2019 with the publication of the guide ‘Get started with flex-housing!’ and the ‘Temporary Housing Acceleration taskforce’ in 2022 (Druta & Fatemidokhtcharook, 2023), is still at an embryonic stage of development. The success of the initiative and its real impact, especially in the long term, remain to be seen. Analogous housing projects have been carried out in other European countries, such as Germany, Italy, and France among others (See references section). Although their objectives and innovative aspects resonate with the ones of Flexwonen in the Netherlands, the nationwide scope of this model, sustained by the commitment and collaboration between national and local governments, social housing providers and contractors, is taking the effects of policy, building and design innovation to another level. Involvement of stakeholders The national government's aim to establish a more dynamic housing supply system, capable of adapting to local, regional or national demand trends in the short-term, has prompted municipalities like Haarlemmermeer to join forces with housing corporations. Together, they venture into the production of housing that can leverage site constraints while contributing to bridging the gap between supply and demand in the region.   Thanks to its innovative, flexible and collaborative nature, the Oosterdreef project was completed in less than a year after the first module was placed on the site. The land, which is owned by the municipality, is subject to environmental restrictions due to the noise pollution caused by its proximity to Schiphol airport, meaning that the construction of permanent housing was not feasible in the short term. Nevertheless, the pressing challenge of providing housing, especially for young people in the region, priced out by the private market, has led the municipality to collaborate with a housing corporation and an architecture firm. Together, they have developed a ‘Kavelpaspoort’ (plot passport), a document that significantly expedites the building process. The plot passport is a comprehensive framework that summarises a series of requirements, restrictions, guidelines and details in a single document, developed in consultation with the various stakeholders involved. Its main purpose is to expedite the construction process. Its various benefits include helping to shorten the time it takes for the project to be approved by the relevant authorities, facilitating the selection of a suitable developer and contractors, and avoiding unforeseen issues during construction. The document is also an effective means of incorporating the voices of relevant stakeholders, including local residents before any work begins on the site. This ensures transparency and participatory decision-making. In Oosterdreef, Ymere, the housing corporation that manages the units, and FARO, the architecture firm commissioned with the design, played pivotal roles in drafting the document in collaboration with the municipality of Haarlemmermeer. Their main objective was to swiftly build houses using innovative construction techniques and to provide much-needed housing on a site that was underused due to land restrictions. Project’s target groups and selection process Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of the model is the diverse group of people it intends to benefit. The target groups of Flexwonen vary according to context and needs, as the municipalities are in charge of establishing their priorities. In the case of Oosterdreef, Ymere and Haarlemmermeer aim for a social mix that not only contributes to solving the housing shortage in the region, but also supports the integration process of the status holders. The selection of status holders, i.e. asylum seekers who have received a residence permit and therefore cannot continue living in the reception centres, who would benefit from the scheme, was carried out in collaboration with the municipality and the housing corporation. As most of these residents did not previously live in the local area, as the central government determines the number of status holders that each municipality must accommodate, the social mix is attained by also including local residents. In this case, they were allocated a flat in the project based on a specific profile, as the flats were designed for single people. The project, which comprises 60 dwellings, is therefore deliberately divided to accommodate 30 of the above-mentioned status holders and 30 locals. In addition, the group of locals was completed with emergency seekers (‘Spoed- zoekers’) and starters. The emphasis that the project's focus on this population swathe emphasises its social function. Emergency seekers are people who are unable to continue living in their homes due to severe hardship, including circumstances that severely affect their physical or mental well-being, and who are otherwise likely to be at risk of homelessness. This includes, for example, victims of domestic violence and eviction, but also people going through a life-changing situation such as divorce. On the other hand, starters, in this project between the ages of 23 and 28, refer to people who long to start on the housing ladder, e.g., recent graduates, young professionals, migrant workers and people who are unable to move from their parental home to independent living due to financial constraints. Finally, local residents interested in the project were asked to submit a letter of motivation explaining how they would contribute to making Oosterdreef a thriving community, in addition to the usual documentation required as part of the process. Thus, a stated willingness to participate in the project was deemed more important than, for example, a place on the waiting list, demonstrating the commitment of the housing corporation and local authorities to creating a community and placemaking. Innovative aspects of the housing design Although this model has been applied to a range of buildings and contexts, from the temporary use of office space to the retrofitting of vacant residential buildings and the use of containers in its early stages of development (which has had a significant bearing on the stigmatisation of the model), one of the most notable features of the government's current approach to scaling up and accelerating the model is its support for the development of innovative construction techniques. The use of factory-built production methods such as prefabricated construction in the form of modules that are later transported to the site to be assembled could help to establish the model as a fully-fledged segment of the housing sector. An example of this is Homes Factory, a 3D module factory based in Breda, which was chosen as the contractor. Prefab construction not only significantly reduces the construction phases, but also makes it easier to relocate the houses when the licence expires after 15 years, which contributes to its flexibility. The architecture firm FARO played a crucial role in shaping the plot passport, which incorporated details on the design and layout of the scheme. The objective was to encourage social interaction through shared indoor and outdoor spaces, organized around two courtyards. These courtyards are partially enclosed by two- and three-storey blocks, featuring deck access with wider-than-usual galleries with benches that offer additional space for the inhabitants to linger. Additionally, facilities such as letterboxes, entrance areas, waste collection points, and covered bicycle parking spaces were strategically placed to foster spontaneous encounters between neighbours. Some spaces, such as the courtyards, were intentionally left unfinished to encourage and enable residents to determine the function that best suits them. This provides an opportunity for residents to get to know each other, integrate, and cultivate a sense of belonging. Within the blocks, the prefab modules consist of two different housing typologies of 32 m2 and 37 m2. One of these units on the ground floor was left unoccupied to be used as a common indoor space. The ‘Huiskamer’ or living room according to its English translation, is strategically located at the heart of the scheme, adjacent to the mailboxes and bicycle parking space. Besides serving as a place for everyone to meet and hold events, it is the place where a community builder interacts and works with the residents on-site. Construction and energy performance characteristics The environmental sustainability of the building was at the top of the project's priorities. Off-site construction methods offer several advantages over traditional techniques, including reduced waste due to precise manufacturing at the factory, efficient material transport, less on-site disruption, shorter construction times and the reusability and circularity of the materials and the units themselves. The choice of bamboo for the façades also contributes to the project's sustainability. Bamboo is a highly renewable and fast-growing material compared to traditional timber, with a low carbon footprint as it absorbs CO2 during growth (linked to embodied carbon). It also has energy-efficient properties, such as good thermal regulation, which leads to lower energy consumption (operational carbon). This is complemented by a heat pump system and solar panels on the roofs of the buildings. “The only thing that is not permanent is the site” This sentiment was shared by many, if not all, individuals involved in the project whom I had the opportunity to interview for this case study. The design qualities of the project meet the standards expected for permanent housing. One of the main challenges faced by projects of this type is the perception, increasingly erroneous, that their temporary nature implies lower quality compared to permanent housing. In this case, the houses were designed and conceived as permanent dwellings, the temporary aspect is only linked to the site. When the 15-year licence expires, the homes will be relocated to another location where they can potentially become permanent. They can also be reassembled in a different configuration if required, a possibility granted by the modular design of the dwellings. Integration with the community The residents were selected with the expectation that they would contribute to building a community and support the permit-holders to better adapt and integrate into the local community and surroundings. Ymere, together with a local social organisation, helps new residents in this process of integration. During the first two years following the completion of the construction phase, concurrent with tenants moving into their new homes, an on-site community builder works with residents to help them forge the social ties that will enable the development of a cohesive and thriving community. The community builder has organised a range of social activities and initiatives in collaboration with the residents in the shared spaces. These include piano lessons, communal meals, sporting activities and ‘de Weggeefkast’, or the giveaway cupboard, a communal pantry aimed at fostering a sense of neighbourly sharing and cooperation.  

Over the last decades, ESG debt issuance, through green, social or sustainability-linked loans and bonds has become increasingly common. Financial markets have hailed the adoption of ESG indicators as a tool to align capital investments with environmental and social goals, such as the decarbonisation of the social housing stock. According to the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI), the green debt market has experienced a 50% growth over the last five years (CBI, 2021). However, the lack of clearly established indicators and objectives has tainted the growth of green finance with a series of high-level scandals and accusations of green-washing, unjustified claims of a company’s green credentials. For example, a fraud investigation by German prosecutors into Deutsche Bank’s asset manager, DWS, has found that ESG factors were not taken into account in a large number of investments despite this being stated in the fund’s prospectus (Reuters, 2022). To curb greenwashing and improve transparency and accountability in green investments, the EU has embarked on an ambitious legislative agenda. This includes the first classification of environmentally sustainable economic activities: the EU Green Taxonomy (Regulation 2020/852). The Taxonomy is directly linked to the European Commission’s decarbonisation strategy, the Renovation Wave (COM (2020) 662), which relies on a combination of private and public finance to secure the investment needed for the decarbonisation of social housing. Energy efficiency targets have become increasingly stringent as the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) and its successive recasts (COM(2021)) have been incorporated into national legislation; see for example the French Loi Climate et Resilience (2021-1104, 2021). Consequently, capital expenses for SHOs are set to increase considerably. For example, in the Netherlands, according to a Housing Europe (2020) report, attaining the 2035 energy efficiency targets set by the Dutch government will cost €116bn. Sustainable finance legislation constitutes an expansion of the financial measures implemented by the EU in recent decades to incentivise energy efficiency standards as well as renovations in the built environment. For more detail on prior EU policies, see Economidou et al. (2020) and Bertoldi et al. (2021). The increased connections between finance and energy performance raise specific questions regarding SHOs’ access to capital markets in light of the shift toward ESG. The rapidly expanding finance literature on green bonds draws from econometric models to explore the links between investors’ preferences and yields (Fama & French, 2007). This body of literature on asset pricing relies on the introduction of non-pecuniary preferences in investors’ utility functions together with returns and risks to explain fluctuations in the equilibrium price of capital. Drawing from a comparison between green and conventional bonds, Hachenberg and Schiereck (2018) find evidence of the former being priced at a premium. Similarly, Zerbib (2019) also shows a low but significant negative yield premium for green bonds resulting from both investors’ environmental preferences and lower risk levels. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (Fatica & Panzica, 2021) documents the dependency of premiums on the issuer with significant estimates for supranational institutions and corporations, but not for financial institutions. While these econometric approaches offer relevant insight into the pricing of green bonds and the incentives for issuers and investors, they do not account for the institutional particularities of social housing, a highly regulated sector usually covered by varying forms of state guarantees and subsidisation (Lawson, 2013). ESG-labelled debt instruments & Related Legislation Throughout the last two decades, the term ESG finance has evolved to include a large number of financial vehicles of which green bonds have become the most popular (Cortellini & Panetta, 2021). In the social housing sector, ESG comprises a broad array of tools from sustainability-linked loans to less conventional forms of finance such as carbon credits. When it comes to bonds, there is a wide variation in the sustainability credentials among the different types. Broadly speaking, green and social bonds are issued under specific ‘use of proceeds’, which means the funds raised must be used to finance projects producing clear environmental or social benefits. The issuance of these types of bonds requires a sustainable finance framework, which is usually assessed by a third party emitting an opinion on its robustness. Sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) are an alternative to ‘use of proceeds’. Funds raised in this manner are not earmarked for sustainable projects, but can be used for general purposes. SLBs are linked to the attainment of certain company-wide Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), for example an average Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of “C” in an SHO’s housing stock. These indicators and objectives usually result in a price premium for Sustainable Bonds, or a rebate in interest rates in the case of SLBs or sustainability-linked loans (SLLs) (Cortellini & Panetta, 2021). While there are international standards for the categorisation of green projects such as the Green Bond Principle or the Climate Bonds Strategy, strict adherence is optional and there are few legally-binding requirements resulting in a large divergence in reporting practices and external auditing. To solve these issues and prevent greenwashing, the EU has been the first regulator to embark on the formulation of a legal framework for green finance through a series of acts targeting the labelling of economic activities, investors, corporations and financial vehicles. First, the EU Green Taxonomy (Regulation (EU) 2020/852) is the cornerstone of this new legislation since it classifies economic activities attending to their alignment with the objectives set in the European Green Deal (EGD). When it comes to housing, the EU Taxonomy requires specific energy efficiency levels for a project to be deemed ‘taxonomy aligned’. Second, the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR) (Regulation (EU) 2019/2088) mandates ESG reporting on funds, which tend to consist of exchange-traded collections of real assets, bonds or stocks. Funds are required to self-classify under article 6 with no sustainability scope, ‘light green’ article 8 which incorporates some sustainability elements, and article 9 ‘dark green’ for funds only investing in sustainability objectives. Under the SFDR, which came into effect in January 2023, fund managers are required to report the proportion of energy inefficient real estate assets as calculated by a specific formula taking into account the proportion of ‘nearly zero-energy building’, ‘primary energy demand’ and ‘energy performance certificate’ (Conrads, 2022). Third, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)(COM(2021) 189) increases disclosure requirements for corporations along Taxonomy lines. This legislation, which came into effect in 2023, will be progressively rolled out starting from larger and listed companies and expanding to a majority of companies this decade. Provisions have been made for charities and non-profits to be exempt. However, one of the key consequences of disclosure requirements over funds through the SFDR is its waterfall effect; that is the imposition of indirect reporting requirements as investors pass-on their reporting responsibilities to their borrowers. Fourth, the proposed EU Green Bonds Standards (EU-GBS) COM(2021) 391 aims to gear bond proceedings toward Taxonomy-aligned projects and increase transparency through detailed reporting and external reviewing by auditors certified by the European Security Markets Authorities (ESMA). The main objectives of these legislative changes is to create additionality, that is, steer new finance into green activities (see Figure 1).   While this new legislation is poised to increase accountability and transparency, it also aims to encourage a better management of environmental risks. According to a recent report on banking supervision by the European Central Bank (ECB), real estate is one of the major sources of risk exposure for the financial sector (ECB, 2022). This includes both physical risks, those resulting from flooding or drought and, more relevant in this case, transitional risks, that is those derived from changes in legislation such as the EPBD and transposing national legislation. The ECB points to the need for a better understanding of risk transmission channels from real estate portfolios into the financial sector through enhanced data collection and better assessments of energy efficiency, renovation costs and investing capacity. At its most extreme, non-compliance with EU regulations could result in premature devaluation and stranded assets (ECB, 2022). In short, the introduction of reporting and oversight mechanisms connects legislation on housing’s built fabric, namely the EPBD, to financial circuits. On the one hand, the EU has been strengthening its requirements vis-à-vis energy efficiency over the last decades. The Energy Efficiency Directive (EED) suggested the introduction of Minimum Energy Performance Standards (MEPS) by Member States (Economidou et al., 2020), a rationale followed by France and the Netherlands for certain segments of the housing stock. Currently, policy-makers are debating on whether the EPBD’s recast (COM/2021/802) should incorporate MEPS and make decarbonisation an obligation for SHOs across the EU. On the other hand, legislation on green finance aims to produce incentives and oversight over investments in energy efficient renovation and new build, mobilising the private sector to cater to green projects (Renovation Wave (COM(2020) 662)). 

“Theory and practice are not only interwoven with one’s culture but with the responsibility of shaping the environment, of breaking up social complacency, and challenging the power of the status quo.” – Sambo Mockbee Overview – The (Hi)Story of Rural Studio Rural Studio is an off-campus, client-driven, design & build & place-based research studio located in the town of Newbern in Hale County in rural Alabama, and part of the curriculum of the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture of Auburn University. It was first conceptualised by Samuel “Sambo” Mockbee and D.K. Ruth as both an answer to the lack of ethical backbone in architectural education and a critique on the separation of theory and practice illustrated through the curriculum (Freear et al., 2013; Jones & Card, 2011). Both of these reasons mirrored and reinforced the way architecture was practised in the professional world in the early 1990s when, following the dominance of post-modernism, US architects were more preoccupied with matters of aesthetics and style, rather than the social and environmental aspects of their work (Oppenheimer Dean, 2002). Mockbee and Ruth aspired to create a learning environment and shape a pedagogy where students would be introduced to a real-world setting, combining theory with hands-on work and at the same time inscribing incremental, positive change on the Hale County underserved communities. This incremental change is enabled by three main factors: (1) Auburn University’s commitment to providing stable financial support to the studio, paired with the various sponsorships that the studio receives from individual benefactors, (2) the broad network of collaborations that have been established over the years including local governing officials, external professional experts and consultants, non-profit organisations, schools, and community groups, among others, and (3) the studio’s permanent presence -and the subsequent accountability this presence fosters- in Hale County. Unlike most design-and-build activities and programmes that adopt a “live” approach (i.e. work with/alongside real stakeholders, in real settings), Rural Studio has continuously implemented various types of projects ranging from housing and parks to community activities (e.g. farming and cooking), with five completed projects per year in Newbern and the broader Hale County area since its launching in 1993 (Freear et al., 2013; Stagg & McGlohn, 2022). Studio structure and learning objectives Within the Rural Studio, there are two distinct design-and-build programmes addressing third-year and fifth-year undergraduate students. As currently designed, the third-year programme primarily focuses on sharpening technical skills and exploring the process of transitioning from paper to the building site. In contrast, the fifth-year programme places greater emphasis on the social and organizational aspects of a project. Students may opt to join the Rural Studio activities either once during their third of fifth year, or twice, after spending their first two years on campus and having acquired a solid foundation in the basic skills of an architect.  Third-year programme The third-year programme accommodates up to 16 students per semester, inviting them to reside and work in Newbern on the construction of a wooden house using platform frame construction. Until 2009, the fall semester focused on design, from conception to technical details, while the spring semester concentrated on construction, culminating in the handover of the completed project to clients or future users. However, several issues called for a profound restructuring, such as the uneven distribution of skills (with students specializing in either design or construction, rarely both), a lack of a continuous knowledge transfer from past to current projects, and students’ limited experience in collaborating with larger teams.    In its current iteration, the third-year programme is dedicated to refining technical skills – such as understanding the structural and natural properties of wood- by implementing an already designed project in phases, while complementing this process with parallel modules on building a knowledge base(Freear et al., 2013; Rural Studio, n.d.). Seminar in aspects of design – students delve deeper in the history of the built environment of the local context, as well as the international history of wooden buildings. “Dessein” – in this furniture-making course, students focus heavily on sharpening their wood-working skills by recreating chairs designed by well-known modernist architects. Fifth-year programme The fifth-year programme consists of up to 12 students, organized into teams of four, who dedicate a full academic year on a community-focused design-and-build project. These projects, collaboratively chosen by the Rural Studio teaching team and local community representatives, ensure alignment with residents’ needs and programmatic suitability for future users. The programme is student-led, requiring participants to engage in client negotiations, manage financial and material resources, and navigate the local socio-political landscape, among other tasks. Projects can be either set up to be concluded within the nine-month academic year or compartmentalized into several phases, spanning several years. In case of the latter, students are invited to stay a second year, overseeing project progress or completion, if they wish, and become mentors to the next group of fifth-year students. Curriculum and learning Outcomes In the Rural studio, “students learn by researching, exploring, observing, questioning, drawing, critiquing, designing, and making” In the Rural studio, “students learn by researching, exploring, observing, questioning, drawing, critiquing, designing, and making” (Freear et al., 2013, p. 34). The annual schedules, or “drumbeats,” as they are called, serve to organise and frame the activities throughout each semester. These activities are designed to enhance the skills and knowledge of students, encompassing technical and practical aspects (such as workshops on building codes, structural engineering, graphic design, and woodworking), theoretical understanding (including lectures and idea exchange sessions with invited experts), and communication skills (involving community presentations and midterm reviews). These activities are conducted in a manner that fosters a team-building approach, with creative elements like the Halloween review conducted in fancy dress, and using food as a unifying element. In terms of learning outcomes, there are four main categories identified*: Analysis & Synthesis (researching, exploring, observing, questioning). Students learn how to identify, analyse and navigate the parameters that can influence a design-and-build process and lay out a course of action taking everything they have identified into account. Design & Construction (drawing, designing, making). Students learn how to navigate a project from conception to construction, and develop a deep understanding of construction technologies, environmental and structural systems, as well as the necessary technical skills to perform relevant tasks. Teamwork & Management (exploring, questioning, critiquing, designing, making). Students learn how to work in large teams, prioritise and allocate tasks, voice their opinion, negotiate, and manage human and material resources. Ethos & Responsibility (observing, questioning, critiquing). Through place-based immersion in the local community over the span of 4 to 9 months, students get a deeper understanding of their own role and responsibility as architects within the local sustainable development, especially in contexts of crises, and learn how to trace and assess the socio-political, financial and environmental factors that influence a project’s lifespan. *author’s own assessment and categorisation, based on relevant readings Context of operations: Hale County, AL Hale County, located in Alabama, is a black, working-class area and ranks as the second poorest county in the state (Oppenheimer Dean & Hursley, 2005). Historically, southern states like Alabama and Mississippi have been either the locus of an aestheticisation of the rural life and traditions of the past, especially in popular culture (Cox, 2011), or regarded as socially “backward”, marked by elevated levels of social tension, including discriminatory, racist and white supremacist attitudes (Bateman, 2023). Since the decline in cotton production, which began shortly after the American Civil War, Hale County has faced increasing precarity, with its the local economy heavily reliant on low-wage agricultural industries, like dairy. Given the predominant home-ownership culture in the USA and insufficient welfare safety-nets, the poorest members of communities like Hale County are grappling with urgent housing and living issues, resulting in a sizeable portion of the population facing homelessness or residing in precarious conditions, such as trailer parks (Freear et al., 2013). Rural Studio provides students from other areas of Alabama and beyond, often hailing from middle-class families, with an opportunity to engage with and be exposed to the harsh realities of a version of the USA they may not have encountered or interacted with before. Notable initiatives and projects 20k House Initiated in 2005, the 20K House programme engage students in the creation of affordable housing prototypes tailored to the needs and financial capacity of prospective clients: 20,000 USD is the rough amount a minimum wage worker in the USA can receive as a mortgage. Beyond the immediate provision of housing, the programme aspires to draw academic interest in “well-designed houses for everyone” (Freear et al., 2013, p. 202). Additionally, the initiative incorporates post-occupancy evaluations as integral components of both the pedagogical approach and the continuous improvement of services provided to the local community. Front Porch Initiative Launched in 2019, this program revolves around the pressing issue of insufficient housing. Its primary goal is to establish an adaptable, scalable, and robust delivery system for high-quality, well-designed homes designated as real property. The design process takes into account the overall costs of homeownership over time, addressing specifically matters of well-being, efficiency and durability. (Rural Studio, n.d.; Stagg & McGlohn, 2022) Rural Studio Farm As part of the Newbern strategic plan, the Rural Studio Farm project seeks to immerse students in the realities of food production, exploring its social, cultural, financial, and environmental implications. Simultaneously, the project addresses the rapid decline in local food production in West Alabama (Freear et al., 2013; Rural Studio, n.d.). 

