Spatialising the collective: the spatial practices of two housing projects in Berlin

ABSTRACT

This article delves into the everyday experiences of alternative collective housing initiatives, examining how the physical form, the organization of space, and the interactions within it encourage the emergence of specific feelings. Based on interviews carried out in two collective housing projects in Berlin – one older project that was historically a squat and legalized as an autonomous housing project, and one newer model that extends the culture of squatting and emphasizes collective property rights – this article argues that these initiatives are oriented towards different ways of living through how individual and collective bodies inhabit and experiment with their respective houses. In studying the internal dynamics and the multiplicity of roles enabled by the experimentation with space, this research suggests that these housing projects might be understood as transversal affective/political territories. In line with Sara Ahmed’s use of orientations, it is argued that these housing initiatives foster specific orientations towards the project of collective living by adopting micropolitical experiments with housing spaces. It is also argued that it is not only about designing or renovating a house with certain material characteristics that will allow certain encounters and concomitant feelings, but that practice and repetition are fundamental to their project of collective life.

Espacializando lo colectivo: las prácticas espaciales de dos proyectos de vivienda en Berlín

Este artículo profundiza en las experiencias cotidianas de las iniciativas de vivienda colectiva alternativa, examinando cómo la forma física, la organización del espacio y las interacciones en él favorecen el surgimiento de sentimientos específicos. Con base en entrevistas en persona realizadas en dos proyectos de vivienda colectiva en Berlín, un proyecto más antiguo que históricamente fue una ocupación ilegal y se legalizó como un proyecto de vivienda autónomo, y un modelo más nuevo que extiende la cultura de la ocupación ilegal y enfatiza los derechos de propiedad colectiva, este artículo argumenta que estas iniciativas se orientan hacia diferentes formas de vivir a través de cómo los cuerpos individuales y colectivos habitan y experimentan sus respectivas casas. Al estudiar las dinámicas internas y la multiplicidad de roles habilitados por la experimentación con el espacio, esta investigación sugiere que estos proyectos de vivienda colectiva pueden entenderse como territorios afectivos/políticos transversales. En línea con el uso de orientaciones de Sara Ahmed, se argumenta que estas iniciativas de vivienda fomentan orientaciones específicas hacia el proyecto de vida colectiva al adoptar experimentos micropolíticos con espacios habitacionales. A su vez, estas orientaciones dan forma a los contornos de lo que implica vivir en estas casas. Se argumenta que se trata no solo de diseñar o renovar una casa con ciertas características materiales que permitan ciertos encuentros y sentimientos concomitantes, sino que la práctica y la repetición son fundamentales para su proyecto de vida colectiva.

La spatialisation du collectif: pratiques spatiales de deux projets de logement à Berlin

Cet article explore les expériences quotidiennes d’initiatives de logements collectifs alternatifs, et étudie la façon dont la forme physique, l’organisation spatiale et les interactions qui y prennent place encouragent l’émergence de sentiments spécifiques. Il s’appuie sur des entretiens face à face dans deux ensembles de logements collectifs: le plus vieux est un ancien squat légalisé en projet d’habitation autonome et le plus neuf est une extension sur la culture du squat et met l’accent sur les droits de la propriété collective. L’article soutient que ces initiatives s’orientent vers des manières de vivre différentes à travers ce que les corps individuels et collectifs habitent et ressentent avec leurs habitations respectives. Par l’étude des dynamiques internes et de la multiplicité des rôles que l’expérimentation avec l’espace a activées, notre recherche suggère qu’on peut considérer ces projets de logements collectifs en tant que territoires affectifs/politiques. En accord avec l’utilisation de l’orientation offerte par Sara Ahmed, nous soutenons que ces initiatives de logements facilitent des orientations spécifiques vers le projet de vie en commun en adoptant des expérimentations micropolitiques avec les espaces d’habitation. À leur tour, ces orientations façonnent les contours de ce qu’implique la vie dans ces résidences. Nous soutenons que ce n’est pas seulement la conception ou la rénovation de maison avec certaines caractéristiques matérielles qui permet certaines rencontres et les sentiments associés, mais que la pratique et la répétition sont fondamentales pour leur projet de vie en collectivité.