Context In contemporary Italy, public housing provision follows two main typologies: edilizia residenziale pubblica (ERP) or "public residential housing", with rents determined by law based on residents’ incomes, and edilizia residenziale sociale - (ERS) or "social residential building" offering affordable rents for individuals who do not meet public housing criteria and cannot access housing in the private market (Storto, 2018; Divari, 2019). The ERS rent is capped, and tenants are selected through a public call. Under this typology, there is a specific fund for ERS housing which also serves social networking purposes. Porto 15 belongs to this stream of projects. Project Porto 15 is an ERS development financed through a national call for housing projects from 2015 that aimed to promote housing autonomy for people under 35 by expanding and diversifying the affordable housing provision. The municipality of Bologna was one of the winners of the call.  It initiated the housing project in collaboration with two other public bodies: the municipal welfare service provider and the regional public housing manager. The public institutions’ aim was to address housing demand and promote collaborative living as a desirable housing model among young people. Collaborative housing in Italy is mainly based on private property, long-term investment and selective communities (Rogel, 2018). This category of housing can encompass cohousing, residents’ cooperatives, solidarity condominium and eco-villages, among other. Porto 15 represents a pioneering experiment in collaborative housing, expanding access to it through a public rental scheme. This scheme responds to the co-housing category, by keeping private space to a minimum and complementing it with shared living spaces. In this case, the ‘co’ not only signifies mutual help relationships among tenants but also reflects collective efforts in networking to promote a collaborative housing culture in the neighbourhood (Calastri, 2013).  In the Porto 15 experiment, future residents received 40 hours of training aimed at fostering group cohesion. The selection process entailed studying candidates’ motivations and profiles to create a socially mixed diverse community, including individuals with specific fragilities such as migration background, disability, and integration difficulties. Residents’ origins are diverse, including Syria, Peru, Russia, Spain, Morocco and various regions of Italy. The intention was to extend beyond a self-contained community, selecting individuals based on their motivation to build social ties beyond their homes. Currently, the co-housing accommodates 25 adults and 12 children. Prospective residents were encouraged to establish an association, disseminate the positive implications of the collaborative housing model, and facilitate sense-making processes regarding the values and principles that underpin this type of housing. The housing development occupies a portion of a historic building dating back to 1914 which underwent a renovation to be repurposed as a co-housing facility. It comprises eighteen units, consisting of 9 two-bedroom and 9 three-bedroom apartments, along with a shared apartment and a multipurpose room. The premises also include a courtyard and communal spaces in the basements. Rent is set at a standard rate of seven euros per square meter, approximately 300 euros per month, depending on the apartment size. This stands in stark contrast to the average of eighteen euros per square meter in the private housing market within the central districts of Bologna, a city facing significant housing pressure.   Co-housing and tenant – landlord relations: changing postures? In Italy, recipients of public housing have traditionally been viewed as beneficiaries of either monetary subsidies for rent and bills or public house for living. The prevailing approach by public management perceived these individuals as users with uniform needs, leading to the delivery of standardised services to satisfy them. (Andersen & Pors, 2016). However, a “governance metatrend” (Mortensen et al., 2020) is emerging, fostering a hybridization of roles for service providers and users, encouraging  co-production, capacity-building, and a mutual learning perspective. With Porto 15, the public administration seeks to transform itself into an enabler and a place-maker, striving to create a space for opportunities, not just in physical terms but also socially. This marks a shift in attitude towards public housing residents, who are now actively engaged in creating and collaborating, rather than passively receiving social benefits.  In Porto 15, public bodies are shaping a new social dynamic by adopting a strength-based approach to social welfare (Price et al., 2020). In the final phase of the building renovation, as the group of dwellers was being formed, future residents participated in the co-design of the basements together with the architects. They collectively decided to incorporate a bicycle repair workshop, a shared laundry, communal storage and a music practice room in that space. After the group came together, irregular contact with the public service provider resulted in an interaction based on questions/answers or problem/solution, resembling a landlord-tenant relationship rather than the intended horizontal collaboration.   Paradoxically, this gap created an open space for innovation, allowing the co-housing group to take a proactive role. The group established a self-managed network, which was acknowledged by public authorities.    In its inaugural year, the Porto 15 community engaged with twenty-seven different associations, took part in twenty-one projects (leading one), and organized various public events. All of these initiatives received endorsement from both the municipal welfare service provider and the municipality, serving as showcases for the   collaborative housing model. Notably, the association joined the “European Collaborative Housing Day” in 2022, also hosting activities from local groups in the shared spaces.    Co-housing in the local urban regulation: a transformative impact? Porto 15 played a pivotal role in shaping the first normative definition of co-housing in Bologna, setting an example for the entire country.  While collaborative housing was vaguely mentioned in a 2014 regional law as an “integrated solution for local communities to meet their goals”, the Bologna building code introduced more precise principles for “collaborative and solidarity-based housing”. These principles explicitly aim to prevent speculation and promote environmental sustainability, fostering homogenisation among emerging projects falling under the co-housing label. Households involved in such projects are required to adhere to building and environmental sustainability principles. Additionally, they must actively participate in community actions, engage in the design and management of common spaces, share practices within the neighbourhood, and organize public events. Co-housing offspring in Bologna: a generative effect? The Housing Plan of Bologna incorporates a dedicated section for the development of new “collaborative and solidarity-based” public projects in the city, drawing inspiration from the pilot project of Porto 15. The emergence of second generation co-housing projects started with the Salus Space in 2019, a “collaborative village” funded by the European Union and characterized by a diverse governance model endorsed by the municipality. This new wave of projects aims to forge connections between collaborative housing and various policies, shaping a fresh narrative around collaborative housing. These policies prioritize environmental sustainability, with an upcoming co-housing project focusing on creating the first community energy collective for nearly zero-energy self-consumption in a public building. The second area of intervention emphasizes community building with an intergenerational and intersectional dimension, along with the development of a collaborative condominium. The third planned intervention involves awareness initiatives within co-housing for young people and families,  promoting efforts against organized crime. The overarching goal is to create a lasting inventory of affordable social housing, serving as a social catalyst for the territory.  The residents of Porto 15 plan to contribute to this vision by sharing their expertise with future residents of other collaborative projects. This will involve organizing conferences, extending invitations to shared activities, and participating in events organized by future co-housing groups. Public housing production in Italy faces the challenge of establishing secure financial channels. To achieve this goal, municipalities must devise solutions utilizing a range of financial resources, spanning from European to municipal levels, to ensure the successful development of collaborative housing projects. Looking forward, key strategies will entail incentivizing private investors to invest in social housing development and fostering a reflection on the role of social cooperation in affordable housing provision.

A response to environmental and economic challenges The initiators of Patch22, architect Tom Frantzen and building manager Claus Oussoren, aimed at achieving together what they couldn’t manage in previous commissions independently: an oversized wooden structure characterised by flexibility, distinctive architecture, and a strong commitment to sustainability. They established the development company Lemniskade Projects to pursue their goals (Frantzen et al architecten, 2017). Winning the Amsterdam Buiksloterham Sustainability tender in 2009, Patch22 was not only recognised for its exceptional sustainability scores but also for its innovative circular design approach and its capability to adapt to unforeseen future uses. The project's primary objectives were rooted in environmental sustainability, employing renewable and reusable materials, particularly wood for the main structure and facade. Embracing Open Building principles, Patch22 sought maximum flexibility in dwelling sizes and layouts, offering an ingenious response to the environmental and economic challenges outlined in the tender (Kendall, 2021). The 30-meter-tall wooden structure currently hosts 33 dwellings with diverse sizes ranging from 40 m² to 204 m². The building promotes long-term adaptability, as it is prepared to be easily subdivided into six independent office floors or a maximum of 48 apartments (Frantzen, 2023). This showcases how a single support structure can serve multiple generations, accommodating the dynamic needs of its users while addressing some of the current environmental challenges such as material waste, the construction industry’s carbon footprint or the implementation of design for disassembly practices.     A flexible and adaptable building A flexibility of a building can be enhanced when traditional architectural elements are reassessed. Various strategies were employed to maximize the adaptability of use, layout design, and apartment sizes: No load-bearing division walls The timber laminated post and beam structure, in combination with lightweight division walls, became crucial to ensure size variations between apartments and a greater freedom of choice in defining the layouts. Additionally, by superimposing the residential and office regulations, introducing a generous floor height of 4 m, and structurally supporting floor loads of 4 KN, the building accommodates the potential for entirely or partially utilising residential spaces for office purposes (Frantzen et al architecten, 2017). No vertical shafts inside the apartment In conventional housing, meter cabinets, kitchens, and bathrooms have typically been constructed near vertical shafts to minimise the length of the drains. When developing Patch22, it was unknown which units would merge to form a single apartment, making it challenging to position the vertical shafts. Two shafts were integrated into the structural core, with pre-installed drains, water and electricity conduits running up to each front door, from where they could be extended to the desired location in an apartment (Council on Open Building, 2023). Hollow floors to run services horizontally Patch22 adopts a horizontal services distribution, a common practice in office buildings. The necessary inclination of a toilet drain from the central shaft to the outermost corner of the building results in a floor build-up increase to 50cm. This available space for conduits enables the placement of kitchens and bathrooms anywhere within the dwelling. This departure from the traditional clustering of humid spaces in residential buildings facilitates the creation of multiple floor layouts that respond to the users’ needs. No meters inside the apartment By relocating the heavily regulated meters and main switches to the ground floor and placing the non-regulated secondary fuse boxes at each level, Patch22 provides open spaces which can be subdivided in multiple ways (Frantzen, 2023). The independence of the meters from the dwellings streamlines future adaptations with minimal disruptions to the individual living spaces. Smaller subdivision of legal entities From a technical perspective, designing a flexible and adaptable building is feasible. But it is also necessary to provide the legal mechanisms that make it possible. In the case of Patch22, each floor contains 8 legal units that can be combined horizontally or vertically (Frantzen, 2023). Although, in its current state, most floors have 3-6 dwellings per flight, these legal units could be divided or merged, sold, or rented independently, used as office or as residential spaces. Designing for the unknown Embracing the philosophy advocated by Habraken (OpenBuilding.co, 2023), Patch22 prioritises designing for the unknown. Strategies include over-dimensioning the structure, simultaneous compliance with diverse regulations for different uses, incorporating extra entrance doors, and providing space for additional mailboxes. These approaches keep the design open for future changes, ensuring long-term adaptability.     A sustainable proposal Patch22 embodies sustainability across multiple dimensions.  Environmentally, the building achieves sustainability through a series of strategies: improving energy efficiency, using renewable materials, and fostering layout flexibility. The 2009 design garnered a GPR score of 8.9 and an EPC of 0.2, showcasing its commitment to sustainable practices. The roof, covered with photovoltaic panels, makes the building energy-neutral, while the rainwater collection feeds into a grey water system. The adoption of CO2-neutral pellet stoves, utilising compressed waste wood as fuel, further underlines Patch22’s commitment to eco-friendly energy sources (Frantzen et al architecten, 2017). Despite the challenges posed by fire and acoustic regulations, the building boldly features wood as its main material, with additional thickness added to columns and beams to comply with safety standards. This decision, although increasing costs, remains more economical than the alternative solution of building with 2D CLT panels (Frantzen, 2023). Additionally, the emphasis on long-term layout flexibility aligns with environmental sustainability by reducing waste during future adaptations and facilitating component disassembly. From a social standpoint, involving residents in the design process fostered diversity and strengthened the sense of belonging. Finally, the economic sustainability of Patch22 is evident in its adaptable support, serving as a long-term investment that evolves with changing needs, potentially acquiring different uses over time, benefitting both the planet and the economic interests of its users. Construction characteristics The support components, encompassing the structure, façade, and core of Patch22, are highly prefabricated, facilitating a swift and precise assembly process on-site while minimising waste and reducing disruptions. The structure incorporates over-dimensioned laminated wooden beams and columns, along with vertical core constructed with prefabricated concrete panels (Open Building NOW!, 2020). The NW and SE façades employ CLT panels with a thickness of 220mm, while the NE and SW orientations, serving as the main facades, create loggias on both sides. The loggia's interior façade features modulated sliding doors with CLT prefabricated frames, allowing for the free placement of interior partitions by strategically positioning mullions every 3 meters (Frantzen, 2023). Externally, the loggia is characterised by redwood truss beams with bolted connections to steel joints which facilitate their future disassembly. These buffer zones can be fully enclosed with glazed modular panels in winter or left open with a fixed handrail during the summer. The floor plays a pivotal role in leveraging the flexibility of the apartments within the structure. Employing a Slimline structural flooring system made of IPE 400 steel profiles and a 70mm reinforced concrete slab below, this design allows services to run efficiently within the hollow floor, reaching even the most remote corners of each apartment. After installing drains and other facilities, the floor is topped with an acoustic membrane, a Lewis profile sheet, and 8cm of anhydrite screed with underfloor heating. While initially considering demountable top floor tiles, this solution was deemed complex and expensive compared to the anhydrite screed, which proved more cost-effective and flexible (Frantzen, 2023). By planning in advance for the placement of maintenance registration points to the floor cavity, it was possible to enable access for the necessary alterations while maintaining practicality and affordability.    User customisation process The customisation process at Patch22 began with a search for prospective residents through social media, leveraging it as a platform to connect with individuals interested in actively designing their living spaces in collaboration. Once on board, residents were presented with the opportunity to shape their homes within an entirely empty interior. A catalogue of multiple variations was offered by the architects, allowing some residents to select a pre-designed option that suited their preferences. Alternatively, others opted for a more collaborative approach, working closely with Frantzen architects to create a custom layout. Some residents took an independent venue, either designing their dwellings themselves or hiring another architect to develop their interiors (Frantzen, 2023). Throughout the process, Frantzen provided comprehensive guidance on the technical requirements, ensuring compliance with fire and soundproofing regulations. Residents could choose to have the base installations in the floor installed by the main contractor or to receive the bare shell and install them themselves. This inclusive approach allowed residents to actively contribute to the unique character of Patch22 while ensuring the resiliency of the building support for future generations.

The Oosterwold greenfield site in the Netherlands, spanning 4,300 hectares near the town of Almere, represents a well-documented example of large-scale self-organisation and urban development. Initially established as a Dutch New Town in the 1970s within the greater Amsterdam Metropolitan Area, Almere’s first phase of development embraced poly-nuclear, low-rise, and child-friendly neighbourhood plans, incorporating social housing and small-scale public amenities. Subsequent phases witnessed a shift towards more rational and uniform urban plans, characterized by market-led housing development, taking advantage of its proximity to Amsterdam amid urban growth in the 20th century. In 2006, a new council looked for alternatives to large-scale housing production, leading to the sale of municipally owned plots to individual households. Further programmes to financially support the private and collective commissioning of affordable housing were later introduced in partnership with the housing corporation Alliante. After the 2008 financial crisis, Almere’s approach to suburban housing began to shift towards enabling participation and self-organisation by citizens, with principles of active citizenship playing a prominent role (Boonstra, 2015).    The ongoing development of the Oosterwold area represents the latest and most  experimental  urban extension community  built on greenfield land. This initiative has provided Almere’s municipality with an opportunity to further explore the liberalisation of planning and housing development by selling land to individuals, housing associations and professional developers. It is being implemented as an “organic area development”, meaning that there is no predetermined master plan, only experimental land use rules related to the division of space. These rules encompass various aspects such as the division of space according to use categories, terms of energy production, sanitation and floor area ratios. For example, the rules stipulate the ratio between buildable land, urban farming and publicly accessible green areas per plot. This type of plot-by-plot ratio approach encourages the realization of a distinctive urban-agricultural lifestyle. This experimental approach, also referred to as “do-it-yourself urbanism”, not only empowers residents to construct on their own plots (unconventional for Dutch norms), but also, unconventionally, allows them to collectively decide the design and management of other infrastructural components such as roads, waste management, water management, energy supply and green spaces in communal land (MVRDV, 2022).   Thanks to this innovative arrangement of co-production of services, plots were offered at rates which were lower than market value, providing citizens with an opportunity to integrate agriculture with housing. In Oosterwold, active citizens organized themselves and share responsibility with the government in delivering  public services, such as the management of water facilities, which would otherwise fall under complete government control (van Karnenbeek et al., 2021). The variety of built residential projects is vast. Some residents were attracted to Oosterwold because they were interested in living off the grid, starting with as little as a camper van and expanding outwards. Another project involves a 100 m long co-living building designed for a group of friends, horizontally connected in a row of units of 160 square meters each. To connect the diverse shapes and sizes of structures with public infrastructure such as roads and wastewater, a high level of community participation and self-organisation was required. A dedicated website provides information for potential dwellers, including an initial letter of intent, options to collaborate with neighbours to set up an association to build the access road, the submission of a development plan, obtaining an environmental permit, and other responsibilities entrusted to the “initiator” of a housing initiative. The initiators can be individuals, cooperatives or real estate developers capable of producing housing at either market or affordable costs. The processes of collective decision-making and collaborative governance are monitored by numerous neighbourhood organizations already active in Oosterwold, discussing among other topics the need for more affordable housing. Consultation meetings, involving residents, local farmers, developers, utility companies, and municipality officials, are held regularly.   Cozzolino et al. (2017, p. 55) explain that the framework-rules allow for “greater use of dispersed knowledge”, indicating a high degree of flexibility. However, this flexibility raises concerns about the potential for the public agency to operate in a discretionary manner, especially regarding rule interpretations and agreements between private initiators and the municipality at the local scale (Cozzolino et al., 2017). Addressing debates surrounding the notion of localism, and considering the selectiveness of policies supporting self-organisation and active citizenship, there is a danger of new forms of exclusivity emerging. The Dutch Wijkaanpak, meaning “neighbourhood approach”, is criticized by Savini (2016) who explains how “self-organization may undermine the capacity of public governments to balance increasing socio-economic inequalities across city-regions and to sustain exclusionary and selective practices of spatial appropriation” (p. 1153). This way, under the guise of increased freedom in planning, plan-led development by the state can be replaced with neoliberal, property-led development (Chevalier & Tzaninis, 2022). Furthermore, such endeavours tend to need more time and higher levels of expertise, which attracts private actors with higher economic and social capital rather than low-income residents (Levelt & Tan, 2023). Finally, other authors criticize the incremental approach of self-organised wastewater management in Oosterwold for jeopardising environmental standards (van Karnenbeek et al., 2021) Nonetheless, despite the increasing development of privately-owned housing and the underdevelopment of social housing (Van Straalen et al., 2017), the Oosterwold way of planning has facilitated some cohousing projects and those by larger developers that prioritize open space and agriculture while minimising the square meters of living areas. For instance, projects such as 't Groene Wold by the developer Vastbouw integrate sustainability and the Oosterwold framework of urban agriculture, water collection and public facilities while providing about 70% of rental properties in the affordable segment. Additionally, the co-production of public services in Oosterwold, which could also be considered as common-pool resources, represents a real-life experiment in social infrastructure, public services, and housing provision simultaneously. Direct citizen engagement in Oosterwold, involving decisions about land use and the planning of services, such as wastewater and energy production, is an innovative approach to neighbourhood development and urban governance. While not without expected challenges, especially concerning the need to consolidate infrastructural components, this more flexible project-based planning has created opportunities to test various housing typologies and open space layouts that can grow incrementally and also diffuse initial housing costs. The primary focus of this case study is the incremental and experimental civic-led urban development strategy implemented in residential greenfield sites. When analysing urban developments characterized by increased self-governance and self-organisation in planning, the project’s scale, ranging from the plot to the district level, becomes a decisive factor (Rauws, 2016).  This highlights the imperative for planning experiments at the neighbourhood level , specifically addressing the provision of affordable housing. Starting from the individual plot and expanding with a do-it-yourself ethos to the level of community self-organisation, these experiments in urban growth have the potential to challenge the market-dependent institutions of housing development. They can achieve this by establishing collaborative governance arrangements between local government and civil society organisations.  

Introduction In 2016, during the Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU, the "Pact of Amsterdam" (the Pact) was signed. This pivotal document was endorsed at an informal gathering of EU Ministers responsible for urban affairs on 30 May 2016. The Pact served as the foundation for the Urban Agenda for the EU, a comprehensive multi-level agreement whose aim was to enhance the urban dimension in European legislation and policymaking. Within this agreement, twelve priority themes were outlined. The fourth priority specifically concerns housing, which is the focus of this case study. The Urban Agenda for the EU has become the overarching governance framework that promotes co-operation at all levels of governance to facilitate the implementation of sustainable urban development policies. Within the framework of partnerships involving voluntary co-operation between relevant stakeholders, each priority theme is addressed by a specific partnership. In this context, the Housing Partnership has been entrusted with a three-year mandate to develop the Action Plan, a comprehensive document based on the results of the partnership’s co-operation. The Action Plan is the result of the three-year partnership and is divided into three parts. The most important part is the twelve actions, which are divided into three groups: “Better Regulation,” “Better Knowledge and Governance” and “Better Funding”. These actions are explained below. The other themes for these partnerships encompass urban poverty, inclusion of migrants and refugees, air quality, sustainable use of land and nature-based solutions, circular economy, climate adaptation, energy transition, urban mobility, jobs and skills in the local economy, digital transition and innovative and responsible public procurement. The European Commission (EC) does not have a specific mandate for housing, leaving the development of housing policies and strategies to individual Member States and local authorities. Nevertheless, one of the objectives included in the Pact was "to explore public and affordable housing, state aid rules and general housing policy". At the EU level, there is a growing demand for housing, yet the supply of affordable housing fails to keep pace with this increasing need. A 2018 report (Fransen et al., 2018, p. 41) revealed that the EU faces an annual shortfall of €57 billion in affordable housing investment. Housing provision varies significantly across the EU Member States, with the global financial crisis causing a reduction in affordable housing investment. This decline has contributed to a surge in housing prices within the market. Thus, the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) has issued a cautionary statement to specific Member States, pointing to a possible overheating of the housing market, which could lead to increased vulnerability of the residential real estate sector (ESRB, 2022). In 2021, more than 10% of the EU population was overburdened by housing costs (Eurostat, 2023). Therefore, national and local authorities urgently need workable policy solutions to make housing more affordable. Furthermore, around 48% of young adults in the EU live with their parents (Housing Partnership, 2018, p. 63), a situation that could have a negative economic and demographic impact across the EU in the near future. The Housing Partnership's key findings reveal several significant trends: an escalating number of EU citizens across diverse income brackets facing housing affordability issues, housing prices outpacing income growth, a growing fragmentation in the housing market intensifying spatial and social segregation, and a decline in overall investment in affordable housing. The partnership comprised a range of partners with the city of Vienna (Austria) and Slovak Republic as coordinators, and various institutional and academic stakeholders (Housing Partnership, 2018). Main outcomes of the Action Plan As outlined in the Action Plan, the Housing Partnership encompasses on three key areas: firstly, a territorial emphasis on cities; secondly, a dedication to affordable housing; and thirdly, a focus on various housing themes. Actions aiming at better regulation Over the course of the three-year partnership, a list of twelve actions and recommendations was produced to address the housing crisis. - Action 1 Guidance on EU regulation and public support for housing – special aim is to provide clear guidance on public support for social and affordable housing in European cities. - Action 2 Capacity building for the application of state aid rules in the affordable housing sector at a city level - Action 3 Revision of the Services of General Economic Interest (SGEI) decision with regard to the narrow target group of social housing Actions aiming at better knowledge and governance - Action 4 Affordable housing good practice database that proposes gathering of the best practices of the social and affordable housing sector, to foster learning and knowledge exchange on affordable housing provision in European cities - Action 5 Policy guidance for the supply of social and affordable housing in Europe, aiming to offer guidance for European cities on how to increase affordable housing supply - Action 6 Exchange programme for urban housing professionals - Action 7 Monitoring system for affordable housing in the European Union - Action 8 Exchange on affordable housing at member-state level, by establishing Housing Focal Points and the informal Ministerial Meetings in Housing to allow for continuous exchange at a high political level - Action 9 Recommendation on improvement of EU urban housing market data, and to establish an EU database mapping housing prices on the subnational levels in the EU - Action 10 Recommendation on the improvement of EU gender-poverty-energy nexus data, by developing gender disaggregated data and making it available to inform policy development Actions aiming at better funding - Action 11 Recommendations on EU funding of affordable housing, aiming to increase the capacity of cities to find funding sources for affordable housing, and inform them of funding options through European investment bank and other funding instruments. - Action 12 Recommendations on the European Semester and affordable housing, aims to better inform and address the European Semester procedure to reflect housing affordability problems. According to the Housing Partnership (2018), there are four recommendations by the partnership, and eight recommendations according to the priority fields (Figure 1): 1.  In addition to the European Semester macroeconomic imbalances procedures, more needs to be done to address the different housing affordability situations along the housing continuum and/or to refine the Housing Price Index (HPI) indicator. This is to ensure that the European Semester and CSR process takes into account all housing options, including rental markets in the social/public, cooperative and private sectors, and not just one. 2.  To improve the analytical basis for the housing market assessment in the national reports and Country Specific Recommendations, comprehensive and complete monitoring of all housing properties along the housing continuum should be included, as well as an examination of the geographical difference between areas with low demand and hot housing markets. The situation in cities and urban areas should be particularly monitored as there are important developments there that cause potential financial crises. 3.  Develop affordable and social housing indicators in social scoreboards, including taking better account of the socio-economic situation of EU citizens, for example by combining the revised definition of housing overcrowding with other indicators such as expulsion and poverty rates. The Housing Partnership recommends that the minimum reference threshold for total housing costs when calculating the housing overpopulation rate should not exceed 25% of disposable household income. Member States should formulate policies and strategies at national, regional and local level and set the conditions for achieving these targets based on the principle of subsidiarity 4. It is necessary to promote the use of investment clauses in the European Semester to finance affordable housing to strengthen short-term and existing investments. Furthermore, investment programmes for affordable housing should be interpreted as structural reforms (Housing Partnership, 2018). Figure 1 shows eight recommendations addressing the significant concern faced by European cities under pressure to secure affordable housing for their population.  