Mots clefs: logement radical, micropolitiques, pratiques spatiales, orientations, territoires transverses

Spatialising the collective: the spatial practices of two housing projects in Berlin

This article delves into the everyday experiences of alternative collective housing initiatives, examining how the physical form, the organization of space, and the interactions within it encourage the emergence of specific feelings. Based on in-person interviews carried out in two collective housing projects in Berlin – one older project that was historically a squat and legalized as an autonomous housing project, and one newer model that extends the culture of squatting and emphasizes collective property rights – this article argues that these initiatives are oriented towards different ways of living through how individual and collective bodies inhabit and experiment with their respective houses. In studying the internal dynamics and the multiplicity of roles enabled by the experimentation with space, this research suggests that these collective housing projects might be understood as transversal affective/political territories. In line with Sara Ahmed’s use of orientations, it is argued that these housing initiatives foster specific orientations towards the project of collective living by adopting micropolitical experiments with housing spaces. In turn, these orientations shape the contours of what living in these houses entails. It is argued that it is not only about designing or renovating a house with certain material characteristics that will allow certain encounters and concomitant feelings, but that practice and repetition are fundamental to their project of collective life.

KEYWORDS:

• Radical housing
• micropolitics
• spatial practices
• orientations
• transversal territories

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• vivienda radical
• micropolítica
• prácticas espaciales
• orientaciones
• territorios transversales

Introduction

This article studies how the shape and distribution of space in collective housing initiatives contribute to how residents articulate life in community and, in turn, generate certain experiences. I take the so-called Hausprojekte as my unit of study. These collective living projects are residential communities with a political bent, which have played a formative role in many areas of Berlin since reunification. However, the Hausprojekte have a long tradition going back to the counterculture of the German squatter movement in the seventies and eighties (Vasudevan, 2015). They are not only about making housing more affordable or accessible – they can also be sites for experimentation with different ways of collective living.

The Hausprojekte approach to collective life has consequences for the lives of their inhabitants and for the dynamics of the collective. By experimenting with the organization and the uses of space and challenging the traditional scripts of intimacies and domesticities, certain orientations to the project of collective living are produced. This article studies the everyday experiences of the collective life of two housing projects, examining how the physical form, the organization of space, and the interactions within it encourage specific feelings to emerge. In doing so, it studies the relationship between the material geographies of Hausprojekte and the experiences of their inhabitants. Furthermore, it examines how the shape and organization of space contribute to how residents articulate life in community.

Following Anja Kanngieser on the necessary conditions of encounters to create and support transformative movements (2012, 2013), this article suggests radical collective housing projects might be understood as transversal affective/political territories. Transversal spaces are ‘catalyzing and transitional spaces from which new experiences, subjective reconfigurations, and, by extension, dissident mobilizations can emerge’ (Reynolds, 2009, as cited in Kanngieser, 2013, p. 50). In line with Sara Ahmed’s use of the term orientations, it is argued that by proposing micropolitical experiments with housing spaces, times, organization and activities, Hausprojekte foster specific orientations towards the project of collective living. These orientations shape the contours of what living in these houses entails. Furthermore, it argues that these spaces are characterized by processes of experimentation and resistance through their everyday practices in the ongoing process of negotiating communal living. It does so by illustrating how different orientations to the communal life generate specific experiences making up the collective life of two housing projects. In doing so, it argues that Hausprojekte propose an experiment for alternative housing solutions based on solidarity, commonality, and self-management, sustained through a constant negotiation and learning process that it is not exempt from contradiction, tension, and conflict.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, renewed scholarship on radical housing movements gained momentum focusing on direct action around housing (Martínez López, 2018; SqEK, 2014). However, most of these approaches have tended to focus on protest and claim-making processes rather than internal geographies of spaces they have shaped. This article contributes to this scholarship by providing an understanding of how housing direct action through spatial experimentation allows the construction of alternative modes of living together, which are negotiated at the level of the experience. Previous studies in the field are scarce: while Card (2020) adopts a mixed ethnographic approach to examine how different housing models theorise and materialise responses to the housing shortage in Berlin, Sandler (2016) considers how Hausprojekte adopt architectural decay for socio-political purposes that have implications for wider urban debates. This paper’s primary contribution is that it emphasizes the experiences identified by inhabitants as a way of gaining insight into the internal dynamics and the spatial practices of Hausprojekte. Furthermore, it studies the similarities and differences between different models of collective housing. By extending and recentering works on the relationship between housing activism and the affective aspects of collective living, the article studies how housing can be configured as a place for political openings through everyday practices. By providing key knowledge on the micropolitics of alternative housing models, it contributes to the broader debate on geographies of housing, solidarity and resistance.