Relationship to urban environment The SDE 2022 competition called for innovative urban housing solutions within existing contexts, allowing teams to choose from one of three scenarios: (1) a vertical extension adding additional storeys, (2) closing gaps between buildings, or (3) a horizontal extension. Among the sixteen built projects, eleven were top-ups, four were in-fill, and one was a horizontal extension. Some teams opted for a top-up solution for the existing Café Ada site in Wuppertal, whilst others produced solutions tailored to a local context of their home country. Despite the diverse origins of the projects, all of them had to be transported and operated at the Solar Campus in Wuppertal, Germany. Table 1 shows the results of the competition, which was won by team RoofKIT from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Note that the third place was tied between teams SUM from TU Delft and Aura from Grenoble School or Architecture. Innovative aspects of the housing design/building As documented in the competition Source Book (Voss & Simon, 2022), the teams developed various innovative biological, low-carbon, and circular materials and products from various other sectors, such as mycelium bound insulation, sea grass, recycled newspapers, jeans for insulation, and recycled yoghurt pots for kitchen and bathroom joinery. Chalmers University’s Team Sweden experimented with 3D printed cellulose whilst team X4S from Biberach University of Applied Sciences used tubular thin film photovoltaics, originally developed for large-scale use in agriculture, as pergola roofing. Innovative layouts included tessellating modules to provide multiple configurations, and highly efficient living units for multiple households (SDE, 2022). Construction characteristics, materials and processes All teams used Industrialised Construction (also known as Modern Methods of Construction in the UK) to varying degrees to prefabricate their buildings in their home countries. Construction included timber-based 3D modular and 2D panelised elements, and the competition also required the use of BIM to model the designs. To be able to disassemble and reassemble the HDUs they had to avoid the use of glues and wet sealants and instead join the building parts using various forms of reversible connections. Strategies included interlocking wood jointing, steel plates and footings, tapes, and mechanical joints such as screws, rivets, and bolts (Voss & Simon, 2022). These joining methods were designed to withstand water-ingress as well as airtightness, which was tested using the blower door test. Energy performance characteristics High energy efficiency performance and the production of on-site renewable energy were critical design aspects of the competition. All homes were designed to use electricity as the sole energy source for energy services and were powered by air- and ground-source heat pumps, and photovoltaic panels were integrated both horizontally on roofs and vertically on façades, depending on whether the project responded as an infill or top-up solution (Voss & Simon, 2022). Nine HDUs met the Passive House standard and included innovative passive strategies, such as solar chimneys, which were implemented by five teams, including Azalea from the Polytechnic University of València. Eight of the sixteen teams were chosen to remain on-site for an additional 3-5 years after the competition as Living Labs to provide in-use research data (University of Wuppertal, 2022). Involvement of other stakeholders The competition incorporates a level of entrepreneurship, with teams encouraged to forge partnerships and gain sponsorship from various industry partners. This provided teams with a mixture of financial support, in-kind services, or donations of materials and products. The extent of collaboration with partners and sponsors varied across the teams: these were formed not only with contractors and product suppliers, but in some cases with housing associations and local municipalities as well. The involvement of stakeholders from different fields not only fostered collaboration between fields, but brought about innovative construction solutions, bridging the gap between academia and industry.

The review and the analysis of this case is based on several sources of data including project design statements and reports (e.g., planning, architectural, transport, drainage, heritage, landscape, tenure, sustainability and energy), design drawings, planning application and the associated documentation, and archival records obtained from the designers and the East Suffolk planning portal. As well as conducting interviews with the actors involved in the project planning and design, namely the architects, energy system designers and sustainability specialists. Therefore, this review is structured to address various key aspects such as, design, construction, sustainability, community impact and cultural heritage. 1- Design statement “The initial idea was a cricket pitch on the existing playing field and on the leftover land to develop 25 to 30 housing units. We saw an opportunity to connect the dots by connecting the school site into the cricket field and create better spaces and connectivity for the neighbouring communities […] through prober massing the site was optimised to increase the density to 61 housing units, maximising the views towards the park and generate best returns for the council […] that and investing in East Suffolk Council affordable housing scheme” (M. Jamieson, personal communication, June 13, 2023). The Deben Fields development is located near the centre of Felixstowe in Suffolk, England (Figure 1). The site was previously occupied by Deben High School, which was built in 1930, surrounded by low-density semi-detached housing. In their design statement, TateHindle, the architects responsible for the project, articulate a design philosophy centred around the creation of an environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable neighbourhood. This vision places paramount importance on people, their lived experiences, and the integration of nature into the living environment (TateHindle, 2021, 2022). The site's redevelopment aligns seamlessly with East Suffolk Council's Housing Strategy, which emphasises the expansion of council-owned affordable housing through innovative and sustainable methods. To adhere to this strategy, the architect chose to preserve and repurpose existing structures on the site, including the school hall and its annexes. These buildings were meticulously retained, redesigned, and refurbished to serve as a new indoor public facility catering for both the current and anticipated population (ESC, 2021). The project site is 3.89 hectares, of which 2.65 hectares is open green space (cricket pitch and park) and 1.36 hectares is allocated to residential development, with a net density of 53 dwellings per hectare and a total of 93 car parking spaces (61 for residential and 32 for leisure and community services) and 163 cycle spaces (HDA, 2022; TateHindle, 2021). The project is designed according to Passivhaus standards with airtight building envelopes and comprises 61 dwellings with 18 one-bedroom, 28 two-bedroom, seven three-bedroom and eight four-bedroom, spread across semi-detached houses, flats and maisonettes. From a tenure distribution point of view, 68 per cent are available at affordable rents, while the remaining 32 per cent are intended for open market sale (TateHindle, 2021). The average floor area of the housing units is 74.0 m², five per cent above the floor area requirement described by the Nationally Described Space Standard (HDA, 2022). In terms of ownership, however, the aim is to deliver a ‘tenure neutral’ project, so there is no physical distinction between open-market, shared ownership and affordable rental housing. The tenure mix has been integrated throughout the site to ensure that the project delivers proper housing that meets the needs of the housing market. Figure 2 illustrates Deben Fields tenure distribution and housing typologies plans. 2- Construction TateHindle's structural design statement outlines their goal of achieving a highly insulated façade construction. This was accomplished through the implementation of load-bearing double stud timber frame walls and load-bearing timber metal web beams at both floor and roof levels. The project uses Typical Passivhaus Foundations (TPFs) to minimise thermal bridging and achieve low U-values for the ground slab construction. Cradden (2019), however, explains that there are multiple challenges when using TPFs, such as soil conditions, material and geological properties (Cradden, 2019). To address these challenges, a shallow foundation method was chosen within the Red Crag Formation, a geological structure in south-eastern Suffolk defined by a basal pebble bed overlaid with coarse shell sand. This approach utilised the mini-pile technique, thereby bypassing the need for extensive and deeper excavations. In addition, Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) are used to maximise the use of off-site construction and achieve high levels of quality through factory-controlled assembly, reduce construction time, minimise noise pollution and construction waste, and reduce CO2 emissions (TateHindle, 2021). 3- Sustainability and energy “The project has similar challenges to others […] with this project electrification and overheating were the main challenge […] so we did really want to simplify the forms to make it more Passivhaus compliant and cost-effective […] We started from rectangles; obviously you can then add and remove to create interest and increase efficiency” (sustainable design specialist, personal communication, July 20, 2023). To achieve the planned outcomes of the economically, socially and environmentally sustainable neighbourhood, Deben Fields has set comprehensive objectives including: improving the well-being of residents, promoting pedestrian and child-friendly design, integrating passive design principles such as natural ventilation and daylighting, optimising construction costs and minimising waste through recycling and efficient use of materials, implementing monitoring systems for seamless building management, reducing sequestered carbon by reusing existing structures, promoting affordability as an overarching principle, adopting a fabric-first approach to reduce energy consumption and tackle fuel poverty, addressing future sustainability requirements, using renewable energy through photovoltaics to power communal areas and providing spaces that encourage social interaction such as areas for growing food and for play. To translate design objectives into a practical design language, the project employed various approaches, as explained in the following subsections. 3.1- Architectural design and technology integration The primary emphasis is placed on optimising the orientation of the buildings to harness passive solar gain effectively, thereby ensuring ample natural lighting and thermal comfort within indoor spaces (Figure 3). In pursuit of energy efficiency and to reduce overheating impacts, a simplified building form was devised. This involved implementing measures to minimise thermal bridging and establish an airtight building envelope, thereby reducing undesired energy losses. To emphasise the importance of insulation, sufficient provisions were made in the walls to allow for higher levels of thermal protection. A mechanical background ventilation with heat recovery system (MVHR) was used to create a well-ventilated and comfortable living environment. Furthermore, strategically positioned openings, balconies, entrances, sunshades, and shade pergolas contribute to a cohesive architectural language, fostering socially stimulating spaces while adhering to energy-efficient design principles in line with Passivhaus standards. The high-performance triple glazed windows have been carefully positioned and sized to allow natural cross ventilation. All of such techniques maximise control over the building envelope and reduce energy consumption. 3.2- Policy and standards To achieve the desired sustainability goals, a combination of mandatory and voluntary policies and standards were introduced as part of the project design strategy. Firstly, the mandatory building regulations on sustainability, particularly Part L, which sets specific requirements for insulation, heating systems, ventilation and fuel consumption and aims to reduce carbon emissions by 31 per cent compared to the previous regulations. Secondly, the 'SCLP9.2' – a local planning initiative produced by East Suffolk Council to foment sustainable construction. The SCLP9.2 aims to achieve higher energy efficiency standards resulting in a 20 per cent reduction in CO2 emissions below the target CO2 emission rate, design the dwelling to use less than 110 litres of water per person per day, and encourage the use of locally sourced materials, with a focus on recycling and waste reduction (ESC, 2020, p. 9). Thirdly, the project adhered to Passivhaus standards and set a higher target by meeting higher sustainability standards in terms of energy efficiency, water consumption and material use. CGB Consultants – the sustainability specialist – clarified that with such combination of policies and standards, the dwellings could comfortably exceed the planning target for a 20 per cent improvement over building regulations, as simulated using calculations based on the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) (CGB, 2021). 4- Community and cultural heritage In the early design phase, the design team developed a comprehensive communication plan that included public hearings and consultations with the community to inform planners of local needs, foster effective communication with project neighbours and obtain their feedback. However, the restriction of COVID-19 posed a challenge to the effective implementation of the original plan.  In response, the architect and the City Council took alternative measures such as formal online consultations, monthly newsletters, social media updates, a website, public exhibitions, public notices, press releases, emails and letters. As a result, the project received critical feedback and concerns around impacts on nature, traffic, existing buildings, privacy, green spaces and alternative renewable energy sources. Responding to the concerns raised, the project team developed a cycling and pedestrian strategy that introduces the concept of “green corridors", “rain gardens" and “play streets", while carefully allocated parking in line with the National Transport Strategy provides a green roof with photovoltaic panels. The community gardens, use the building structure as a privacy screen and integrate existing culture and heritage into the project (Figure 4). Although the former Deben High School site is not nationally recognised as a historically significant building, it has become a local landmark with local significance and considerable architectural and historical value. Designed by Cecil George Stillman (1894–1968), a British architect known as a "pioneer of prefabrication" (Hinchcliffe, 2004). The proposed architectural language therefore draws on the existing buildings, particularly the school's building and assembly hall, which is considered the largest historic building on the site. The proposed pedestrian corridors also have helped to make the building more visible and put the assembly hall at the centre of the project (TateHindle, 2021). 5- Final reflections This section highlights both the successful aspects and the potential areas for improvement arising from the review in the previous sections. This is by addressing the following questions: What methodologies were deployed within Deben Field that can be classified as exemplifying ‘good' practise? The proposed designs have looked beyond the initial requirements and original goals and proposed economically, socially and environmentally viable strategies and solutions. Jon Bootland (2011) explains that responsible housing design must adopt a rigorous design standard for low energy consumption, develop high-quality and affordable outcomes, and prioritise user comfort (Bootland, 2011). In response, the project has embraced higher design standards that go beyond mandatory building regulations and systematically addressed the challenges of engaging specialist services (including Passivhaus designers, ecology and biodiversity consultants, sustainable drainage designers and sustainability consultants) with a high level of expertise to provide the necessary technical feedback. In addition, current challenges such as electrification and overheating were proactively addressed by choosing simple architectural forms and integrating renewable energy sources. While the project initially took a top-down approach, the community was actively involved in the early design phases through a variety of well-organised communication channels (as listed in section 5.4). The project team ensured that responses to planning notices were reviewed, analysed and incorporated into the architectural language of the project. For example, when neighbours raised privacy concerns, the building massing and layout were adjusted to form a privacy screen without compromising the number of dwellings provided. The project has also demonstrated an inclusive design approach that appeals to users of all ages (e.g., community garden and play street). In addition, the design has maximised the benefits of using brownfield sites and seamlessly integrated the existing infrastructure into the project layout, carefully considering the recycling and reuse of materials. What are the vulnerabilities associated with Deben Fields? Knox (2015) stated that the high construction costs of ‘green building’ are a common misconception for which there are insufficient studies (Knox, 2015). However, the study by Chegut et al. (2019) shows that “BREEAM – Excellent” certified buildings are 40 to 150 per cent more expensive to build and attributes these higher costs to specialised design costs, material selection, specialised labour and construction time (Chegut, Eichholtz, & Kok, 2019). The Deben Fields project adopted several sustainability features, such as special materials, green roofs and photovoltaic cells. However, it appears that the project has not conducted a thorough life-cycle cost analysis to determine the costs and benefits of these features and whether additional features are needed in the future. Meanwhile, at the design level and to achieve the intended outcomes, the project complied with several standards and building codes, resulting in a complex and intertwined design structure that makes it difficult to apply the same strategies to other projects. From a sustainable urbanism perspective, density and diverse land use are often considered effective strategies for sustainable development (Carmona, 2021). Despite its central location, the project did not consider density and diversity of land use as a key strategy for its development. For example, the proposed project does not include any retail or commercial uses, and the nearest commercial services are 500 metres from the project (Figure 5). The Deben Fields project is widely regarded as an example of ‘good practice’ in its field, as reflected in the number of awards it has won. However, in order to accurately assess the results of the project, it is essential to conduct additional post-occupancy studies. These studies will allow for a thorough evaluation of the project's features and provide valuable insights and potential areas for improvement. Another major factor contributing to its prominence is the use of numerous well-designed features. These features have improved the overall performance of the project and highlighted the novel techniques (e.g. play street, environmentally friendly materials, reducing overheating through massing). Therefore, it is crucial to undertake comprehensive documentation of all phases, steps and procedures taken during the design and construction of the project. Acknowledgement I would like to express my sincere gratitude to TateHindle Architects for generously providing the necessary data and information for Deben Fields. Special thanks go to Mike Jamieson for dedicating his time and expertise to discussing the project in detail. Additionally, I extend my appreciation to the anonymous interviewees who provided valuable insights into this case. Thank you all for your support and cooperation.

The term 'retrofit' remains a subject of debate, often used interchangeably with 'refurbishment' and 'renovation', lacking a clear distinction. Linguistically, the Oxford English Dictionary (2023) defines 'retrofit' as: "A modification made to a product or structure to incorporate changes and developments introduced since manufacture or construction; the action or fact of modifying a product or structure in this manner. Also figurative. Concerning buildings, in later use, often implying (an instance of) the making of adaptations to improve energy efficiency or to counteract or mitigate the effects of climate change." For buildings, retrofit encompasses substantial physical modifications made to them. These changes can stem from two kinds of activities: mitigating activities aimed at improving energy efficiency and adaptive activities, often referred to as 'adaption', involving interventions such as adjustments, reuse or upgrades to align the building with new requirements or conditions  (Dixon, 2014). The retrofitting process of this old tenement at 107 Niddrie Road involved activities for various purposes. For instance, external activities included preserving the aesthetic appearance and heritage of Glasgow's iconic housing typology. The internal activities included repairing all services, including urgent maintenance for timber elements and structural enhancements for future residents' safety. The retrofitting decisions were also made as a response to the pressing demands of climate change and the future needs of residents. However, these decisions were primarily based on the expertise of the landlord (the housing association), architects, and the Passivhaus enerPHit standard rather than the active involvement of the future occupants (see RE-DWELL blogpost Retrofit and Social Engagement).  In this case study, we will only focus on three primary goals of the retrofitting process: low energy consumption, low carbon emissions, and ensuring the health and wellbeing of future dwellers. Low energy consumption The 107 Niddrie Road is an example of how to tackle fuel poverty among dwellers living in this type of historic housing stock. In Scotland, approximately 30% of families living in traditional tenements (equivalent to 175,000 homes) are considered to be fuel poor. The substandard housing conditions of old tenements make it challenging to maintain indoor warmth. Consequently, a substantial portion of a family's income is allocated to energy bills, exacerbating fuel poverty. The retrofit involved implementing several energy measures aligned with the Passivhaus enerPhit standard to enhance the tenement's energy efficiency. The architects of John Gilbert expect these measures to result in slashing heating costs by up to 90%. Therefore, this retrofit can be considered a deep energy retrofit. Deep energy retrofit provides up to 60 % energy savings by upgrading the building using "a combination or "package" of multiple energy measures that upgrade the physical fabric, heat generation system and lighting of a building" (Page 3, Saffari & Beagon, 2022). The adopted energy measures for this deep energy retrofit included: 1) Retrofitting the fabric:  It involved insulating walls, roof, and ground floor, installing triple-glazed windows, and ensuring airtightness to minimise thermal bridging. The retrofit also guaranteed a continuous airtightness line, including all key junctions at the attic level, windows, and doors. 2) Use of Waste Water Heat Recovery (WWHR) system:  This system heats cold water using heat recovered from shower or bath drain water. This method significantly reduces hot water costs and carbon emissions by approximately 40%. Given that heating water represents the second largest cost of a fuel bill, this system is expected to substantially reduce these costs and carbon emissions. 3) Individual Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP):  These units were installed in the four flats on the lower floors. In parallel, efficient combi gas boilers were set up in the remaining flats to compare their performance with ASHP during residents' occupancy. Low carbon emissions Various measures, including the installation of ASHP and WWHR systems and the utilisation of natural materials, were implemented in a bid to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. The project minimised its environmental impact using fewer new materials than new construction blocks. The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence is currently evaluating the extent of the carbon reduction achieved through these measures. Ensuring health and wellbeing By adopting the Passivhaus enerPHit standard, the project prioritised occupant comfort, indoor air quality, and energy efficiency. Expected benefits include: 1) Thermal comfort and reduced energy costs: The retrofit project aimed to maintain warmth during winter and coolness in summer, thereby reducing energy costs, improving residents' quality of life, and minimising temperature-related stress amid rising energy expenses and extreme temperature fluctuations. 2) Damp and mould mitigation for indoor air quality:  Condensation and humid air are common issues in Scottish homes, often leading to dampness and mould, adversely affecting residents' health. The project implemented the following techniques to mitigate these risks: Improving ventilation: A high-performance Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery (MVHR) system was installed to provide constant fresh air while extracting humidity. Contrary to a common misconception that installing MVHR eliminates the need to open windows, it is possible to do so in moderation, particularly during extreme temperatures, to conserve energy. Ensuring air tightness: Thermal bridges, which leak heat during winter and create cold spots on walls, were eliminated. The retrofit assured continuous airtightness line. Using breathable materials: Lime plaster was used for airtightness and vapour-permeable wood fibre for insulation. These materials mitigate common moisture-related risks in highly airtight buildings. 3) Reduced toxicity of materials for indoor air quality: Efforts were made to minimise indoor air pollution by opting for natural building materials wherever feasible. These materials were chosen to uphold excellent indoor air quality and reduce low-level toxins that could exacerbate health problems, especially for vulnerable individuals. Additionally, chemical treatments on wood were avoided to limit exposure to harmful substances and reduce costs. 4) Altered layout for better functionality and accessibility: Major changes were made to make dwellings more functional for households and guests. Some of the changes contributed to optimising available space, demonstrating the adaptability of the existing property. These adjustments aimed to improve accessibility while complying with current building regulations. A comparison of the before and after floor plan images reveals two main differences. Firstly, the kitchen was relocated closer to the living room area; it was distant and only accessible through the bedroom, making it impractical. Secondly, the bathroom was redesigned to accommodate a spacious shower, and the toilet was moved from the end of a long and narrow corridor. This change ensured accessibility, especially for family members using a wheelchair. 5) Preserve the tenement heritage: The street-facing facade was internally insulated, ensuring the building's historic appearance was preserved. Additionally, triple-glazed windows were carefully chosen to keep the traditional window frame design. Replicating this retrofitting process on a large scale The retrofit project at 107 Niddrie Road represents a noteworthy example of successfully implementing the Passivhaus enerPHit standard for deep retrofitting old tenements. The retrofit incorporated a range of energy efficiency techniques, including enhanced ventilation systems and the use of natural, non-toxic materials. However, replicating these retrofits on a larger scale presents some advantages and challenges. For instance, retrofitting several tenements at once could offer the financial benefit of bulk purchasing advanced energy-efficient technologies, like heat pumps, potentially reducing overall costs. However, the social factor of the dwellers poses a challenge in replicating these projects on a larger scale, mainly when dealing with multiple tenements being retrofitted simultaneously. Minimising disruptions to residents' daily lives during work is imperative to ensure the success of building retrofitting. In inhabited properties, resident cooperation becomes pivotal for project success. Resistance or a lack of understanding among residents can impede the implementation process. Retrofritting an inhabited dwelling disturbs household life. Communicating the benefits of the retrofit project and addressing residents' concerns becomes paramount, which is also time-consuming and financially burdensome for housing associations. Therefore, a critical factor that contributed to the successful process of executing the retrofit in this case was the vacant status of the flats, which might not be the case for other Scottish tenements. Retrofitting tenements on a large scale faces several technical challenges, including the absence of a dependable supply chain for advanced technologies like heat pumps. Some technologies mandated by the Passivhaus standards are relatively new to the UK market. Additionally, the technical expertise required to install and maintain these advanced technologies is still inadequate.

Mason Place is a permanent supportive housing development in the city of Fort Collins, Colorado, US, developed by Housing Catalyst, that uses trauma-informed design to create a safe and supportive environment for residents. It is a home to individuals who may have been suffered both short and long-term periods of homelessness while ten units are reserved for veterans (Housing Catalyst, 2021; Kimura, 2021). For over five decades, Housing Catalyst has been a cornerstone of the Northern Colorado community, unwavering in its commitment to providing accessible and affordable housing solutions. Through innovative, sustainable, and community-centric approaches, Housing Catalyst has developed and managed over 1,000 affordable homes, becoming the largest property manager in the region (Housing Catalyst, 2021). Housing Catalyst plays a pivotal role in administering housing assistance programs, serving thousands of residents each year. With a steadfast focus on families with children, seniors, individuals with disabilities, and those experiencing homelessness, Housing Catalyst tirelessly strives to make homeownership a reality for all (Housing Catalyst, 2021). To create Mason Place, Housing Catalyst gave a new purpose to an old movie theatre by designing it with trauma survivors in mind. This resulted in a building with a skylighted atrium, large windows in units and common spaces, live plants, and wooden skirting board to create a calming environment. Case managers (on-site service assistants provided by the Homeward Alliance) worked with residents to develop and implement individualized plans to address their unique needs. This included assistance with finding employment, accessing healthcare, and securing permanent housing. Case managers also provided support and encouragement for residents to develop the skills and helped them to gain confidence (Homeward Alliance, 2021). David Rout, executive director of Homeward Alliance, said:  “When it comes to our community's ongoing effort to make homelessness rare, short-lived and non-recurring, developments like Mason Place are the gold standard. It will immediately provide dozens of our most vulnerable neighbors with a safe place to live and the supportive services they need to stay housed, healthy and happy” (Coloradoan, 2021). Homeward Alliance, a non-profit organization that provides a continuum of care in Fort Collins, provided two case managers at Mason Place, who worked with individuals and families to develop plans to address their long-term needs, and to help residents with Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), such as using the bus system, proper personal hygiene, and cooking, as well as Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs), among them,  accessing treatment for mental health issues, applying for a job, and obtaining healthcare benefits. In addition to case management, Homeward Alliance also provided a variety of support services, including mental health services, substance abuse treatment, employment services, and other needed care. Affordability aspects The affordability of housing has been a long-standing priority for the city of Fort Collins. As highlighted in the city plan (City of Fort Collins, 2023), and also in the housing strategic plan (City of Fort Collins, 2021), housing affordability is a key element of community liveability. The Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) overlay zones, such as the College/Mason corridor to the South Transit Center are used to encourage higher-density development in areas that are well-served by public transit. These zones typically have additional land use code standards, such as higher density requirements, mixed-use requirements, and pedestrian-friendly design standards. One of the provisions of the TOD is the allowance of one additional story of building height if the project qualifies as an affordable housing development and is south of Prospect Road. This allows the developer to build more units in exchange for 10% of the units overall being affordable to households earning 80% of Area Median Income (AMI) or less. This provision is designed to increase the supply of affordable housing in TOD areas, which are typically located near public transit and other amenities. By allowing developers to build more units in exchange for providing affordable housing, TOD areas become more accessible to lower-income residents. In addition to increasing the supply of affordable housing, TOD can also help to achieve other sustainability goals. For example, encouraging people to live in those areas helps to reduce vehicle miles travelled and air pollution. Overall, the TOD provision is a win-win for both developers and communities. It allows developers to build more units in desirable locations, and it helps to provide inclusive and affordable for all residents (City of Fort Collins, 2021). As the community continues to grow, a significant portion of the population is struggling to afford stable and healthy housing. Nearly 60% of renters and 20% of homeowners are cost-burdened (City of Fort Collins, 2021)., meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and low-income households are disproportionately affected by this issue, with lower homeownership rates, lower income levels, and higher rates of poverty (City of Fort Collins, 2021). The city facilitates affordable housing to promote mixed-income neighbourhoods and reduce concentrations of poverty. In 2018 Housing Catalyst submitted a funding application to the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority's Low Income Housing Credit programme and the construction started in 2019. Currently, Mason Place provides affordable housing, in form of low-income apartments, and coordinated services to help people stabilize their lives and move forward. Housing Catalyst works closely together with the National Equity Fund, which is a nonprofit organization that delivers new and innovative financial solutions to expand the creation and preservation of affordable housing. According to the Fund, everyone deserves a safe and affordable place to live. Their vision is that all individuals and families must have access to stable, safe, and affordable homes that provide a foundation for them to reach their full potential (National Equity Fund, 2022). Mason Place houses the disabled and homeless, including military veterans earning up to 30 percent of the area median income, or about $16,150 for a single person.   

The context In Switzerland, housing cooperatives are private organisations, co-owned and self-managed. The city of Zurich has a rich history of housing cooperatives and non-profit housing associations dating back to the early 20th century, constituting 25% of the city’s housing stock. As was the case in other central European cities, housing cooperatives in Zurich emerged in response to a housing shortage and the unavailability of affordable prices. The model for establishing a housing cooperative is straightforward: individuals come together to form a cooperative, becoming shareholders. The cooperative builds housing and rents it to its members at cost prices. Since no profits are generated, and the land value is not increased for resale, the gap between cooperative rents and open market rents widens significantly over time. Historically, members of housing cooperatives were often affiliated based on profession or religion, such as public officers, for example. The foundation of this housing cooperative model was laid in 1907 when a law was enacted, assigning responsibility to the municipality for providing ‘affordable and adequate housing’ (Hugentobler et al., 2016). The first housing cooperatives were established in 1910, and the Allgemeine Baugenossenschaft Zürich, ABZ, currently the largest cooperative in Switzerland, was founded in 1916. In the 1970s, cooperative housing faced a decline due to poor maintenance. However, a revival occurred in the 1980s when a new cooperative movement emerged. The new cooperatives aimed to break away from the rigidity, institutionalisation, and outdated principles of traditional housing cooperatives. The discourse of this movement emphasized the need for more sustainable living environments, affordable and non-speculative housing, and social integration. In 2011, a city-scale referendum took place, resulting in the population voting in favour of a law aiming to increase the proportion of non-profit housing to 33% of all housing (not just newly built homes) in the city by 2050. This legislation mandates the city of Zurich to establish a framework and instruments to support non-profit housing. Process In 2008, the Public Works Department of the city of Zurich and the cooperative Mehr als Wohnen launched an international competition for ideas. This initiative was part of the festivities marking 100 years since the inception of cooperative housing in Zurich (“Mehr als wohnen - 100 Jahre gemeinnütziger Wohnungsbau”). The competition sought innovative ideas about the future of non-profit housing. Out of 100 submissions, 26 teams of architects were selected and were invited to submit an urban development concept for the Hunziker Areal, including designs for residential buildings. A young team won the master plan competition, aiming to integrate diverse architectural proposals into a cohesive urban development concept.  A subsequent dialogue phase ensued, during which architects and project operators collaborated to integrate various concepts into the master plan. Future residents and the broader public participated in 3 to 4 events annually, engaging in discussions about the neighbourhood’s future. The dialogic process continued until construction started in 2012. Land The four-hectare plot of disused industrial land at the Hunziker Areal in the Leutschenbach district was made available for building by the city administration. The site formerly housed a concrete industry until the 1980s when the company closed, and the city of Zurich acquired the land. Due to a law approved by a referendum in 2011, the city of Zurich is obligated to prioritize non-profit housing over selling land to the highest bidder. In 2007, the city council signed an agreement with the cooperative for a lease of 100 years, with the possibility of renewal. As part of the agreement, the cooperative must adhere to various conditions, including calculating rents based on investment costs, subsidizing 20% of the housing units, providing 1% of the ground floor for neighbourhood services at no cost to the city, allocating 0,5% of construction costs to local art projects, meeting high energy standards in construction, and launching an architectural competition for the new housing buildings. The cooperative pays an annual fee for the use of the plot, which is adjusted every five years, according to the cost-of-living index and interest rates. This fee also considers the space provided by the cooperative and the subsidies offered to low-income residents. Funding Following the agreement with the city council for the land, cooperative members embarked on securing funding. The members of the cooperative had to bring the 5,4% of the initial capital, with the remaining other 0.6% covered by the municipality. The founding cooperatives of Mehr als Wohnen leveraging their existing resources and expertise, contributed half of this amount. The other half was covered by the future residents, amounting to CHF 250/m2 as their member equity. For low-income households or elderly people, the city’s social services could cover this amount. The remaining funding was obtained from three levels of administration: city, canton and federal. At the federal level, the Federation of Swiss Housing Cooperatives provided a CHF 11 million loan through its revolving fund, offering a twenty-year term with a 1% interest rate. Additionally, at the federal level, CHF 35 million was secured through a bond loan with fixed interest rates for the first twenty years, facilitated by the Bond Issuing Cooperative for Limited Profit Housing (Emissionszentrale für gemeinnütziger Wohnbauträger/ Centrale d’émission pour la construction de logements – EGW/CC) and public subsidies.  EGW functions as a financing instrument for housing projects of public interest, guaranteeing loans through the Swiss Confederation (Federal Bureau of Housing) to provide security for investors. Nonprofits benefit from significantly more advantages compared to comparable fixed mortgages with the same terms. At the cantonal level of Zurich, the project secured a CHF 8 million loan, and at the municipal level, another of CHF 8 million, both with fixed interest rates. However, instead of paying the interest to the city and canton of Zurich, the cooperative uses this amount to subsidize 20% of housing units (80 of the 370 apartments). To complete its financial planning, Mehr als Wohnen also secured a CHF 8 million loan from the city of Zurich’s pension fund, with a fixed interest rate. With this combination of sources, providing 27% of the total investments, the remaining necessary financing was obtained from a consortium of four banks through traditional mortgage loans. Inclusion mechanisms Mehr als Wohnen employs a mechanism commonly used by many Swiss housing cooperatives, that allows its members to transfer their savings to the cooperative instead of keeping them in traditional banks. These “member funds” constitute part of the cooperative’s capital, meaning that the larger the member funds are, the less the cooperative will rely on mortgages in the future. Members who invest in their cooperatives benefit from a higher investment return compared to what they would receive at a conventional bank. The cooperative also maintains an internal solidarity fund, aiding in financing solidarity projects or assisting families facing difficulties in paying their equity. Every household and commercial store contributes a monthly amount, ranging from 10 to 30 CHF, depending on their income. Through this fund, the cooperative can reduce monthly rents for low-income households, cover maintenance or adaptation fees, organise events, and provide financial support to cooperative projects in the neighbourhood or abroad. Design innovations The project is planned for a mixed-residential population and a diverse mix of uses. The term “more” in its name signifies the aim of creating a sense of community and belonging, which is reflected in the interior as well as exterior spaces. The concept revolves around reducing private spaces, with an average of 35 m2 per person for tenants, while providing increased communal areas, such as roof terraces, children’s playgrounds, and car-free spaces. In terms of private spaces, Mehr als Wohnen incorporates various housing typologies to accommodate diverse needs, including cluster apartments, satellites, family apartments, large units capable of housing 7 to 12 individuals, studios and spaces that can be adapted to different purposes. The apartments range from 2 to 7.5 rooms[1], offering a broad spectrum for exploring different residential possibilities. These combinations of spaces highlight diverse household compositions and lifestyles, acknowledging the simultaneous desire for privacy and communal living. Most of the apartments have 4-4.5 rooms (37%), followed by 3-3.5 room apartments (26%), and larger apartments with 5.5 rooms or more (22%). Apartments with 1 to 2.5 rooms account for only 15%, which is a smaller percentage compared to the city of Zurich, where this category represents 34%. lusion The aim was to create a “lively quarter where people like to live, work and spend their free time” and should be offered to people from “all social strata” (as stated in Mehr als Wohnen’s mission statement). The aim of the project was that the composition of the residents in the project should reflect the distribution of different households from the canton of Zurich as a whole. In order to achieve a mixed population, the cooperative collaborated with various institutions. A total of 10% of the apartments were reserved for the Züriwerk Foundation, supporting people with impairments; the Domicil Foundation, assisting families with immigrant backgrounds in finding housing; the Woko Cooperative, aiding teachers and students; and the ZKJ Foundation, finding homes for children who could not live with their families.   [1] In Switzerland and Germany, the count of rooms per apartment encompasses more than just bedrooms; it includes any kind of room present in the apartment. The term "half room" typically refers to spaces that aren't fully designated as bedrooms, such as a living room that could potentially be converted into one. It's important to note that bathrooms and toilets are not included in this room count.

Background The neighbourhood of Exarcheia, where the park is located, is one of the most – if not the most– politically active areas in Athens and is traditionally home to intellectuals and artists. Since the 1970s, it has been in the centre of social movements, serving as a breeding ground for leftist, anarchist and antifascist grassroots and alternative cultural practices (Chatzidakis, 2013). Given its location in the centre of Athens, the neighbourhood is lacking green and open spaces. The site of the park has a long history of negotiations regarding ownership and use, dating back to the 1970s. During that time, the Technical Chamber of Greece (TEE) purchased the 65-year-old medical clinic with the purpose of demolishing it and constructing its central offices. Although the building was eventually demolished in the 1980s, TEE never constructed its offices. In the 1990s, the site was offered as part of an exchange between the TEE and the Municipality of Athens for the development of a green space, but this agreement did not materialise. Instead, the TEE leased the plot for private use, and turned it into an open-air parking space (Frezouli, 2016). The termination of the lease in 2008 coincided with a major social movement triggered by the assassination of a 15-year-old boy, Alexis Grigoropoulos, at the hands of the police. This tragic incident took place in December of the same year, just a few streets away from the  site and led to uprisings in many Greek cities and neighbourhoods as citizens demanded the right to life, freedom, and the city through protests and illegal occupations. In response to the rumours about the site’s future construction, the Exarcheia Residents’ Initiative, in collaboration with many grassroots movements, used digital means to issue a collective call for action to reclaim the plot as an open green space. On 7th March 2009, tens of people from the neighbourhood and around Athens occupied the plot and created the 'Self-managed Navarinou and Zoodochou Pigis Park' (Frezouli, 2016; pablodesoto, 2010) The park as an urban commons urban commons resource The operation and development of the park, in terms of its uses and infrastructure, is collectively shaped by the appropriating community of commoners, consisting of activists and local residents, without any contributions from the state, municipal or private organisations. Hence the activities and interventions within the park are evolving with the joint efforts and time, work, skills and financial resources of the commoners. In this regard, the transformation of the space from a parking lot into its present form has followed a dynamic process, that keeps adapting to the changing resources, needs and challenges created by the social and urban circumstances. The initial intervention involved replacing the concrete ground with soil and planting flowers and trees donated by the community. Subsequently, a small playground and seating areas were constructed, forming an open amphitheatre (Parko Navarinou Initative, 2018b).  This infrastructure served as a base for organising public events such as cultural activities, public discussions, live concerts, film projections, and children’s activities. At a later stage, educational workshops on agriculture were also introduced (Frezouli, 2016). Many of the activities brought about spatial transformations within the park, including the creation of community gardens or sculptures, murals and installations. In its most recent phase, the park has been transformed into a “big playground” for all the residents housing a variety of greenery, such as the urban gardens, as well as seating and gathering urban furniture, including benches and tables. The park now features several playground equipment suitable for both children and adults, such as swings, playing structures, a basketball court, and a ping pong table. Additionally, safety has been enhanced by improving the lighting and adding a fence (Parko Navarinou Initative, 2018a). Commoners and commoning To thrive as a bottom-up initiative, the operation and governance of the park are based on several forms of mobilisation that extend beyond the initial public space occupation. Among the various forms of commoning undertaken, activism, collective action, network creation and co-governance have been vital for Navarinou Park. These social processes have been supported by other participatory or community-based practices, such as public campaigns, co-construction and co-creation activities (Frezouli, 2016). Since its beginning, the initiative has established an open assembly as the main instrument for decision-making on  operational and infrastructural matters related to the park. This ensures that the park remains a shared resource, fostering a sense of belonging and strong bonds among the commoners. The assembly sets the rules and practises that constitute the institutional arrangements of the park, following a governance model based on horizontal democratic processes driven by the principles of self-management, anti-hierarchy and anti-commodification. The assembly is open to any individual or group that wishes to participate. However, throughout the park’s lifetime, only a small core of people remains permanently committed to the initiative. This groups is cohesive in terms of social incentives, activist ideals, and social capital, which reduces conflicts during decision-making processes (Arvanitidis & Papagiannitsis, 2020). However, beyond addressing issues such as maintenance, organisation of events and infrastructure interventions, the assembly has been confronted with several challenges of both internal and external character, necessitating adaptability and rule-setting. One key challenge is the continuous commitment required for attending meetings and carrying out the daily tasks, which relies entirely on voluntary engagement. The gradual decrease in engagement, reaching its peak in early 2018 and even threatening the park’s survival, prompted the core team to seek new forms of communication and involvement to attract more residents to use and engage with the space. (Arvanitidis & Papagiannitsis, 2020). The idea that emerged focused on addressing the lack of play-areas in the neighbourhood by transforming  the park into a large playground that would appeal to families, parents, children and the elderly. This vision was realised through a successful crowdfunding campaign (Parko Navarinou Initative, 2018a) that used the moto “play, breath, discuss, blossom, reclaim, live” to convey the key functions of the park. Another significant challenge, especially during the first years of the initiative, was external delinquent behaviour, including vandalism, drug trafficking, and problems with the police (Avdikos, 2011). After several negotiations, the assembly decided to install a fence around the park to improve the monitoring and maintenance of the space while still keeping it open to everyone during operational hours and activities. Impact & Significance Navarinou Park is considered to be a successful example of the bottom-up transformation of an urban void into an urban commons among scholarly discourses (Arvanitidis & Papagiannitsis, 2020; Daskalaki, 2018; Frezouli, 2016; pablodesoto, 2010). It not only provides environmental benefits delivered through high quality green spaces, along with a variety of social and cultural activities for the residents of Exarcheia but, most significantly, it has "motivated and empowered residents, offering a great sense of pride and providing incentives for enhancing social capital and social inclusion, community resilience, collective learning and action"(Daskalaki, 2018, p. 162). The park demonstrates a successful example of urban commons in continuous growth, where social capital and solidarity are the motivating goals that drive both collective management and the ability to overcome challenges over time: “If there is one thing that motivates us to move forward, it is the impact of our endeavour not only in theory but in practice: in the constructive transformation of behaviours, awarenesses, practices and everyday lives. It is up to us to seize the new opportunities that open up before us. If we ourselves do not struggle to create the utopias we imagine, they will never exist”. (Parko Navarinou Initative, 2018a)

  In 2017, the Croatian parliament introduced a new housing loan subsidy programme (cro. subvencioniranje stambenih kredita – SSK). Using data from 2017 to 2019, a first evaluation of the impact this subsidy has had on the housing market indicates that it has worsened housing affordability. Evidence points to the majority of the subsidies being concentrated in urbanised areas in already dynamic housing markets (Kunovac & Zilic, 2021). Background The socialist legacy of housing policy was hastily deconstructed during the transition of the 1990s, however it was not replaced by  efficient and just housing provision. Housing privatization of a giveaway kind, mostly in terms of the right to buy and limited denationalization measures became the central reformist aspect of the Croatian housing policy transition, while adequate and lawful marketization lagged behind. In the first decade of the transition, the number of public housing units fell from 24% in 1991 to 2.6% in 2001 while homeownership level rose from 64% to 82.9% in the same period (Bežovan, 2013). In the aftermath of the Croatian War of Independence, housing measures focused on reconstruction and emergency provision for refugees and war victims. Reconstruction measures were mostly directed at households living in or returning to the so called “areas of special state care”, in other words the worse-off territories. Foreign technical assistance projects were not implemented  in Croatia due to various reasons, mostly regarding clientelism, corruption and international political isolation, which at the time coincided with the process of housing deprofessionalization and the negligence of housing cooperatives as relicts of the socialist past. Not wanting to fall back on outdated socialist practices but instead to become part of a highly developed world by means of implementing liberal housing policy, policymakers went on a path of preserving a socially sensitive demeanour of an improvised middle way policy thus shying away from extremes to satisfy the political demands of the day. In other words, all that the hybrid and experimental combination of measures achieved was  the creation of a peculiar housing corporatism regime that amounted to using the state to enhance market policies in housing. Still, Croatia remained firmly within the parameters of a transitional country, in line with the South European, basically Mediterranean, housing regime which could be described as a conservative, familist model based on a high degree of homeownership and family-backed housing provision or inheritance. The housing tenure structure, housing transitions and housing careers spanning from the mid-1970s to the mid-2010s unequivocally confirm this (Rodik et al., 2019). The strong legacy of familism in housing manifests itself through acts of primary kinship is still the dominant feature of housing transactions in Croatia. By the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s, commercial housing lending, a Bausparkassen type housing savings scheme and State-Subsidized Housing Construction (POS) model were introduced as innovative instruments to modernize Croatian housing policy. The last in line was actually a government top-down programme which was implemented in 2001 and aimed to build affordable housing in large cities for the first-time buyers. Not only was it introduced on top of the speculative and unregulated housing market, but its creation and implementation were lacking in terms of necessary analysis, public discussion as well as an evaluation of available results. As time went by, other housing policy instruments were introduced to speed up the processes in the housing market. For example, the real estate transfer tax exemption (5%) for first home buyers introduced in 2003 and rent subsidies for private rental market households that lasted from 2003 to 2010. In short, the aforementioned programmes were intended for well-off middle and upper-middle class households while social housing programmes such as housing allowances, which fall under the jurisdiction of local authorities, either do not exist or are of a residual kind (Bežovan, 2019; 2018). In these circumstances, it is difficult to build an efficient and sustainable system of social and public rental housing (Hegedus et al., 2013). The new supply subsidy measures were short-term and ineffective. Dwellings built in these programmes have been largely privatized or are under pressure to privatize, which is interpreted as a trap of the earlier privatization of the state-owned housing stock (giveaway privatization) in the early 1990s. The results of research in transition countries show that part of the younger population, who did not stand to receive family inheritance or who were less competitive in the labour market, tended to opt for long-term privately owned apartment rentals  (Hegedüs et al., 2018). Around this time, housing financialization in Croatia began to gain momentum, primarily driven by commercial housing lending. This trend continued despite the setback caused by the financial crisis and the subsequent prolonged recession in the Croatian economy. Namely, as a result of the onset of the crisis in 2009, the credit market froze and, faced with fiscal contraction, government housing supply also declined. In the midst of the economic crisis of 2010, the government started encouraging the sale of unsold flats as well as subsidizing housing loans and making state guarantees on them in 2011. With these legal measures, the state wanted to jump start stagnant activity in the credit and real estate markets, while at the same time the Socially Encouraged Rent Program (PON) enabled rental housing in POS flats with the possibility of a buyout after the expiry of the five-year contract period. From the end of 1990s to the latest period of housing loan subsidies for first-time buyers starting in 2017, housing policy measures were almost exclusively designed to support future homeowners. These resulted in serious housing market distortions and inequities. Policy Characteristics and Analysis - (Fernández & Bežovan, 2023) In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Croatia found itself in a deep economic crisis that resulted in a reduction in completed buildings and building permits until 2015. The collapse of the housing and stock markets reduced the financial assets of a generation of Croatian households while leaving a trail of stagnant property prices and unsold housing units. It is in the context of the early signs of recovery that the SSK was formulated. E-consultations and parliamentary debates in during the adoption of the Bill and its amendments denote the concerns raised at the time of its inception. Critiques raised during the adoption of the Bill delve into the fact that, according to estimates, only 10% of the population were eligible for this measure and that no risk management plan had been elaborated to ensure the repayment of loans after the end of subsidised period. The regressive nature of this measure was also underlined, since income requirements for the subsidy were indirectly set by the banks’ lending criteria without any provision of advantageous rates for lower or single income households. The Bill was also criticised for the introduction of a 3% real estate transfer tax when buying a first home. Moreover, greater subsidies were proposed for the less developed parts of the country, which the government initially refused, but later accepted and amended the Bill. According to the Bill itself, this subsidy had two aims, on the one hand to increase birth rates by providing younger couples with a home to create a family, and on the other hand to incentivize economic growth. Since its implementation in 2017, the housing loans subsidy has been managed by the Agency for Transactions and Mediation in Immovable Properties (APN). The eligibility criteria requires the applicant to be younger than 45 years old and have successfully applied for a loan with a registered bank to buy or build a property. In the call, the maximum subsidy was capped at 100.000 EUR and the maximum property price eligible was 1,500 EUR/m2. The subsidised percentage is also capped between 30 and 50% of the property value with less developed areas being eligible for higher subsidy proportions than more developed ones. Properties above this EUR/m2 threshold are still eligible but the subsidy is only applied to the proportion of the property value below this amount. The loan must last at least 15 years and the effective interest rate (EIR) for the first five years of its repayment may not exceed 3.75% per annum. The subsidy is paid in such a way that it covers half of the monthly instalments or annuities of the first four years of loan repayment. Given that this subsidy was designed with the objective of promoting demographic growth, households who have children during the first five years of repayment receive an extension of two more years per child to their subsidy. Similarly, if a member of the household has a 50% or more disability the loan repayment period increases by one more year. The apartment shall not be rented within two years on completion of the repayment of the subsidy and the recipient must be officially registered there. One of the main setbacks in the design of this particular policy is the eligibility criteria. In the first place, mortgage eligibility criteria are the same with or without a subsidy as credit institutions and banks require clients to satisfy their lending requirements prior to obtaining the subsidy. Secondly, subsidy eligibility is particularly lax on other dimensions as there in no income cap, the policy does not target first-time-buyers and includes older households up to the age of 45. During the discussions about the latest amendments to the Bill in 2020, the effect of this programme on the increase of housing prices were discussed, however, these concerns were ignored in the final bill. The government also rejected the suggestion to keep the measure applications open continuously throughout the year, and the suggestion that due to increased housing prices, the total loan amount would increase, along with the amount per square meter that can be subsidized.      