A brief history of the Berlin tradition of radical housing

To understand the Hausprojekte in present-day Berlin it is necessary to look at the city’s recent history, and the relationship it has with the squatter movement of previous decades. The history of squatters and their radical politics left an enormous legacy still resonating with the city’s activists and alternative scenes.

The squatting movement in Berlin dates back to the early seventies in a post-war context of endemic housing crisis in which issues of urban planning and access to housing became highly relevant on both sides of the wall (Vasudevan, 2017). In this context, squatting vacant places was an important tactic adopted by the countercultural left in West German to experiment with non-hierarchical ways of living and dispute the capitalist emotional regime (Häberlen & Smith, 2014). The experimentation with the built environment played a crucial role here; the active materiality of buildings was understood as a necessary condition for testing new forms of collective life (Häberlen & Tändler, 2017). The possibility of social change was found less in traditional politics than in the idea of micropolitics. For many young people, squatting represented an act of resistance against the traditional economic and urban model while incorporating counterhegemonic practices into everyday life. In turn, for a large part of the squatters in the East, the squats were a way to access housing freely and relatively autonomously, and they were formative for the wave of occupations taking place after the fall of the wall in 1989 (Kuhn & azozomox, 2018).

The political vacuum after the fall of the Wall was the key contextual condition for the proliferation of a new wave of squatting (Holm & Kuhn, 2011), but the squats were also a response to the problems of housing insecurity and the search for self-determined solutions. Squatting was understood as a form of resistance to the neoliberal restructuring of the city and the housing market. However, the violent position taken by the German government after the reunification marked the decline of the movement (Kuhn & azozomox, 2018). After forced evictions, only a few occupants rejected a negotiated agreement with local officials, and many were safeguarded in legal agreements to maintain the use of the properties. This also resulted in many houses receiving public financing for renovation works. The legalization meant the radical and alternative character of the squatter movement was distorted. The houses became more stable, losing a lot of their confrontational and alternative impulses.

Despite the fragmentation and decline of the squatting scene, the various waves of squatting sedimented a culture of resistance around housing and the possibilities it provides for imagining other worlds. In this sense, it is not trivial that Berlin remains an epicenter of alternative forms of urban life.

Living collectively: the Hausprojekte

One of the ways in which the old squats managed to secure ownership or use of their homes was through the creation of cooperatives and the subsequent purchase of the property. Although some projects are still in the unstable situation of having temporary contracts with speculative investors (Lennert, 2011), the Hausprojekte continue to pose ways to combat the neoliberal model of the city and the commodification of urban space. On the one hand, they aim to provide alternative solutions to the housing problem, and on the other they are built around a shared desire to construct cooperative and solidary ways of living. An example of this is the alternative posed by the Mietshäuser Syndikat (MHS), which is a cooperatively and non-commercially organized investment company created for the joint acquisition of houses, which are self-organized and converted into common property in order to create autonomous and long-term affordable housing.

Nevertheless, the Hausprojekte encompass a huge diversity of projects; these differences relate to the tenure situation, the group of people, the socioeconomic conditions, the familial situations, the political and social approaches, and so on. They usually have a political component; a significant number of the residents identify themselves politically on the left, and many of them are committed to some kind of political and/or social activism (Sandler, 2016, pp. 52–54). They adopt a horizontal collective structure characterized by regular assemblies in which the major household decisions are taken under consensus in an attempt to prevent the formation of hierarchies within the group (Lennert, 2011). A key part of the work relates to the establishment of new forms of organization and socialization. In this sense, the notion of ‘projects’ in the Hausprojekte is related to the procedural character they adopt. Many of these initiatives understand housing as a process of constant redefinition, a process of material, social and symbolic continuous construction (Giorgi & Fasulo, 2013).

Many of the Hausprojekte existing today are located in buildings dating from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Sandler, 2016, p. 55), but some of them have been newly designed and constructed. Internal structure can be centralized, where a kitchen and all common areas are shared, or decentralized, where subgroups ‘belong’ to different kitchens but still organize themselves as one collective house. The shared spaces play a central role in the project of living collectively; these are where the formal and informal meetings take place, and they are also sometimes open to the public. The Hausprojekte usually have a strong public dimension associated with a self-awareness of the external impact they can have. Many of them have spaces that allow neighbours and outsiders to take advantage of the house facilities, such as community bars, communal gardens, and rooms available for political and social activities. Also, many Hausprojekte have rooms free of cost for people who have precarious legal or economic status and cannot pay rent. In this sense, the Hausprojekte usually play an important civic role since they offer public services and spaces for discussion and exchange.