Innovative Aspects of the Housing Design/Building: Bloc Els Mestres underwent a major retrofit as part of the EU-funded HOUSEFUL project, integrating innovative circular solutions and services. Tenants were involved through technical systems operation learning and feedback sessions. Tenant engagement methods included interviews and workshops focused on teaching residents how to engage with energy consumption and learning the energy consumption of home systems. As with typical DER, there were four main technical improvements to the building: (1) airtightness, (2) insulation, (3) smart systems, and (4) renewable energies. Circular solutions also incorporated into the retrofit to reduce waste include: (1) reusing the balcony balustrades after raising their height to meet building regulations, (2) recycled wall cladding product, and (3) greywater to be treated using the Nature Based Solution (NBS) of a green wall inside the courtyard. Construction Characteristics, Materials, and Processes: After the rehabilitation, the housing block has evolved into a resilient structure with two four-bedroom apartments per floor, spanning the 1st to the 8th floor. Its distinctive design encompasses an array of materials, from natural limestone and cork SATE for insulation to yellow render, terracotta brick, and unobstructed glass panels. With a strategic south-east orientation, the building optimizes natural light, thanks to square windows and cantilevered balconies. Inside, the apartments are designed in a clean, white palette, giving tenants the freedom to infuse their unique style and personal touch. Energy Performance Characteristics: Physical deep energy retrofit interventions included: cork external wall insulation; airtightness, fixing holes and fissures, double glazing, and other solutions to reduce thermal coefficient; mechanical ventilation; hydraulic balance valve with differential pressure measurement for the determination of the circulation flow, with insulation; and solar thermal panels, owned by the building owner, together increasing energy efficiency by approximately 50% compared to pre-retrofit. Tenants received technical training on how to use dwelling systems, potentially improving energy efficiency. Involvement of Users and Other Stakeholders: The rehabilitation process has involved collaborative decision-making among key stakeholders: LEITAT, non-profit organisation managing and researching sustainable technologies—project co-ordinators; AHC—Housing Agency of Catalonia and building owners; Sabadell Council; WE&B, organised co-creation activities and resident outreach; Housing Europe; members of the tenants’ association; Aiguasol, solar thermal energy; and ITEC, Catalan Institute of Construction and Technology—performed LCAs (life cycle analyses) to decide on cost-effectiveness of circular solutions. The retrofit project encompassed low levels of tenant consultation and feedback sessions. The importance of managing conflicts that arise during tenant involvement in decision-making processes was recognized. A 'circularity agent' was proposed to teach tenants how to use complex technical systems, potentially fostering in-house expertise. Relationship to Urban Environment: Located in Sabadell Sud near the local airport, the block has undergone a significant transformation over the years. It has evolved from an isolated building, the once surrounding fields now transformed into a densely populated urban environment. Notably, it seamlessly integrates into this urban landscape, with a tonally harmonious façade that bathes the surroundings in a warm and visually appealing ambiance. The ground floor is dedicated to the community, fostering a strong connection to the local area and its residents. The nearby pedestrianized streets, adorned with benches, trees, and versatile playground equipment for all age groups, create a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere. This building plays a vital role as it provides accommodation exclusively for social housing residents, contributing to the rich social fabric of the urban community.

The EU's Social Climate Fund (SCF) was officially approved by the European Parliament on 18 April 2023 as part of the broader Green Deal initiative, which seeks to expand the scope of the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) to encompass buildings, transport and other sectors. This extension of the ETS is expected to result in increased energy costs and gasoline prices for households and businesses. To assist vulnerable households, micro-enterprises, and transport users in mitigating the financial impact of these price increases, EU Member States may use resources from the SCF to finance various measures and investments. The SCF will primarily be funded through the revenues generated by the new emissions trading system, with a maximum allocation of €65 bn, which will be supplemented by national contributions. Temporarily established for the period of 2026-2032, the fund aims to provide support during this specified timeframe. Preliminary Exploration of Merits and Limitations The initiation of the SCF has received praise from various NGOs advocating for a just transition (WWF, 2022). Supporters highlight its significance in integrating a social dimension into EU climate policies, despite some remaining weaknesses. The SCF’s spending rules are commended for striking a suitable balance between financing structural investments and providing temporary direct income support to vulnerable households. Through the SCF, Member States can finance subsidies that will enable these households to renovate their homes, adopt energy-efficient technologies, and access renewable energy and sustainable transportation. Moreover, various NGOs welcome the requirement for government consultation with subnational administrations and civil society organizations. This could potentially facilitate greater engagement of the target groups in the legislative process. Notably, the SCF also introduces a definition of transport poverty, marking a first in EU policy, and aiding member states to identify those eligible for support (thereby improving recognitional justice). Regarding the aforementioned weaknesses, there is a range of concerns. Firstly, the projected timeline may pose a limitation. Initiating green investments for vulnerable households only a year before the introduction of carbon pricing may not allow sufficient time for the desired impact. Projects related to energy renovation and improved public mobility infrastructure typically require several years to yield tangible results. Additionally, while Member States are required to include consultation with various stakeholders in their national ‘Social Climate Plans’ (SCPs), the level of participation outlined in the proposed regulation is minimalistic, raising concerns about ensuring procedural justice. Perceived Importance of Targeting The legislative text (EU, 2023) underscores the significance of consistent targeting, and Member States are required to furnish comprehensive information regarding the objective of the measure or investment and the specific individuals or groups it aims to address. Additionally, the European Commission expects an elucidation of how the measure or investment will effectively contribute to the accomplishment of the Fund's objectives and its potential to reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Targeting is deemed particularly crucial with regard to direct income support, as universal energy support tends to generate inflationary pressures, encourage unsustainable behaviour, and yield regressive effects. The legislative text states that is crucial to perceive such support as a temporary measure accompanying the decarbonisation of the housing and transport sectors, rather than a permanent solution that fails to address the fundamental causes of energy poverty and transport poverty. Thus, this support should exclusively target the direct consequences of including greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and road transport under the purview of Directive 2003/87/EC, without encompassing electricity or heating costs related to power and heat production covered by the same directive. As stated, "recipients of direct income support should be targeted, as members of a general group of recipients, by measures and investments aimed at effectively lifting those recipients out of energy poverty and transport poverty" (EU, 2023: p.4). The share of the SCF designated for renovation projects should also be specifically directed at the vulnerable households and transport users who are already receiving direct income support. SCPs are allowed to extend support to both public and private entities, including social housing providers and public-private cooperatives, in developing and providing affordable energy efficiency solutions and suitable funding mechanisms that align with the social objectives of the Fund. This support could include ‘financial assistance’ or even ‘fiscal incentives’, which poses the question of how lenient should the approach of the European Commission be towards the state support of social housing organisations, given the tensions that have emerged in the past (Gruis & Elsinga, 2014). Ex Ante and Ex Post Assessment of Social Climate Plans EU Member States are required to submit national Social Climate Plans (SCPs) no later than 30 June 2025, so that they can be given “careful and timely consideration”. The plans should encompass an investment component that promotes the long-term solution of reducing reliance on fossil fuels, potentially incorporating additional measures, such as temporary direct income support, to alleviate any immediate adverse effects on income. The primary objectives of these plans must be twofold. Firstly, they should provide vulnerable households, vulnerable micro-enterprises, and vulnerable transport users with the necessary resources to enable them to finance and undertake investments in energy efficiency, the decarbonisation of heating and cooling systems, the adoption of zero- and low-emission vehicles, and sustainable mobility. This support may be provided through mechanisms such as vouchers, subsidies, or zero-interest loans. Secondly, the plans should mitigate the impact of rising fossil fuel costs on the most vulnerable segments of society, thus fighting energy poverty and transport poverty during the transitional phase until the aforementioned investments have been implemented. The legislative text contains comprehensive information concerning the criteria utilised to assess the SCPs upon submission and evaluation after implementation. The set of ‘result indicators’ that are specifically relevant to the 'building sector' can be found in the table accompanying this case study. Time will tell whether this framework is sufficient to ensure that besides ‘recognitional justice’ and ‘procedural justice’, the SCF will make sure that the European Green Deal delivers ‘distributive justice’.

Innovative aspects of the housing design/building The APROP design and construction system is based on prefabricated modules, providing dignified and energy efficient dwellings for members of society who have difficulties in accessing housing. The homes achieve an AA Energy Rating, which the Barcelona municipality equates to a level of energy consumption four to six times lower than that of a conventional building of the same characteristics (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2019a). Circularity is integral to the concept of the project, with upcycled shipping containers forming the structure, which would otherwise be considered as waste and sent to landfill. In terms of time and cost savings, owing to the dry and lightweight structure the entire building can be disassembled in four weeks are reassembled elsewhere, significantly reducing on-site construction time. APROP has been documented as an exemplary project by the municipality and features in the “Innovation in affordable housing Barcelona” and “Barcelona right to housing” reports (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2018; Hernández Falagán, 2019). The architectural team includes three practices: Straddle3 and Eulia Arkitektura in the design stage, and Yaiza Terré for the delivery stage. Following the announcement of the Bauhaus award, a prize that aims to demonstrate sustainability in alignment with the European Green Deal (European Commission, 2022), Housing Europe declared APROP “an emerging housing model” (Housing Europe, 2021). The project has also been recognised by various other local and international awards (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2022). Although APROP is built to the same building standards as conventional housing in Barcelona, it received a critical response from a UK newspaper article (The Guardian, 2019), which raised concerns over the danger of lowering standards in the quality of housing if replicated elsewhere. Re-purposing shipping containers to provide housing has become an established industry in many countries but can typically lead to poor thermal and acoustic performance if it is not done well. This was highlighted in the same article by the principal architect David Juárez from Straddle3, who asserted that "building with containers can bring terrible results unless you really make an effort". Methodology and research project by ATRI The APROP programme is the result of research carried out by Tactical Accommodations of Inclusive Repopulation (ATRI), an interdisciplinary team supported by the Barcelona municipality that consists of architects, builders, economists, a lawyer, and a social scientist. The group was initiated in response to a lack of social and emergency housing in the Barcelona region. The project framework was formed between the Department of Social Rights, Cooperativa Lacol (the architects responsible for housing cooperative “La Borda”), Bestraten Hormias Arquitectura, and architectural practice Straddle3. ATRI cite the thesis project of architectural scholar Gerardo Wadel on Industrialised Construction and sustainability as further theoretical grounding for the APROP programme (ATRI, n.d.-a; Wadel, 2009). The methodology crosses disciplines to encompass four key areas: urbanism, architecture, economy, and management. This research culminated into the three main characteristics of an ATRI building: reversibility, being lightweight, and minimising execution time. Construction characteristics, materials and processes The prefabricated construction method and modular design strategy are characteristic of Industrialised Construction. Although the project is based on off-site construction, this did not take place in a factory setting and traditional manual labour was used (Ajuntament de Barcelona, 2019b). The prefabricated modules were transported through the narrow inner-city streets and placed on site within a steel frame using a large tonnage crane. The lightweight corrugated steel containers used were “last trip” containers that are easily available in the coastal port city of Barcelona, meaning the amount of embodied carbon to transport the containers was more minimal compared to further inland locations. Shipping containers are based on international ISO standards and are designed to universal sizes and can support their own weight whilst being stackable. Therefore, making changes to the structure to provide openings for doors and windows compromises their structural integrity and requires additional structural support. Considering the need to scale up production of the programme and the need to modify the structure, the construction system could potentially be modified in the future to use steel beams and columns formed from recycled material, rather than reusing steel in the form of shipping containers. The apartments integrate underfloor heating to provide efficient thermal comfort for residents, whilst the double skin façade ensures the homes do not overheat. The skin includes a translucent outer layer made from cellular polycarbonate and timber to increase natural daylight. This also serves to visually adapt the building to its context and allows the shipping containers beneath to be visible. Knauf products were used to create a double plate system in the ceilings and partitions for a structural 60-minute fire rating. The modules, façade and roof incorporate dismountable dry joints for disassembly, recycling, and to enable the easy relocation of parts or whole buildings if necessary. Energy performance characteristics The project team claim APROP housing reduces energy consumption by 25% and greenhouse gas emissions by 54% (European Commission, 2021). The double skin façade, layout, and the use of photovoltaics significantly contributed to the achievement of the AA energy certification. These design decisions were tested during the design process using energy simulation models and collaboration with an energy and resource efficiency consultancy (European Commission, 2021). Energy is supplied by an aerothermal heat pump that extracts energy from the ambient air, which is more energy efficient compared to conventional methods. Passive design strategies are also incorporated with exterior openings positioned to produce cross ventilation and maximise sunlight during the winter and shade in the summer months. These techniques significantly reduce heating and cooling demands and further improve the energy efficiency performance. Financial benefits The APROP Gothic pilot project cost €940,000. The reuse of shipping containers is reported to have resulted in a 10% material reduction in construction costs compared to traditional methods, in addition to cost savings from a much shorter project programme. These savings are referred to as the Pre-Manufactured Value (PMV) in relation to Industrialised Construction methods, as outlined in the Farmer report (Farmer & Thornton, 2021). The APROP system offers the possibility of further cost savings if the project is replicated through economies of scale; plans are already underway for multiple APROP projects in the city to provide permanent social housing in additional to temporary housing. Work on the second pilot project, a block of 42 dwellings in El Parc i la Llacuna del Poblenou, began in January 2022.

The Elwood Project is an affordable housing development and includes forty-six apartments and supportive housing services provided by Sea-Mar Community Services. All apartments are subsidised through the Vancouver Housing Authority, so that tenants pay thirty-five percent of their income towards rent, according to public housing designation. There are garden-style apartments to allow residents to choose when and where to interact with neighbours. Units are 37 sq. m. with 1 bedroom. These apartments are fully accessible and amenities include a community room, laundry room, covered bike parking, and outdoor courtyard with a community garden (Housing Initiative, 2022). This case highlights the benefits of trauma informed design (TID) in the supportive housing sector. These homes were built using concepts of open corridors, natural light, art and nature, colours of nature, natural materials, design with commercial sustainability, elements of privacy and personalization, open areas, adequate and easy access to services. With these thoughtful techniques, Elwood offers socially sustainable help for vulnerable people (people with special needs, homeless, formally homeless) and for the new “housing precariat”. The Elwood project is a good example of combining private apartments with opportunities for community living, where services and facilities management contribute to the well-being and stability of dwellers. What makes this project especially unique is that it does not look like affordable housing. As Brendan Sanchez concluded, people think that it “looks like really nice market rate upscale housing”, which is empowering, because people in general “deserve access to quality-built environment and healthy indoor interior environments”. Access Architecture did not design it as affordable housing, they just “designed it as housing” (Access Architecture, 2022). Affordability aspects The Elwood affordable housing community project is in a commercially zoned transit corridor. Existing planning regulations did not allow building permits in this area. Elwood is the first affordable housing development in the city of Vancouver that has required changes to the city’s zoning regulations. As a result of these changes, other measures have been adopted to promote affordable housing in the community. Under the city's previous building regulations, it was simply not possible to obtain a building permit. The Affordable Housing Fund helped developers to undertake this project and provided tenants with budget friendly housing options (Otak, 2022). Now, thanks to the Elwood project, there are ongoing talks at the Board of the Planning Commission of Elwood Town to get construction permits for similar projects. As the council stated, “it is on the horizon for all towns to have affordable housing” (Elwood Town Corporation, 2022). Although the population of the area is small, it is estimated that in the coming years the need for more affordable housing units will increase. Previously, permitted uses were limited to C-2 (general commercial, office and retail) and C-3 (intensive service commercial) zoning uses (e.g., gas station, restaurant, public utility substation). Currently, the members of the town council together with other stakeholders are negotiating new plans for affordable housing in the area. With the help of the community, they are striving to harmonise the legal, political, financial and design aspects and work on a general plan that includes the construction of multi-family affordable dwellings. In addition, the ultimate goal is to further modify zoning regulations to incorporate tax advantages for social housing. Sustainability aspects It is a highly energy efficient building as it meets the minimum requirements of the Evergreen Sustainable Development Standards (ESDS), which include requirements for low Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) content, water conservation, air sealing, and reduction of thermal bridges. It also meets the Green Point Rated Program requirements. The building materials are bamboo, cork, salvaged or FSC-Certified wood, natural linoleum, natural rubber and ceramic tile. There are no VOC adhesives or synthetic backing in living rooms, and bathrooms (Otak, 2022). Design Access Architecture used an outcome-based design process during the development of this project. The outcome-based design process considers TID principles to lower barriers among tenants and minimize stigma of receiving services. Brendan Sanchez from Access Architecture highlights that TID is a kind of design that is “getting a lot more attention now that people understand it more. It applies in this project, and we’re also just finding that it doesn’t have to be a certain traumatic event we design for. It can also be a systemic problem — we all have our own traumas we’re working through, especially after the events of the pandemic last year. So Access likes to focus on how we can create healing spaces in this kind of design.” (Nichiha, 2022) As Di Raimo et al. (2021) wrote, trauma informed approaches can be adopted by a wide range of service providers (health, social care, education, justice). In this case, Sea Mar-Community Services Northwest’s Foundational Community Support provides guidance for tenants with the help of case managers. Such partners can help with professional and health objectives. CDM Caregiving Services helps (or offer assistance) with daily tasks from cooking to cleaning and hygiene. Finally, Vancouver Housing Authority members help with anything they can, so that tenants would not feel themselves alone with their problems (Nahro, 2022). Elwood offers informal indoor and outdoor spaces which provide a relaxed atmosphere in a friendly milieu. In this building, TID suits the resident’s needs. The building was planned with the help of potential residents and social workers, so that a sense of space and place would provide familiarity, stability, and safety for those who are longing for the feeling of place attachment.

Public participation in planning is an enduring concern of scholars and practitioners regarding its practice; its inclusiveness and effectiveness. Participation can be a long-term relationship ‒ as in engagement ‒ or more short term in response to formal requirements ‒ as in consultation‒. New hands-on tools which involve innovative and experimental methods of engaging citizens are increasingly used in many countries to enhance citizen participation and collaboration in planning (AlWaer & Cooper, 2020; Rizzo et al., 2021; Scholl & Kemp, 2016). Hence, there is a growing interest in new forms of democratic practices in planning, which is fomenting the application of new technologies to support decision making. Within the UK planning system, Community Consultation (CC) is the main statutory method for involving citizens in local planning processes. Typically, it takes place in “invited spaces” of participation that are state-led. However, some main drawbacks of the current CC processes have been pointed out (Lawson et al, 2022; Wargent & Parker, 2018); namely, under-resourced local councils, the dominance of technocratic processes that limit the scope of participation, consultation used for building consensus around new pro-growth initiatives to housing development and the uneven representation of disadvantaged groups. Recent research in the UK has revealed that CC leading to the development of a local area plan can be tokenistic, as decisions by powerful actors such as housing developers carry more weight, while input from communities comes at a time when many planning and housing design decisions have been already made (CaCHE, 2020). Official CC activities for citizen participation in the UK include the consultation on local development plans which takes place approximately every five years or the opportunity to comment on a specific planning application in a place. These processes are time consuming and demanding for community members, often involving consultation with a demographic group that is not representative. Therefore, the practice of CC is currently being reviewed in order to respond to these concerns. Community Consultation for Quality of Life (CCQoL) is a UK-based research project that explores the ways in which civic participation in CC becomes much more meaningful, inclusive and engaging. This research project is part of four pilot projects being developed in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland with the participation of community groups, academic researchers, industry partners and local authorities. One of the main methods used to investigate CC is the Urban Room concept. The Urban Room is located on the ground floor of Broad Street Mall in central Reading. Reading is a large town half an hour to the west of London by rail and is characterised by its diverse population and high density of creative industries. The combination of innovation in the physical space, using an Urban Room for conducting research and the digital consultation tools are at the core of the CCQoL project. The key elements examined through my participation in this case study are the two foremost methods being used: (a) the establishment of an experimental Urban Room for community groups to have a platform for face-to-face participation and (b) a new method of social value mapping via a digital mapping interface available on smart phones, tablets as well as in the Urban Room and home computers. As the aim of the project is to improve planning consultation, the physical location is used for the research team to test the use of the Commonplace digital consultation platform in a real-life scenario. Commonplace is one of the leading consultation platforms in the UK. It is currently going through a period of review and will be relaunched as Commonplace 2.0 in the summer 2022.   The Urban Room As defined by the Urban Rooms Network facilitated by the Place Alliance, the purpose of an Urban Room is: “to foster meaningful connections between people and place, using creative methods of engagement to encourage active participation in the future of our buildings, streets and neighbourhoods”. (Urban Room Network, 2022) Running in parallel to the activities of the Urban Room at Reading, there is a website as a platform for online participation which clearly and concisely sets out: “We need your help to develop the Quality of Life maps of Reading. These will tell us about what you value in your place and help us create a wide-ranging resource of local knowledge” (CCQoL Reading, 2022). In the physical space of the Urban Room, posters provide more information regarding the community groups and other partners involved.   The Urban Room is in a shopping centre located at the end of a very busy, pedestrianised shopping street. This space was provided free of charge by the mall’s management company, Moorgarth. There are two ways in which people usually access the room: they can either casually drop in as they pass by or attend a scheduled event. The Urban Room was organised very quickly, over four months, with a minimal budget of roughly £3,000. Most of its equipment was borrowed from the school of architecture. Great efforts have been made to promote the Urban Room through social media. As a result, the initiative has received a lot of attention from local community groups. Over the course of five weeks in March 2022, a large number of events were planned, with many community groups convened by the project’s Community Partnerships Manager. Each week had its own theme: Introduction and Business Community, Health and Wellbeing, Culture and Heritage, Climate Change and The Future of Reading. The events were planned with the dual function of providing a platform for underrepresented groups to exhibit their community actions and discuss issues that affect them and as a way of attracting people to the space. One of the most important benefits of the Urban Room events was the opportunity for community representatives of different organisations to learn about each other’s activities and discuss about common concerns face-to-face. This makes the Urban Room a space of learning, not only about the city but about the participants. However, the establishment of an Urban Room as an experimental setting for engaging people in the creation of place-based knowledge has already presented various challenges. The fact that it is “tucked away” in a shopping centre has made it less visible to the public, making it hard to attract a diverse demographic. Also, as a quasi-public space, it has not been clear how to manage who is allowed in the room or not and at which times. Furthermore, some comments by participants indicate that there is too much information on display, especially for those on the autism spectrum, Finally, researchers have pointed out that the 60 or so workshops and activities might have been too many.   Social Value Mapping During the activities of the Urban Room, in which as a university researcher I was a participant observer, one of the key activities that community members participated in was the use of a digital mapping tool. The main benefit of a digital consultation platform is that it can reach more people. In addition, it can be blended with physical learning. In the Commonplace platform within the Urban Room there is a map of Reading on which participants can drop a pin to locate where they (a) connect with nature; (b) feel healthy; (c) feel a sense of belonging; (d) feel a sense of wonder; (e) feel a sense of control over their environment and; (f) find it easy to get around their area. These categories are based on the Quality of Life Framework (Quality of Life Foundation, 2021) and provide the opportunity for residents of Reading to reveal qualitative data that will be then visualised in the form of a map that captures social value (Samuel & Hatleskog, 2020). Participants often show interest in the contributions that others place on the map, indicating that the tool can function as a way to establish connections and ‒ I would argue ‒ also to create social capital. However, from the initial examination of the findings, the ability to only map the existing, positive characteristics of spaces does not allow participants to raise concerns about places they would like to see improved. The project’s research team have made an ethical decision to focus on the positive attributes of the place as the inclusion of negative impacts on publicly available maps can have a long-term negative impact on identity. Therefore, in the use of the digital mapping tool, citizens’ degree of influence and level of decision-making power remains limited. After speaking to the research team about this, I realised that consultations always need to clarify the limit of their influence. Since the research project is not an official CC linked to a real development plan, there would be a problem in addressing the participants’ concerns. Interestingly, this is a problem particularly observed in official CC processes by local governments that do not respond to the issues raised during the consultation so that community concerns are often disregarded as not being “a material consideration in a planning sense” (Lawson et al, 2022). Therefore, contested issues and oppositional views present the difficulty of how to respond to them. However, regarding the mapping of positive characteristics, when maps are made available to the community they can provide transparency and accountability of the planning process regarding the spatial interpretation of social value.   Reflection & discussion It can be argued that an Urban Room is similar to an Urban Living Lab (ULL) in the sense that they combine an environment and a methodology with a focus on real-life interventions by urban experimentation and collaboration between different stakeholders which has become popular in Europe (McCormick & Hartmann, 2017; Steen & van Bueren, 2017). An ULL almost always involves the goal of innovation in the face of contemporary urban challenges. Importantly, emphasis is placed on citizen-centred approaches to co-design and social innovation. However, an ULL for planning is typically used in sites for experimentation and often in a context where an intervention for alternative urban governance arrangements and sustainability transitions is taking place. Urban Rooms, on the other hand, seem to be placing more emphasis on enhancing the ties between groups of people, to provide a forum for discussion and for building awareness of local issues (Urban Room Network, 2022). Another important distinction is that an ULL places more emphasis on co-creation  by involving citizens in the development of services and planning experiments (Höflehner & Zimmermann, 2016; Scholl & de Kraker, 2021; Scholl & Kemp, 2016). At the same time, co-production between local governments and citizens in collaborative planning processes is observed in design-led planning events such as charrettes (AlWaer & Cooper, 2020). Therefore, there seems to be an opportunity to redefine the Urban Room as an ULL and integrate it in planning charrettes in order to give importance to the decision-making power of participation in planning. Furthermore, despite some technical difficulties and limitations, a digital mapping tool can be a useful method of legitimising citizens’ views in planning policy, especially if it is improved to incorporate more nuanced and critical inputs.

Background An aspect that is worth highlighting of Marmalade Lane, the biggest cohousing community in the UK and the first of its kind in Cambridge, is the unusual series of events that led to its realisation. In 2005 the South Cambridgeshire District Council approved the plan for a major urban development in its Northwest urban fringe. The Orchard Park was planned in the area previously known as Arbury Park and envisaged a housing-led mix-use master plan of at least 900 homes, a third of them planned as affordable housing. The 2008 financial crisis had a profound impact on the normal development of the project causing the withdrawal of many developers, with only housing associations and bigger developers continuing afterwards. This delay and unexpected scenario let plots like the K1, where Marmalade Lane was erected, without any foreseeable solution. At this point, the city council opened the possibilities to a more innovative approach and decided to support a Cohousing community to collaboratively produce a brief for a collaborative housing scheme to be tendered by developers. Involvement of users and other stakeholders   The South Cambridgeshire District Council, in collaboration with the K1 Cohousing group, ventured together to develop a design brief for an innovative housing scheme that had sustainability principles at the forefront of the design. Thus, a tender was launched to select an adequate developer to realise the project. In July 2015, the partnership formed between Town and Trivselhus ‘TOWNHUS’ was chosen to be the developer. The design of the scheme was enabled by Mole Architects, a local architecture firm that, as the verb enable indicates, collaborated with the cohousing group in the accomplishment of the brief. The planning application was submitted in December of the same year after several design workshop meetings whereby decisions regarding interior design, energy performance, common spaces and landscape design were shared and discussed. The procurement and development process was eased by the local authority’s commitment to the realisation of the project. The scheme benefited from seed funding provided by the council and a grant from the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). The land value was set on full-market price, but its payment was deferred to be paid out of the sales and with the responsibility of the developer of selling the homes to the K1 Cohousing members. Who, in turn, were legally bounded to purchase and received discounts for early buyers. As relevant as underscoring the synergies that made Marmalade Lane’s success story possible, it is important to realise that there were defining facts that might be very difficult to replicate in order to bring about analogue housing projects. Two major aspects are securing access to land and receiving enough support from local authorities in the procurement process. In this case, both were a direct consequence of a global economic crisis and the need of developing a plot that was left behind amidst a major urban development plan. Innovative aspects of the housing design Spatially speaking, the housing complex is organised following the logic of a succession of communal spaces that connect the more public and exposed face of the project to the more private and secluded intended only for residents and guests. This is accomplished by integrating a proposed lane that knits the front and rear façades of some of the homes to the surrounding urban fabric and, therefore, serves as a bridge between the public neighbourhood life and the domestic everyday life. The cars have been purposely removed from the lane and pushed into the background at the perimeter of the plot, favouring the human scale and the idea of the lane as a place for interaction and encounters between residents. A design decision that depicts the community’s alignment with sustainable practices, a manifesto that is seen in other features of the development process and community involvement in local initiatives. The lane is complemented by numerous and diverse places to sit, gather and meet; some of them designed and others that have been added spontaneously by the inhabitants offering a more customisable arrangement that enriches the variety of interactions that can take place. The front and rear gardens of the terraced houses contiguous to the lane were reduced in surface and remained open without physical barriers. A straightforward design decision that emphasises the preponderance of the common space vis-a-vis the private, blurring the limits between both and creating a fluid threshold where most of the activities unfold. The Common House is situated adjacent to the lane and congregates the majority of the in-doors social activities in the scheme, within the building, there are available spaces for residents to run community projects and activities. They can cook in a communal kitchen to share both time and food, or organise cinema night in one of the multi-purpose areas. A double-height lounge and children's playroom incite gathering with the use of an application to organise easily social events amongst the inhabitants. Other practical facilities are available such as a bookable guest bedroom and shared laundry. The architecture of its volume stands out due to its cubic-form shape and different lining material that complements its relevance as the place to convene and marks the transition to the courtyard where complementary outdoor activities are performed. Within the courtyard, children can play without any danger and under direct supervision from adults, but at the same time enjoy the liberty and countless possibilities that such a big and open space grants. Lastly, the housing typologies were designed to recognise multiple ways of life and needs. Consequently, adaptability and flexibility were fundamental targets for the architects who claim that units were able to house 29 different configurations. They are arranged in 42 units comprehending terraced houses and apartments from one to five bedrooms. Residents also had the chance to choose between a range of interior materials and fittings and one of four brick colours for the facade. Construction and energy performance characteristics Sustainability was a prime priority to all the stakeholders involved in the project. Being a core value shared by the cohousing members, energy efficiency was emphasised in the brief and influenced the developer’s selection. The Trivselhus Climate Shield® technology was employed to reduce the project’s embodied and operational carbon emissions. The technique incorporates sourced wood and recyclable materials into a timber-framed design using a closed panel construction method that assures insulation and airtightness to the buildings. Alongside the comparative advantages of reducing operational costs, the technique affords open interior spaces which in turn allow multiple configurations of the internal layout, an aspect that was harnessed by the architectural design. Likewise, it optimises the construction time which was further reduced by using industrialised triple-glazed composite aluminium windows for easy on-site assembly. Furthermore, the mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR) system and the air source heat pumps are used to ensure energy efficiency, air quality and thermal comfort. Overall, with an annual average heat loss expected of 35kWh/m², the complex performs close to the Passivhaus low-energy building standard of 30kWh/m² (Merrick, 2019). Integration with the wider community It is worth analysing the extent to which cohousing communities interact with the neighbours that are not part of the estate. The number of reasons that can provoke unwanted segregation between communities might range from deliberate disinterest, differences between the cohousing group’s ethos and that one of the wider population, and the common facilities making redundant the ones provided by local authorities, just to name a few. According to testimonies of some residents contacted during a visit to the estate, it is of great interest for Marmalade Lane’s community to reach out to the rest of the residents of Orchard Park. Several activities have been carried out to foster integration and the use of public and communal venues managed by the local council. Amongst these initiatives highlights the reactivation of neglected green spaces in the vicinity, through gardening and ‘Do it yourself’ DIY activities to provide places to sit and interact. Nonetheless, some residents manifested that the area’s lack of proper infrastructure to meet and gather has impeded the creation of a strong community. For instance, the community centre run by the council is only open when hired for a specific event and not on a drop-in basis. The lack of a pub or café was also identified as a possible justification for the low integration of the rest of the community. Marmalade Lane residents have been leading a monthly ‘rubbish ramble’ and social events inviting the rest of the Orchard Park community. In the same vein, some positive impact on the wider community has been evidenced by the residents consulted. One of them mentioned the realisation of a pop-up cinema and a barbecue organised by neighbours of the Orchard Park community in an adjacent park. Perhaps after being inspired by the activities held in Marmalade Lane, according to another resident.

While gas prices in Europe have surged since the war in Ukraine started, price volatility was already high before the Russian invasion (Statista, 2022). Furthermore, it is to expected that the low-carbon transition will cause more temporary peaks in residential energy prices (Shi & Shen, 2021). This raises the importance for governments to mitigate the effects on households at risk of fuel poverty, most notably low-income households in poorly insulated homes. There are typically three policy angles (Simshauser, 2021): tariff design, retrofit programmes to improve energy efficiency, and targeted income support or subsidies. This case study explores an innovative proposal within the latter category.   Target efficiency of policy In the last decades, governments have moved from universal to more targeted social welfare policies, aiming to ensure their redistributive character in times of austerity (Ortiz & Cummins, 2020). Targeted support is especially important in the context of residential energy affordability because generic measures could reduce the willingness of high-income homeowners to retrofit their homes, and therefore represent perverse incentives. However, targeted policies are by nature imperfect, as it requires balancing between ‘E-mistakes’ (also called ‘leakage’) in which compensation is given to non-targeted groups, and ‘F-mistakes’ (also called ‘under-coverage’) in which part of the targeted group is not given compensation (Cornia & Stewart, 1993). The former is reflected by ‘vertical target efficiency’, the extent to which beneficiaries need compensation, and the latter by ‘horizontal target efficiency’, the extent to which those deemed to need the compensation receive it (Weisbrod, 1972). Moreover, targeting could be problematic when it induces informational distortion, incentive distortion, stigmatisation or significant administrative losses (Sen, 1998).   Warm Home Discount Reform In addition to existing income support policies, such as the Cold Weather Payment and the Winter Fuel Payment, the Brittish government introduced the Warm Home Discount (WHD) for England and Wales in 2011. It has offered rebates of up to £140 on annual electricity and gas bills for specific groups: households in receipt of Pension Credit Guarantee form the ‘core group’ and households on various working age benefits the ‘broader group’ (DECC, 2011). While the core group receives the rebate automatically, the broader group must apply for the scheme (with a first-come first-served basis and a total spending envelope of around £350 million) to their energy supplier. In practice, this means that a large share of the eligible group does not know about its entitlement or is refused by suppliers because their spending cap is already exceeded. In addition, the WHD has ever since its announcement been criticised for not reaching all fuel poor households (Consumer Focus, 2011). In response to this criticism, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published a consultation document for reform of the WHD (BEIS, 2021). It wants to improve targeting of fuel poor households, automate all rebate payments, and reach more households by raising the spending envelope to £475 million. The proposal to improve and automate targeting is innovative in its current shape: BEIS wants to combine data from public and private organisations to identify households on low incomes living in substandard housing or dealing with high energy costs. It would therefore be the first social welfare benefit that is automatically provided based on a prediction of low energy efficiency, using specific housing characteristics such as floor area, property age and property type as proxies.   Narrow focus on vertical efficiency However, in its substantiation of the reform, BEIS seems to interpret target efficiency simply as vertical efficiency, which leads to a neglect of horizontal efficiency effects. BEIS modelling suggests that with the current scheme around 37% of WHD recipients are fuel poor, while the reform would increase this number to 47% of recipients. This reflects the vertical efficiency of the reform, as there would only be 53% ‘leakage’ to the non-targeted group rather than 63%. But arguably of greater importance is the horizontal efficiency, the question what proportion of all fuel poor households in England and Wales would be reached. This percentage remains unknown, leaving the public guessing how much ‘under-coverage’ there would be under the proposed reform. Given the stringent WHD eligibility criteria, my hypothesis would be that under-coverage is high. However, further research is needed to find out whether this is indeed the case, and to explore how setting a different threshold could improve the horizontal efficiency of a future reform. Furthermore, BEIS could think about using a broader understanding of vertical efficiency, not just considering the incidence of fuel poverty, but also the severity on a household level. BEIS now only modelled the proportion of fuel poverty (P0) and not the poverty gap (P1). However, poverty is not a binary phenomenon and should thus not be treated as such. When Hills (2012) was commissioned by the Brittish government to enhance fuel poverty statistics, he introduced the ‘fuel poverty gap’ as an enrichment of the proportion, and envisioned it to be the main driver of policy design. BEIS’ approach in the consultation document demonstrates that this vision has not materialised. Further research could explore whether spending the same amount on a ‘percentage of the utility bill’ rather than a standard discount could lower the fuel poverty gap, as Simshauser (2021) showed for Australian targeted support mechanisms.

In the Nordic countries, water-related damages in buildings (including homes) result in annual costs of several billion euros. These damages emerge from leaks in piping systems, inadequately waterproofing wet room layers, or damp-related problems which also negatively impact indoor air quality and occupants’ health. Some measures can be implemented to enhance the building sustainability that could result in huge savings and have a better impact on the environment and occupants’ health. The Swedish insurance company “Dalarnas Försäkringsbolag” decided to finance this research project to look for solutions to foment a more economically and environmentally sustainable future for housing (Magnusson, 2020; Petrović et al., 2021). In collaboration with the Dalarna University, a design competition for students was announced in 2017 (Dalarna University, 2020). The winning team proposed an aesthetically pleasing design which was also rational and sustainable. In 2019, Dalarnas Villa was constructed by high school students under the supervision of local entrepreneurs. Currently, it is rented out to a Swedish family (Dalarna University, 2020). The Dalarnas Villa received the Nordic Swan Ecolabel which is the Nordic official environmental label (Holén, 2019; Svanen, n.d.). Construction and materials Dalarnas Villa was an opportunity to test the use of sustainable materials and smart systems to augment safety and save energy by way of cost-effective solutions with less negative environmental impact (Magnusson, 2020; Petrović et al., 2021). Wood is considered to be a sustainable option in Sweden. Thus, the house structure system is based entirely on wood. For the façade, wood panels were utilized as well. For the energy and smart systems, they installed photovoltaic panels on the southwest side of the roof; an exhaust air circulation system, and a ground source heat pump. Each year, a new ventilation system is installed to test different solutions to improve indoor air quality and provide energy savings. For safety systems that mitigate water-related damages, they used a smart water control system. It has a switch that detects, alerts, and closes the water supply if there is a leak, no occupants in the house, and/or in case of potential risk or damage due to water freezing (Dalarna University, 2020; Magnusson, 2020; Petrović et al., 2021). Life Cycle Costs assessment Life Cycle Costing (LCC) calculates the costs that are incurred during the pre-construction and construction phases (known as initial costs) and the future maintenance and operational costs (Estevan & Schaefer, 2017). LCC applies discounts and inflation rates to keep future costs in line with those of today. In other words, to bring all initial and future costs over a project lifetime into a single time dimension (Jawad & Ozbay, 2006). Petrović et al., (2021) conducted LCC analysis for the Dalarna Villa from cradle to grave following the lifetime structure of EN 166 27 standard. Over a 50-year lifespan, a discount of 7% and an inflation rate of 2 % and adding the taxes, the life cycle costs of the Villa accounted for 3,588 euro/m2. LCC conducted the study for 50- and 100-year lifespans as well as different inflation and discount rates. Over the two life spans, a common pattern has been detected: The investment-related costs had the highest share. Within these investment-related costs, labour amounted to half of the costs in this life cycle stage, followed by building materials, installations, and other pre-construction costs. This resonates with the ongoing issue of labour availability and the rise in construction prices in Europe as shown in the Eurostat chart presenting the EU construction prices and costs index (CCI) (Eurostat, 2021). This high percentage emphasizes the crucial potential of the industrialized construction sector to reduce construction labour (Qi et al., 2021), which is the research focus of ESR 01.  The running costs during the occupation phase - when residents were living in the house - included maintenance, replacement, operational energy and operational water costs. In this phase, maintenance costs were the highest, followed by replacement costs. After 50 years, both maintenance and replacement costs significantly increase, while the operational energy and operational water costs rise slowly (Petrović et al., 2021). The study also showed that without installing PV panels, the operational energy use costs would almost double over the 100 year lifespan. For the end-of-life costs, the study assumed the villa would be demolished. Thus, these costs were the only value that is decreasing over the 100-year life span. If it were designed to be dismantled, the end-of-life costs would increase, but the solution would be more sustainable with regard to resource efficiency and environmental impact (Petrović et al., 2021). Design for disassembly is the research focus of RE-DWELL ESR01 project. Over a 100-year lifespan, the initial costs of pre-construction and construction accounted for almost 75% of the total LCC, while the operational costs of maintenance, energy and water accounted for almost 25% (Petrović et al., 2021).* Environmental impact The carbon footprint of building materials can be understood through the so-called Global Warming Potential (GWP). It is an indicator of the amount of the greenhouse gases (GHG) that trap heat in the atmosphere (Durkee, 2006). This amount is explained in comparison with a reference gas which is  carbon dioxide. Petrovic et al., (2019) carried out Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with a focus on the villa building materials and their transportation distance to understand their environmental impact. The study calculated the GWP using One Click LCA software. The conclusions were that the thermo wood material used in the exterior envelope releases the highest amount of GHG to the atmosphere compared to the other materials which account for 514.03 Kg CO2e/m3. The next materials were concrete, cross-laminated timber (CLT) and the triple glazed windows releasing 268.68 Kg CO2e/m3, 140 Kg CO2e/m3 and 115 Kg CO2e/piece respectively (Petrovic et al., 2019). On the other hand, the wood-based materials for the structure and envelope are lower in GWP where each account for 25 Kg CO2e/m3. Thus, they can be considered more environmentally friendly. Dalarnas Villa is a pilot project to investigate sustainable housing solutions in Sweden; houses that prioritise the quality of the indoor environment, the health of the residents and the impact on global warming. However, one of the questions to be addressed in the future is whether the increased costs of sustainable solutions will be cost-effective in the long term, as residents will pay less for maintenance and energy costs.

'DARE to build' is a 5–week (1 week of design – 4 weeks of construction) elective summer course offered at the Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. The course caters for master-level students from 5 different master programmes offered at the Architecture and Civil Engineering Department. Through a practice-based approach and a subsequent exposure to real-world problems, “DARE to build” aims to prove that “real change can be simultaneously made and learned (Brandão et al., 2021b, 2021a). The goal of this course is to address the increasing need for effective multidisciplinary teams in the fields of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) in order to tackle the ever-growing complexity of real-world problems (Mcglohn et al., 2014), and the pervading lack of a strong pedagogical framework that responds effectively to this challenge. The two main foci of the “DARE to build” pedagogical model are:  (1) to train students in interdisciplinary communication, to cultivate empathy and appreciation for the contributions of each discipline, to sharpen collaborative skills (Tran et al., 2012) and (2) to expose students in practice-based, real-world design projects, through a problem-and-project-based learning (PPBL) approach, within a multi-stakeholder learning environment (Wiek et al., 2014). This multi-stakeholder environment is situated in the municipality of Gothenburg and involves different branches and services (Stadsbyggnadskontoret, Park och Naturförvaltningen), local/regional housing companies (Familjebostäder, Bostadsbolaget), professionals/collectives operating within the AEC fields (ON/OFF Berlin, COWI), and local residents and their associations (Hyresgästföreningen, Tidsnätverket i Bergsjön).   Design & Build through CDIO By showcasing that “building, making and designing are intrinsic to each other” (Stonorov et al., 2018, p. 1), students put the theory acquired into practice and reflect on the implications of their design decisions. Subsequently they  reflect on their role as AEC professionals, in relation to local and global sustainability; from assessing feasibility within a set timeframe to the intangible qualities generated or channelled through design decisions in specific contexts. This hands-on learning environment applies the CDIO framework (conceive, design, implement, operate, http://www.cdio.org/), an educational framework developed in the MIT, with a particular focus on the “implementation” part.  CDIO has been developed in recent years as a reforming tool for engineering education, and is centred on three main goals: (1) to acquire a thorough knowledge of technical fundamentals, (2) to sharpen leadership and initiative-taking skills, and (3) to become aware of the important role research and technological advances can play in design decisions (Crawley et al., 2014). Therefore, design and construction, combined with  CDIO, offer a comprehensive experience that enables future professionals to assume a knowledgeable and confident role within the AEC sector.   Course structure “DARE to build” projects take place during the autumn semester along with the “Design and Planning for Social Inclusion” (DPSI) studio. Students work closely with the local stakeholders throughout the semester and on completion of the studio, one project is selected to become the “DARE to build” project of the year, based on (1) stakeholder interest and funding capacity, (2) pedagogical opportunities and the (3) feasibility of construction. During the intervening months, the project is further developed, primarily by faculty, with occasional inputs from the original team of DPSI students and support from professionals with expertise relevant to a particular project. The purpose of this further development of the initial project is to establish the guidelines for the 1-week design process carried out within “DARE to build”. During the building phase, the group of students is usually joined by a team of 10-15 local (whenever possible) summer workers, aged between 16-21 years old, employed by the stakeholders (either by the Municipality of Gothenburg or by a local housing company). The aim of this collaboration is twofold - to have a substantial amount of workforce on site and to create a working environment where students are simultaneously learning and teaching, therefore enhancing their sense of responsibility. “DARE to build” has also collaborated - in pre-pandemic times - with Rice University in Texas, so 10 to 15 of their engineering students joined the course as a summer educational experience abroad. The timeline for each edition of the “DARE to build” project evolution can be schematically represented through the CDIO methodology, which becomes the backbone of the programme (adapted from the courses’ syllabi): Conceive: Developed through a participatory process within the design studio “Design and Planning for Social Inclusion”, in the Autumn. Design: (1) Teaching staff  defines design guidelines and materials, (2) student participants detail and redesign some elements of the original project, as well as create schedules, building site logistical plans, budget logs, etc. Implement: The actual construction of the building is planned and executed. All the necessary building documentation is produced in order to sustain an informed and efficient building process. Operate: The completed built project is handed over to the stakeholders and local community. All the necessary final documentation for the operability of the project is produced and completed (such as-built drawings, etc.). In both the design and construction process, students take on different responsibilities on a daily basis, in the form of different roles:  project manager, site supervisor, communications officer, and food & fika (=coffee break) gurus. Through detailed documentation, each team reports on everything related to the project’s progress, the needs and potential material deficits on to the next day’s team. Cooking, as well as eating and drinking together, works as an important and an effective team-bonding activity.    Learning Outcomes The learning outcomes are divided into three different sets to fit with the overall vision of “DARE to Build” (adapted from the course syllabi): Knowledge and understanding: To identify and explain a project’s life cycle, relate applied architectural design to sustainability and to describe different approaches to sustainable design. Abilities and skills: To be able to implement co-creation methods, design and assess concrete solutions, to visualise and communicate proposals, to apply previously gained knowledge to real-world projects, critically review architectural/technical solutions, and to work in multidisciplinary teams. Assessment and attitude: To be able to elaborate different proposals on a scientific and value-based argumentation, to combine knowledge from different disciplines, to consider and review conditions for effective teamwork, to further develop critical thinking   on professional roles.   The context of operations: Miljonprogrammet The context in which “DARE to Build” operates is the so-called “Million Homes Programme” areas (MHP, in Swedish: Miljonprogrammet) of suburban Gothenburg. The MHP was an ambitious state-subsidised response to the rapidly growing need for cheap, high-quality housing in the post-war period. The aim was to provide one million dwellings within a decade (1965-1974), an endeavour anchored on the firm belief that intensified housing production would be relevant and necessary in the future (Baeten et al., 2017; Hall & Vidén, 2005). During the peak years of the Swedish welfare state, as this period is often described, public housing companies, with help from private contractors, built dwellings that targeted any potential home-seeker, regardless of income or class. In order to avoid suburban living and segregation, rental subsidies were granted on the basis of income and number of children, so that, in theory, everyone could have access to modern housing and full of state-of-the-art amenities (Places for People - Gothenburg, 1971). The long-term perspective of MHP also meant profound alterations in the urban landscape; inner city homes in poor condition were demolished and entire new satellite districts were constructed from scratch triggering “the largest wave of housing displacement in Sweden’s history, albeit firmly grounded in a social-democratic conviction of social betterment for all” (Baeten et al., 2017, p. 637) . However, when this economic growth came to an abrupt halt due to the oil crisis of the 1970s, what used to be an attractive and modern residential area became second-class housing, shunned by the majority of Swedish citizens looking for a house. Instead, they became an affordable option for the growing number of immigrants arriving in Sweden between 1980 and 2000, resulting in a high level of segregation in Swedish cities. (Baeten et al., 2017). Nowadays, the MHP areas are home to multi-cultural, mostly low income, immigrant and refugee communities. Media narratives of recent decades have systematically racialised, stigmatised and demonised the suburbs and portrayed them as cradles of criminal activity and delinquency, laying the groundwork for an increasingly militarised discourse (Thapar-Björkert et al., 2019). The withdrawal of the welfare state from these areas is manifested through the poor maintenance of the housing stock and the surrounding public places and the diminishing public facilities (healthcare centres, marketplaces, libraries, etc.) to name a few. Public discourse, best reflected in the media, often individualizes the problems of "culturally different" inhabitants, which subsequently "justifies" people's unwillingness to work due to the "highly insecure" environment. In recent years, the gradual (neo)liberalisation of the Swedish housing regime has provided room for yet another wave of displacement, leaving MHP area residents with little to no housing alternatives. The public housing companies that own MHP stock have started to offer their stock to potential private investors through large scale renovations that, paired with legal reforms, allow private companies to reject rent control. As a result, MHP areas are entering a phase of brutal gentrification (Baeten et al., 2017).   Reflections Within such a sensitive and highly complex context, both “DARE to Build”, and “Design & Planning for Social Inclusion” aspire to make Chalmers University of Technology an influential local actor and spatial agent within the shifting landscape of the MHP areas, thus highlighting the overall relevance of academic institutions as strong, multi-faceted and direct connections with the “real-world”. Even though participation and co-creation methodologies are strong in all “Design and Planning for Social Inclusion” projects, “DARE to Build” has still some ground to cover. In the critical months that follow the selection of the project and up to the first week of design phase, a project may change direction completely in order to fit the pedagogical and feasibility criteria. This fragmented participation and involvement, especially of those with less power within the stakeholder hierarchy, risks leading to interventions in which local residents have no sense of ownership or pride, especially in a context where interventions from outsiders, or from the top down, are greeted with increased suspicion and distrust. Overall “DARE to build” is a relevant case of context-based education which can inform future similar activities aimed at integration education in the community as an instrument to promote sustainable development.   Relevant “DARE to build” projects Gärdsåsmosse uteklassrum: An outdoor classroom in Bergsjön conceptualised through a post-humanist perspective and constructed on the principles of biomimicry, and with the use of almost exclusively natural materials. Visit: https://www.chalmers.se/sv/institutioner/ace/nyheter/Sidor/Nu-kan-undervisningen-dra-at-skogen.aspx https://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/cowi/pressreleases/cowi-hjaelpte-goeteborgs-stad-foervandla-moerk-park-till-en-plats-att-ha-picknick-i-2920358   Parkourius: A parkour playground for children and teens of the Merkuriusgatan neighbourhood in Bergsjön. A wooden construction that employs child-friendly design. Visit: https://www.sto-stiftung.de/de/content-detail_112001.html https://www.mynewsdesk.com/se/familjebostader-goteborg-se/pressreleases/snart-invigs-bergsjoens-nya-parkourpark-3111682

The housing crisis After the crisis of 2008, it became obvious that the mainstream mechanisms for the provision of housing were failing to provide secure and affordable housing for many households, especially in the countries of the European south such as Spain. It is in this context that alternative forms emerged through social initiatives. La Borda is understood as an alternative form of housing provision and a tenancy form in the historical and geographical context of Catalonia. It follows mechanisms for the provision of housing that differ from predominant approaches, which have traditionally been the free market, with a for-profit and speculative role, and a very low percentage of public provision (Allen, 2006). It also constitutes a different tenure model, based on collective instead of private ownership, which is the prevailing form in southern Europe. As such, it encompasses the notions of community engagement, self-management, co-production and democratic decision-making at the core of the project. Alternative forms of housing In the context of Catalonia, housing cooperatives go back to the 1960s when they were promoted by the labour movement or by religious entities. During this period, housing cooperatives were mainly focused on promoting housing development, whether as private housing developers for their members or by facilitating the development of government-protected housing. In most cases, these cooperatives were dissolved once the promotion period ended, and the homes were sold. Some of these still exist today, such as the “Cooperativa Obrera de Viviendas” in El Prat de Llobregat. However, this model of cooperativism is significantly different from the model of “grant of use”, as it was used mostly as an organizational form, with limited or non-existent involvement of the cooperative members. It was only after the 2008 crisis, that new initiatives have arisen, that are linked to the grant-of-use model, such as co-housing or “masoveria urbana”.  The cooperative model of grant-of-use means that all residents are members of the cooperative, which owns the building. As members, they are the ones to make decisions about how it operates, including organisational, communitarian, legislative, and economic issues as well as issues concerning the building and its use. The fact that the members are not owners offers protection and provides for non-speculative development, while actions such as sub-letting or transfer of use are not possible. In the case that someone decides to leave, the flat returns to the cooperative which then decides on the new resident. This is a model that promotes long-term affordability as it prevents housing from being privatized using a condominium scheme. The grant -of -use model has a strong element of community participation, which is not always found in the other two models. International experiences were used as reference points, such as the Andel model from Denmark and the FUCVAM from Uruguay, according to the group (La Borda, 2020). However, Parés et al. (2021) believe that it is closer to the Almen model from Scandinavia, which implies collective ownership and rental, while the Andel is a co-ownership model, where the majority of its apartments have been sold to its user, thus going again back to the free-market stock. In 2015, the city of Barcelona reached an agreement with La Borda and Princesa 49, allowing them to become the first two pilot projects to be constructed on public land with a 75-year leasehold. However, pioneering initiatives like Cal Cases (2004) and La Muralleta (1999) were launched earlier, even though they were located in peri-urban areas. The main difference is that in these cases the land was purchased by the cooperative, as there was no such legal framework at the time. This means that these projects are classified as Officially Protected Housing (Vivienda de Protección Oficial or VPO), and thus all the residents must comply with the criteria to be eligible for social housing, such as having a maximum income and not owning property. Also, since it is characterised as VPO there is a ceiling to the monthly fee to be charged for the use of the housing unit, thus keeping the housing accessible to groups with lower economic power. This makes this scheme a way to provide social housing with the active participation of the community, keeping the property public in the long term. After the agreed period, the plot will return to the municipality, or a new agreement should be signed with the cooperative. The neighbourhood movement In 2011, a group of neighbours occupied one of the abandoned industrial buildings in the old industrial state of Can Batlló in response to an urban renewal project, with the intention of preserving the site's memory (Can Batlló, 2020; Girbés-Peco et al., 2020). The neighbourhood movement known as "Recuperem Can Batlló" sought to explore alternative solutions to the housing crisis of the time. The project started in 2012, after a series of informal meetings with an initial group of 15 people who were already active in the neighbourhood, including members of the architectural cooperative Lacol, members of the labour cooperative La Ciutat Invisible, members of the association Sostre Civic and people from local civic associations. After a long process of public participation, where the potential uses of the site were discussed, they decided to begin a self-managed and self-promotion process to create La Borda. In 2014 they legally formed a residents’ cooperative and after a long process of negotiation with the city council, they obtained a lease for the use of the land for 75 years in exchange for an annual fee. At that time, the group expanded, and it went from 15 members to 45. After another two years of work, construction started in 2017 and the first residents moved in the following year. The participatory process The word “participation” is sometimes used as a buzzword, where it refers to processes of consultation or manipulation of participants to legitimise decisions, leading it to become an empty signifier. However, by identifying the hierarchies that such processes entail, we can identify higher levels of participation, that are based on horizontality, reciprocity, and mutual respect. In such processes, participants not only have equal status in decision-making, but are also able to take control and self-manage the whole process. This was the case with La Borda, a project that followed a democratic participation process, self-development, and self-management. An important element was also the transdisciplinary collaboration between the neighbours, the architects, the support entities and the professionals from the social economy sector who shared similar ideals and values.                    According to Avilla-Royo et al. (2021), greater involvement and agency of dwellers throughout the lifetime of a project is a key characteristic of the cooperative housing movement in Barcelona. In that way, the group collectively discussed, imagined, and developed the housing environment that best covered their needs in typological, material, economic or managerial terms. The group of 45 people was divided into different working committees to discuss the diverse topics that were part of the housing scheme: architecture, cohabitation, economic model, legal policies, communication, and internal management. These committees formed the basis for a decision-making assembly. The committees would adapt to new needs as they arose throughout the process, for example, the “architectural” committee which was responsible for the building development, was converted into a “maintenance and self-building” committee once the building was inhabited. Apart from the specific committees, the general assembly is the place, where all the subgroups present and discuss their work. All adult members have to be part of a committee and meet every two weeks. The members’ involvement in the co-creation and management of the cooperative significantly reduced the costs and helped to create the social cohesion needed for such a project to succeed. The building After a series of workshops and discussions, the cooperative group together with architects and the rest of the team presented their conclusions on the needs of the dwellers and on the distribution of the private and communal spaces. A general strategy was to remove areas and functions from the private apartments and create bigger community spaces that could be enjoyed by everyone. As a result, 280 m2 of the total 2,950 m2 have been allocated for communal spaces, accounting for 10% of the entire built area. These spaces are placed around a central courtyard and include a community kitchen and dining room, a multipurpose room, a laundry room, a co-working space, two guest rooms, shared terraces, a small community garden, storage rooms, and bicycle parking. La Borda comprises 28 dwellings that are available in three different typologies of 40, 50 and 76 m2, catering to the needs of diverse households, including single adults, adult cohabitation, families, and single parents. The modular structure and grid system used in the construction of the dwellings offer the flexibility to modify their size in the future. The construction of La Borda prioritized environmental sustainability and minimized embedded carbon. To achieve this, the foundation was laid as close to the surface as possible, with suspended flooring placed a meter above the ground to aid in insulation. Additionally, the building's structure utilized cross-laminated timber (CLT) from the second to the seventh floors, after the ground floor made of concrete. This choice of material had the advantage of being lightweight and low carbon. CLT was used for both the flooring and the foundation The construction prioritized the optimization of building solutions through the use of fewer materials to achieve the same purpose, while also incorporating recycled and recyclable materials and reusing waste. Furthermore, the cooperative used industrialized elements and applied waste management, separation, and monitoring. According to the members of the cooperative (LaCol, 2020b), an important element for minimizing the construction cost was the substitution of the underground parking, which was mandatory from the local legislation when you exceed a certain number of housing units, with overground parking for bicycles. La Borda was the first development that succeeded not only in being exempt from this legal requirement but also in convincing the municipality of Barcelona to change the legal framework so that new cooperative or social housing developments can obtain an “A” energy ranking without having to construct underground parking. Energy performance goals focused on reducing energy demands through prioritizing passive strategies. This was pursued with the bioclimatic design of the building with the covered courtyard as an element that plays a central role, as it offers cross ventilation during the warm months and acts as a greenhouse during the cold months. Another passive strategy was enhanced insulation which exceeds the proposed regulation level. According to data that the cooperative published, the average energy consumption of electricity, DHW, and heating per square meter of La Borda’s dwellings is 20.25 kWh/m², which is 68% less, compared to a block of similar characteristics in the Mediterranean area, which is 62.61 kWh/m² (LaCol, 2020a). According to interviews with the residents, the building’s performance during the winter months is even better than what was predicted. Most of the apartments do not use the heating system, especially the ones that are facing south. However, the energy demands during the summer months are greater, as the passive cooling system is not very efficient due to the very high temperatures. Therefore, the group is now considering the installation of fans, air-conditioning, or an aerothermal installation that could provide a common solution for the whole building. Finally, the cooperative has recently installed solar panels to generate renewable energy. Social impact and scalability According to Cabré & Andrés (2018), La Borda was created in response to three contextual factors. Firstly, it was a reaction to the housing crisis which was particularly severe in Barcelona. Secondly, the emergence of cooperative movements focusing on affordable housing and social economies at that time drew attention to their importance in housing provision, both among citizens and policy-makers. Finally, the moment coincided with a strong neighbourhood movement around the urban renewal of the industrial site of Can Batlló. La Borda, as a bottom-up, self-initiated project, is not just an affordable housing cooperative but also an example of social innovation with multiple objectives beyond providing housing. The group’s premise of a long-term leasehold was regarded as a novel way to tackle the housing crisis in Barcelona as well as a form of social innovation. The process that followed was innovative as the group had to co-create the project, which included the co-design and self-construction, the negotiation of the cession of land with the municipality, and the development of financial models for the project. Rather than being a niche project, the aim of La Borda is to promote integration with the neighbourhood. The creation of a committee to disseminate news and developments and the open days and lectures exemplify this mission. At the same time, they are actively aiming to scale up the model, offering support and knowledge to other groups. An example of this would be the two new cooperative housing projects set up by people that were on the waiting list for la Borda. Such actions lead to the creation of a strong network, where experiences and knowledge are shared, as well as resources. The interest in alternative forms of access to housing has multiplied in recent years in Catalonia and as it is a relatively new phenomenon it is still in a process of experimentation. There are several support entities in the form of networks for the articulation of initiatives, intermediary organizations, or advisory platforms such as the cooperative Sostre Civic, the foundation La Dinamo, or initiatives such as the cooperative Ateneos, which were recently promoted by the government of Catalonia. These are also aimed at distributing knowledge and fostering a more inclusive and democratic cooperative housing movement. In the end, by fostering the community’s understanding of housing issues, and urban governance, and by seeking sustainable solutions, learning to resolve conflicts, negotiate and self-manage as well as developing mutual support networks and peer learning, these types of projects appear as both outcomes and as drivers of social transformation.

Background Over the last decades, international and national environmental policies have been designed and implemented to counteract the impact of the emerging climate change, this forcing many cities around the globe to adapt their urban environment and update their planning strategies. On a local level, targeted solutions to improve urban microclimates play a catalytic role on the sense of urban comfort, especially in densely built areas lacking green. Such nature-based and cost-effective solutions which provide environmental, social and economic benefits for resilience (European Commision Research and Innovation, n.d.), as well as comprehensive green and blue infrastructure strategies that promote the use of natural processes and vegetation to achieve landscape and water management benefits in an urban context (Victoria State Goverment Department of Environment Land Water and Planning, 2017)  can counteract the effects of rising temperatures and provide resilience for cities and inhabitants (Roehr & Laurenz, 2008). However, their implementation and maintenance face many challenges, such as administrative limitations and lack of awareness or acceptance by the local stakeholders and residents (Hagen et al., 2021; Tötzer et al., 2019). Working to address this challenge in a holistic manner, the LiLa4Green project, as part of the Smart Cities Initiative, aims to foster the implementation of nature-based solutions in the city of Vienna, by integrating a LL approach that focuses on social innovation and knowledge-sharing. The main goals of the project include the collaborative identification of challenges and potentials, the implementation of co-created solutions in the streetscape and the visualisation of the effects of potential solutions in a creative way to raise awareness and activate participants (Hagen et al., 2021). The project is funded by the Climate and Energy Fund and is carried out by an interdisciplinary consortium consisting of research, academic and community partners. The project’s methodology has been tested in two residential neighbourhoods, ‘Quellenstraße Ost’ in the 10th district and ‘Kreta’ in the 14th district of Vienna. Both neighbourhoods are characterised by dense urban structures and insufficient public and green spaces, and their population consists predominantly of young, low-income immigrant groups who are poorly qualified and which suffer a high unemployment rate (Hagen et al., 2019).   Methodological Approach The project was implemented along two parallel lines of work. The first refers to a scientific approach conducted by the research consortium. This initiated with the open space and microclimatic analysis of the areas, the results of which were seen in context with the climate of the whole city, concluding to the areas’ characterisation. A demarcation as ‘vulnerable with respect to densification’ (Tötzer et al., 2019, p. 3) reflects the high density and bioclimatic stress of the neighbourhood. The analysis offered valuable insights in identifying priority spots, i.e., small-scale heat islands, and was followed by discussions on greening potentials and recommendations about the areas’ needs and characteristics. In parallel, a participatory process was initiated in the focus areas to inform the scientific findings on the most problematic locations in the neighbourhood based on the local knowledge and experience of residents and local stakeholders. At the same time, through the establishment of the LL as an alternative to top-down city planning strategies, residents moved from being information facilitators to co-creators. Following this approach of empowering residents to actively participate in the development of solutions that affect their living environment, the LL investigated ways to raise public awareness on mitigation and measures to facilitate citizens’ adaptation to climate change and to ensure a broad acceptance for the green-blue infrastructure among the general public, through the design and testing of multiple and diverse smart user participation and visualisation methods. A combination of innovative social science methods with the latest digital technology was put forward to facilitate the dissemination of information of the diverse functionalities of green and free spaces, testing also new methods of visualisation of the effects, such as Augmented and Virtual Reality, for more informed decisions (www.lila4green.at). Focusing further on the visibility and traceability (Hagen et al., 2021, p. 393) of the added value of the potential interventions, the monitoring phase included a combination of measurements, simulations and surveys, while in the assessment phase, innovative tools such as crowdsourcing and maps were employed to correlate multiple measurements such as costs and maintenance requirements.   Activities The innovative methodology was tested in practice in a range of different activities organised by the LL that opened the research to citizens and stakeholders in an interactive format. The participatory process initiated with the LiLa4Green research team coming together to design the operation and context of the LL. The activities in the LL began with the ‘Start Workshop’, a knowledge-gathering meeting in which research team members and relevant stakeholders (representatives of municipal agencies and local institutions) came together to discuss constrains, potentials in the project area and the mutual benefits. This introductory event was followed by the four cornerstones of the project, namely the ‘Green Workshops’ (GWs) that took place every 6 months and involved the research team, stakeholders and citizens. In preparation of each of these four events, a set of activities was organised on site, related to the objectives of the foregoing events, as well as the results of the previous ones. For instance, before the first Green Workshop that focused on ‘sharing information, building mutual understanding and establishing social connections’ (Tötzer et al., 2019, p. 5), the research team conducted on site activation activities which included the creation of a temporary space for conversations using pictures, signs and questions to approach the people passing by, and also engaging them through game-like activities of mapping and voting. The first workshop started and concluded with a survey. The comparison of the answers of both surveys enabled the organisers to detect changes in the perception of participants on the topic and hence the success of the workshop in the transfer of knowledge. The workshop was organised in two parts that differentiated on the flow of knowledge from the research group to the participants and reversely, using posters, a memory set and a flyer as tools for communication. Working on the feedback from the first workshop, the second event focused on the realisation of the first urban intervention, a parklet, that was developed as a student project at intended design studios at the TU Wien and then selected by the participants of the LL. Furthermore, using a smart interaction tool with AR technology on site, participants were given the chance to visualise and provide their feedback on potential greening interventions. Having built trust between the participants and the research team, the third workshop aimed at the identification of the potential uses of the open space through gamification. The participants designed adaptation activities to respond to the scientifically identified conditions and further grounded their decisions to real restrictions, such as budget. In the same workshop, participants tested the AR tool that was further developed by the research team according to the feedback from the second workshop. Finally, the fourth workshop dealt with the collective implementation of the developed proposals. Due to the pandemic outbreak the workshop was delivered in a digital format and the results were eventually implemented in the summer 2020.   Communication and Sharing Experience Parallel to the workshops and activities, the consortium gave a great value to the communication and dissemination of LiLa4Green within and outside the focus areas by sending out a frequent newsletter and an Explain Video to attract and maintain participants’ motivation. Surveys and questionnaires were used to incorporate the feedback for the next stages, and experiences were shared via a website. Furthermore, the team created a brochure with the title “In 5 Schritten zum guten Klima”  (LiLa4Green, n.d.) to summarise the smart participation methodology in five steps: 1. Prepare the ground and initiate the process, 2. Share knowledge and learn together, 3. Decide and create trust, 4. Designing the future in a playful way, and 5. Specify and implement together. Lastly, aiming to disseminate the knowledge and experiences with the scientific community, the research team actively participated in conferences, presentations, lectures and journals.   Acknowledgment I would like to thank Tanja Tötzer, expert advisor at the Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna and coordinator of the LiLa4Green project, for the inspiring discussion and generous insights that have helped to write about LiLa4Green.  

Innovative aspects of the housing design/building The model for LILAC is based on the Danish co-housing model: mixing private space with shared spaces to encourage social interaction. A plethora of green spaces include allotments, pond, a shared garden and a children’s play area. Akin to the private self-contained homes, the ‘common house’ includes a communal workshop, office, post room, food cooperative, kitchen, dining space, social space, bike storage, play area, guest rooms and laundry room. The LILAC community benefit from a large number of communal facilities including: a common house with shared laundry, kitchen, reading area and community area; car sharing; pooling household equipment and power tools; sharing common meals twice per week; growing food in the allotment; and looking for provisions in the local area (LILAC Coop, 2022b; ModCell, n.d.). A shared lifestyle whereby resources and amenities are combined, reduces energy use and saves money. Construction and energy performance characteristics Constructed under a Design and Build contract (Chatterton, 2015), LILAC boasts an innovative prefabricated ModCell construction that includes a low carbon timber frame insulated with straw-bale. Residents assisted with the labour, collectively adding the straw bale insulation. External walls and interior finishes are in a lime render, increasing benefits from passive solar heating through thermal mass. Air tightness was prioritised during construction, and triple-glazed windows help to decrease heat loss during winter, allowing for Mechanical Ventilation Heat Recovery Systems (MVHR) to regulate indoor air temperature. Further energy performance characteristics include solar thermal energy collection for space and hot water heating, 1.25kw solar PV array, with an extra 4kw on the common house (LILAC Coop, 2022b). LILAC features a flood prevention system whereby a sustainable urban drainage system (SUDS) feeds the central pond. Roof rainwater runoff is collected into water butts that are later used to water the gardens. Overflow from water butts enters the central pond, which discharges into the public drainage system at a reduced rate. Furthermore, all ground surfaces of the site are permeable. Biodiversity planting and a permaculture design certificate course were integrated into the design at planning stage. Major additional spending decisions were made whenever residents believed it would meet their core values and result in long term financial savings (Chatterton, 2015, p.68). Construction costs were therefore higher than the UK average – a 48 sqm one-bedroom flat cost £84,000 to build at a cost of £1,744 per sqm while the average costs in England were £1,200 per sqm. However, the annual heating demand of the homes is far less than the UK average of 140kWh/m² at around 30kWh/m², reducing energy consumption and bills up to two-thirds compared with existing UK housing stock (Chatterton, 2015, p.84). Involvement of users and stakeholders LILAC is owned by a cooperative, through the innovative equity-based model: Mutual Home Ownership Scheme (MHOS). The MHOS is a leaseholder approach (Chatterton, 2013) where residents purchase shares in the co-operative. The number of shares owned by each member is related in part to their income, and partly according to the size of their property. If someone earn a large income their house becomes more expensive, but another property subsequently becomes cheaper, thus conserving affordability. Affordable housing at LILAC is maintained as no more than 35% of net household income should be spent on housing (Chatterton, 2013; LILAC Coop, 2022a). Minimum net income levels were set for each different house size to ensure a 35% equity share rate generates enough income to cover the mortgage repayments (Pickerill, 2015). The MHOS owns the homes and land and is made up of the residents who also manage LILAC. Members lease and occupy specific houses or flat from the MHOS. In effect, residents are their own landlords. The building was financed by a combination of personal members invested capital, a long-term mortgage from the ethical bank Triodos, and a government grant of £420,000 from The Homes and Communities Agency’s Low Carbon Investment Fund, specifically to experiment with ModCell straw construction (Chatterton, 2013; Lawton & Atkinson, 2019). Each member makes monthly payments to the MHOS, who then pays the mortgage – deductions are made for service costs. In 2015, annual household minimum income for a home was set as at least £15,000. ‘Community agreements’ cover areas such as pets, food, communal cooking, use of the common house, management of green spaces, equal opportunities, vulnerable adults, the use of white goods, housing allocation and diversity, and garden upkeep (Chatterton, 2013; LILAC, 2021). “MHOS forms the democratic heart of the project” (Chatterton, 2013). All decisions are made democratically, using templates to generate and discuss proposals, explore pros and cons, generate amendments, and ratify decisions (Chatterton, 2013). Relationship to urban environment LILAC is in a highly integrated inner-city locality, situated in an urban neighbourhood of Leeds, on a site that was previously a school. Integrating with the wider community in West Leeds, the common house is used for “local meetings, film nights, meals and gatherings, workshops and has been used as the local polling station” (LILAC Coop, 2022b). LILAC has increased residents feeling of empowerment to participate in social action, working within the wider community to explore issues together and work for change. This has included supporting a local community association, local schools and holding charity and music events (LILAC, 2021). Behaviour and wellbeing LILACs community act in the knowledge that an adequate response to climate change and energy reduction takes shifting the way we live, enacting behavioural changes that contribute to a post-carbon transition. Decisions in cohousing are made as a community, rather than individual consumers or households. Residents report a much higher health satisfaction – from 58% to 76% – and life satisfaction – from 58% to 87% – compared to previous accommodation (LILAC, 2021). Both physical and mental health improvements have been reported since moving to the community due to LILAC’s “plentiful greenspace, sustainable travel options, better high air quality and natural light in the homes, greater social interaction and opportunities for socialising with neighbours” (LILAC, 2021). Further benefits of LILAC as a cohousing scheme include increased safety and wellbeing, natural surveillance and support for the elderly, reduced car numbers combined with car separation and car-free home zones to increase safety as well as reducing carbon emissions related to car use (Chatterton, 2013).

a) Design philosophy According to the Housing Design Awards, the design of the North Wingfield project took a contemporary design approach, combining the features of local vernacular architecture - as adopted from local farms - with the developer's vision and requirements for flexible, sustainable and innovative housing (HDA, 2021). The architectural office DK -Architects explains that this fusion is represented by massing the morphology of the project, traditional architectural elements (e.g. Dreadnought brick (roof), Janinhoff brick (walls)) with modern elements such as large glazing and aluminium cladding. This combination of materials not only provides an aesthetically pleasing appearance, but also helps to capture heat, ultimately reducing heating energy consumption for at least seven months of the year (DK-A, 2021). In addition, several innovative features have been adapted, including the well-planned use of space and the clear conceptual plans that extends beyond the interior spaces to the shared courtyard, which serves as a social gathering place for the tenants. The inspiration for the courtyard was derived from the local identity, the farmstead and the crew yard (HDA, 2021). At the same time, the use of a see-through fence, which extends the sightline into the rural surroundings, provides a calming splash of green colour in each residential unit. The semi-raised upper massing extends the courtyard and provides a semi-enclosed space that enhances the feeling of safety and security (DK-A, 2021). Meanwhile, the buildings in the front row clearly stand out from the surrounding buildings through the use of colours and materials and also serve as an entrance gate to the project (DK-A, 2021; HDA, 2021). Each dwelling has its own mini agricultural space, which has proven valuable for the well-being of the residents. b) Construction process The skeleton of the building utilises an off-site timber frame method of construction, adopting a semi-modular design principle (Davies & Jokiniemi, 2008). This construction method provides a structure with a superior thermal envelope that requires minimal maintenance and is a 'fit-and-forget' solution for the lifetime of the building. In addition, both labour and material costs were significantly reduced due to less reliance on craftsmanship and multiple suppliers. This is in line with the UK government plans to revamp construction regulations to encourage bold, creative and sustainable construction methods (Davies & Jokiniemi, 2008; Sterjova, 2017). The construction process started with ground treatment, followed by the casting of the foundations on site. Meanwhile, the timber frames were manufactured off-site at the supplier's factory, which helped to reduce construction work and thus carbon emissions. The frames were then transported to the site for fixing and external treatment, and all the construction work ran in parallel (Wheatley, 2020). The overall process can be seen in Figure 1. c) Sustainability integration At the sustainability level, the project worked on several areas to maximise the adaptation of sustainability features and minimise the impact on the natural environment (HDA, 2021). Creating sustainable buildings Through sustainable design and layout (e.g. orientation, maximising daylight, optimising solar gain). Creating high quality outdoor environments (e.g. public and private open spaces that provide shade and shelter and consider flood retention and multi-functional green spaces to protect wildlife). Use of sustainable water management techniques (e.g. use of sustainable drainage systems and consideration of surface water run-off). Use of sustainable waste management facilities for private and communal use (through the appropriate provision of waste and recycling bins). Focus on reducing the use of non-renewable energy. Reduction of carbon emissions The project has been designed in accordance with the highest level of building regulations and sustainability standards, in line with the Government's 10-year timetable for all new homes to be carbon neutral by 2016. Water recycling techniques (such as grey water and rainwater harvesting). Sustainable Transport (reducing reliance on the private car, incorporating practical and accessible sustainable transport patterns). d) Energy performance One of the tools to assess building energy efficiency in the  UK is the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC), which is defined by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities as: A rating scheme that summarises the energy efficiency of buildings; it includes a certificate that gives a property an energy efficiency rating from A (most efficient) to G (least efficient) and is valid for 10 years (DLUHC, 2014). The EPC is produced using the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP), which is defined by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy as follows: The method used to assess and compare the energy and environmental performance of properties in the UK [...] it uses detailed information about the property's construction to calculate energy performance (DBEIS, 2013). The North Wingfield project has successfully achieved a (B) rating - equivalent to 84 out of a maximum possible 100 points with a high potential for an (A) rating equivalent to 95 points (DLUHC, 2021). This score is the result of The use of high-performance materials with very good thermal transmittance properties (walls: 0.20 W/m²K, roof: 0.11 W/m²K, floor: 0.09 W/m²K). Well-designed ventilation system that achieves a good air tightness indicator (air permeability 4.9 m³/h.m²). Low consumption of primary energy of 94 kWh/m2. Another indicator is the Environmental Impact Score (EIS), which shows the impact of a building on the environment through the estimated carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions calculated at the time of the EPC assessment (DLUHC, 2014). The higher the score, the lower the building's impact on the environment: like EPC labels, the environmental impact score is graded from A to G (DBEIS, 2014). The project generates 1.4 tonnes of CO2 annually. This is less than a quarter of the 6 tonnes emitted by an average household. By improving the EIS rating to A, CO2 production will be reduced to 0.3 tonnes, which will distinguish the project as one of the most environmentally friendly projects (DLUHC, 2021). Figure 2 shows the EPC and EIS breakdowns of the properties.

National Housing Fond of the Republic of Slovenia: from inception to present day The Republic of Slovenia proclaimed its independence in 1991, and the new state was obliged to create proper housing for its citizens. The National Housing Fund of the Republic of Slovenia (the Fund) was founded in October 1991 under the National Housing Act (the Act) in order to oversee the implementation of the National Housing Programme (NHP) in collaboration with other governmental bodies and agencies at a national and municipal level (HFRS, 2021; European Commission, 2017). According to the Act, the proceedings from the privatisation were to be distributed as follows: 20% to the Fund, 30% refunded to tenants that relinquished the rights to purchase dwellings and 50% to purchase new housing (Sendi, 1995). The NHP aimed to ensure a higher standard of living for vulnerable groups. According to Kerbler and Kolar (2018), the four main objectives of the NHP are to create a balanced supply of suitable housing, to facilitate access to housing, to improve the quality and functionality of housing and to increase the residential mobility of the population. Over the years, the Fund's tasks have extended from policy implementation to investment, management and construction activities. After Slovenia gained independence in 1991, there was a massive privatisation of the public housing stock (Cirman, 2017). Overseeing the privatisation was one of the first tasks for the newly created Fund in Slovenia, as the role of the state in the housing market was slowly diminishing (Cirman & Mandič, 2013). Provisions from the privatisation of public dwellings were allocated to the Fund, and over the period of 30 years of the Fund’s existence, almost 3,000 housing units were sold at favourable prices (HFRS, 2021). Originally, one of the Fund’s main tasks was to provide favourable loans (around 3%) mainly to non-profit housing organisations so that they could construct housing units to accommodate young families with children, single-income families, the physically handicapped and three-generation households (Sendi, 1995). At present, there is a ten-year strategy in place, which is set to finish in 2025, that aims to increase the supply of dwellings and to support disadvantaged and vulnerable people The Fund's main activities currently include promoting investment in new construction to increase the public rental housing stock through long-term loans, housing saving schemes, direct investment in projects, management of the existing housing stock and the development of pilot projects. (HFRS, 2021). Under the NHP, for each public dwelling sold, the Fund is obliged to dedicate one dwelling for rental use (Cirman, 2017). The Fund develops its own projects as well as projects in cooperation with municipal housing associations and housing cooperatives. The current strategy runs from 2015 to 2025 and focuses on renewing the housing stock, increasing affordability through various financial instruments such as mortgage insurance and building new housing (BMVBS, 2009; European Commission, 2017). Among other objectives, the Fund plans to acquire up to 500 public rental housing units, 150 assisted rental housing units and 50 places in retirement homes, as well as up to 3,280 public rental housing units for young families in the period 2021-2025. One of the recently completed projects co-financed by the Fund is the construction of housing for young people and seniors in the city of Ljubljana. The Housing Fund received a favourable loan of €50 million from the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB) for the construction of 500 rental flats for 498 families and individuals. According to the director of the Housing Fund, Črtomir Remec, on its completion in 2021, this will be the "largest housing construction in independent Slovenia". Some similar projects are in the development phase while others are scheduled to start in the near future, co-financed by the CEB and the Housing Fund. Moreover, around €60 million for affordable housing has been obtained from European Commissions Recovery and Resilience Fund. The Funds’ structure The founding body of the Fund is the Republic of Slovenia. It is governed by a supervisory board consisting of two members of the Ministry of Spatial Planning, one member of the Ministry of Finance, one member of the beneficiaries and one member of the legal department. In addition to the Fund, there are 13 registered municipal public funds in Slovenia that are responsible for implementing municipal housing programmes.  The day-to-day operations of the Fund are managed by 40 employees (31 December 2020) and the total assets of the Fund amount to more than €400 million (HFRS, 2021). The main sources of funding come from the sale of housing units, transfers from the state budget, foreign and domestic grants, the issuance of the Fund's securities, the sale of other non-operating assets under the Fund's management, and income from the rental of housing and long-term loans. The Fund owns two subsidy companies, a building management company and a property consultancy company, employing around 30 and 20 people respectively. At the end of 2020, there were 3,825 public rental housing units managed by the Fund. It is modernising its platform to better manage rental housing applications (HFRS, 2021). Shortcomings of the Fund’s operations At the beginning of the Fund's operation in the early 1990s, the Minister of Environment, who was one of the authors of the Housing Act on the basis of which the Housing Funds had been established, claimed that 20% of the proceeds from the sale of the housing stock owned by the local authorities had not been paid into the Housing Fund by the local authorities, as stipulated in the Act. Due to the lack of these funds, the objectives of the fund were not achieved in the first years of its operation and its development was hampered. (Sendi, 1995). Other observations by the European Commission (2017) state that the programme is not on the right track because of the lack of legislation to facilitate new pilot projects and innovative solutions. This report also points to the underfunding of the fund. It estimates that at least 220 million euros are needed to achieve the goals, while claiming that the administration, with 40 staff, is not sufficiently staffed to fulfil all the tasks. Moreover, since the rentals the Fund charges are below market levels, it has difficulty attracting private companies to invest in social housing. The last remark in the report is that homeless people, people who have been evicted and live in overcrowded flats, do not fall within the scope of the fund's activities (see also FIlipovič Hrast, 2019).   Final remarks Compared to neighbouring EU Member States, namely Croatia, the Fund is seen as an innovation in the context of the post-privatisation period. For example, after its privatisation in the early 1990s, Croatia sold almost all of its public housing stock without developing a vision or strategy to reinvest the proceeds in affordable housing. In contrast, Slovenia had the institutional capacity to establish a national governing body to oversee and implement the housing strategy and take responsibility for the construction and maintenance of the public and social housing stock. Since then, the Fund has become the cornerstone of any future housing policy development. With its 30 years of experience and expertise, the Fund is an example of best practise and a goal that countries with similar circumstances should strive for, namely post-socialist countries with high levels of home ownership and a non-existent national housing strategy.

The act of housing The development of a space-time relationship was a revolution during the Modern Movement. How to incorporate the time variable into architecture became a fundamental matter throughout the twentieth century and became the focus of the Team 10’s research and practice. Following this concern, Herman Hertzberger tried to adapt to the change and growth of architecture by incorporating spatial polyvalency in his projects. During the post-war period,  and as response to the fast and homogeneous urbanization developed using mass production technologies, John Habraken published “The three R’s for Housing” (1966) and “Supports: an Alternative to Mass Housing” (1961). He supported the idea that a dwelling should be an act as opposed to a product, and that the architect’s role should be to deliver a system through which the users could accommodate their ways of living. This means allowing personal expression in the way of inhabiting the space within the limits created by the building system. To do this, Habraken proposed differentiating between 2 spheres of control: the support which would represent all the communal decisions about housing, and the infill that would represent the individual decisions. The Diagoon Houses, built between 1967 and 1971, follow this warped and weft idea, where the warp establishes the main order of the fabric in such a way that then contrasts with the weft, giving each other meaning and purpose.   A flexible housing approach Opposed to the standardization of mass-produced housing based on stereotypical patterns of life which cannot accommodate heterogeneous groups to models in which the form follows the function and the possibility of change is not considered, Hertzberger’s initial argument was that the design of a house should not constrain the form that a user inhabits the space, but it should allow for a set of different possibilities throughout time in an optimal way. He believed that what matters in the form is its intrinsic capability and potential as a vehicle of significance, allowing the user to create its own interpretations of the space. On the same line of thought, during their talk “Signs of Occupancy” (1979) in London, Alison and Peter Smithson highlighted the importance of creating spaces that can accommodate a variety of uses, allowing the user to discover and occupy the places that would best suit their different activities, based on patterns of light, seasons and other environmental conditions. They argued that what should stand out from a dwelling should be the style of its inhabitants, as opposed to the style of the architect. User participation has become one of the biggest achievements of social architecture, it is an approach by which many universal norms can be left aside to introduce the diversity of individuals and the aspirations of a plural society.   The Diagoon Houses, also known as the experimental carcase houses, were delivered as incomplete dwellings, an unfinished framework in which the users could define the location of the living room, bedroom, study, play, relaxing, dining etc., and adjust or enlarge the house if the composition of the family changed over time. The aim was to replace the widely spread collective labels of living patterns and allow a personal interpretation of communal life instead. This concept of delivering an unfinished product and allowing the user to complete it as a way to approach affordability has been further developed in research and practice as for example in the Incremental Housing of Alejandro Aravena.  Construction characteristics The Diagoon Houses consist of two intertwined volumes with two cores containing the staircase, toilet, kitchen and bathroom. The fact that the floors in each volume are separated only by half a storey creates a spatial articulation between the living units that allows for many optimal solutions. Hertzberger develops the support responding to the collective patterns of life, which are primary necessities to every human being. This enables the living units at each half floor to take on any function, given that the primary needs are covered by the main support. He demonstrates how the internal arrangements can be adapted to the inhabitants’ individual interpretations of the space by providing some potential distributions. Each living unit can incorporate an internal partition, leaving an interior balcony looking into the central living hall that runs the full height of the house, lighting up the space through a rooflight.   The construction system proposed by Herztberger is a combination of in-situ and mass-produced elements, maximising the use of prefabricated concrete blocks for the vertical elements to allow future modifications or additions. The Diagoon facades were designed as a framework that could easily incorporate different prefabricated infill panels that, previously selected to comply with the set regulations, would always result in a consistent façade composition. This allowance for variation at a minimal cost due to the use of prefabricated components and the design of open structures, sets the foundations of the mass customization paradigm.   User participation While the internal interventions allow the users to covert the house to fit their individual needs, the external elements of the facade and garden could also be adapted, however in this case inhabitants must reach a mutual decision with the rest of the neighbours, reinforcing the dependency of people on one another and creating sense of community. The Diagoon Houses prove that true value of participation lies in the effects it creates in its participants. The same living spaces when seen from different eyes at different situations, resulted in unique arrangements and acquired different significance. User participation creates the emotional involvement of the inhabitant with the environment, the more the inhabitants adapt the space to their needs, the more they will be inclined to lavish care and value the things around them. In this case, the individual identity of each household lied in their unique way of interpreting a specific function, that depended on multiple factors as the place, time or circumstances. While some users felt that the house should be completed and subdivided to separate the living units, others thought that the visual connections between these spaces would reflect better their living patterns and playful arrangement between uses.   After inhabiting the house for several decades, the inhabitants of the Diagoon Houses were interviewed and all of them agreed that the house suggested the exploration of different distributions, experiencing it as “captivating, playful and challenging”1. There was general approval of the characteristic spatial and visual connection between the living units, although some users had placed internal partitions in order to achieve acoustic independence between rooms. One of the families that had been living there for more than 40 years indicated that they had made full use of the adaptability of space; the house had been subject to the changing needs of being a couple with two children, to present when the couple had already retired, and the children had left home. Another of the families that was interviewed had changed the stereotypical room naming based on functions (living room, office, dining room etc.) for floor levels (1-4), this could as well be considered a success from Hertzberger as it’s a way of liberating the space from permanent functions. Finally, there were divergent opinions with regards to the housing finishing, some thought that the house should be fitted-out, while others believed that it looked better if it was not conventionally perfect. This ability to integrate different possibilities has proven that Hertzberger’s experimental houses was a success, enhancing inclusivity and social cohesion. Despite fitting-out the inside of their homes, the exterior appearance has remained unchanged; neighbourly consideration and community identity have been realised in the design. The changes reflecting the individual identity do not disrupt the reading of the collective housing as a whole.   Spatial polivalency in contemporary housing From a contemporary point of view, in which a housing project must be sustainable from an environmental, social and economic perspective, the strategies used for the Diagoon Houses could address some of the challenges of our time. A recent example of this would be the 85 social housing units in Cornellà by Peris+Toral Arquitectes, which exemplify how by designing polyvalent and non-hierarchical spaces and fixed wet areas, the support system has been able to accommodate different ways of appropriation by the users, embracing social sustainability and allowing future adaptations. As in Diagoon, in this new housing development the use of standardized, reusable, prefabricated elements have contributed to increasing the affordability and sustainability of the dwellings. Additionally, the use of wood as main material in the Cornellà dwellings has proved to have significant benefits for the building’s environmental impact. Nevertheless, while this matrix of equal room sizes, non-existing corridors and a centralised open kitchen has been acknowledged to avoid gender roles, some users have criticised the 13m² room size to be too restrictive for certain furniture distributions. All in all, both the Diagoon houses and the Cornellà dwellings demonstrate that the meaning of architecture must be subject to how it contributes to improving the changing living conditions of society.  Although different in terms of period, construction technologies and housing typology, these two residential buildings show strategies that allow for a reinterpretation of the domestic space, responding to the current needs of society.