The ability of the Hausprojekte to adopt an experimentalist approach to the organization of spaces guided by a different set of values inhabitants consider relevant is a crucial aspect of their communal living project. Moreover, in a context of a global housing crisis, it becomes necessary to study the possibilities offered by these spaces to experiment with alternative forms of collective urban living.

Attending to the experience of everyday radical politics

Since the early 2000s, a series of works have shown renewed interest in the geographies of social movements, activism, and the protest (Miller & Nicholls, 2013). Amongst this diversity of geographical research, there has been an ever-increasing body of work insisting that the study of the microscale of bodies, perceptions, and feelings is necessary to understand activist political praxis (Brown & Pickerill, 2009; Leitner et al., 2008). These works range from explorations of the role of emotions in the sustainability of activism (Chatterton & Pickerill, 2010; Wilkinson, 2009) to how the atmosphere of protesting crowds can help us understand how social movements operate (Feigenbaum et al., 2013). Studies of the emotional and affective dimensions of activism in geography have been complemented by examinations of how radical politics build new structures of feeling and emotional ties aimed at accelerating and sustaining social struggle (Bosco, 2007). In a key text by Brown and Pickerill (2009) they pose the following question: ‘how would we like to feel in a just (post-capitalist) society; and what can we do in the present to practice and model these emotionally sustainable interpersonal relationships?’ (p. 33). By highlighting this they open the debate about the relations between emotions, activism and political prefiguration.

Given the literature’s engagement with the affective and emotional aspects of political mobilization, it is somewhat surprising the lack of geographical studies dealing specifically with other alternative spaces, such as squatted spaces, where their politics largely revolve around their internal dynamics and how to open up possibilities for living and feeling differently. Most approaches to radical housing have tended to focus on claim-making processes rather than their affective or emotional geographies (Martínez, 2018; SqEK, 2014). This is even more striking given the long history of work around the architecture and utopian living proposed by feminist projects built on feminist and socialist beliefs (from the kitchenless houses of the beginning of the 20^th century to the feminist design co-operative Matrix in the eighties). Feminist scholars have studied and worked in practice on the premise that the design and uses of space affect social relations and can create spaces of resistance (Petrescu, 2007).

When looking at work engaging specifically in the relationship between affective experiences, spatial practices, and radical movements, the research of Häberlen and Smith (2014) and Häberlen and Tändler (2017) is worth noting as an example of an attempt to study how the alternative left in West Germany experimented with space and social interaction to allow different emotional experiences. In turn, Alexander Vasudevan’s (2015) provides a powerful historical account of the ability of the German squatter movement of the previous decades to prefigure forms of non-oppressive life in part thanks to its affective labour. Vasudevan’s work studies how the squats were a site for constructing an alternative habitus resulting from the entanglement of cooperative ways of living, politics, emotional attachments, and material geographies of everyday domesticity. His research opens up space for thinking about how the micropolitics of radical housing practices are sites for the construction of alternatives modes of living and how this is sustained (or not) by the experience of the everyday. However, research is needed into the internal dynamics of these alternative spaces nowadays. Very little existing work addresses the relationship between spatial practices and the affective aspects of community living in alternative spaces. This paper contributes to this gap in the literature by providing an ethnographic study of the internal dynamics and spatial practices of two cases of alternative housing initiatives.

Studying the experiences of radical housing initiatives

Studying the internal dynamics of radical housing initiatives requires an approach capable of examining the multiplicity of roles they adopt. The work of Kanngieser (2012, 2013) provides a useful theoretical approach to understand the potential of the micropolitical experiments taking place in radical housing initiatives. Relying on the work of Bryan Reynolds and specifically on the concept of transversal territory, they unpack the potential of specific types of encounters to generate new subjectivities and worlds. They adopt the concept of ‘performative encounter’ to refer to those strategies of resistance which are shaped by a desire ‘to move through and beyond political circles, to work on issues that affect people on a day-to-day basis and to participate in self-determined and shared struggles’ (Kanngieser, 2012, p. 286)

Kanngieser employs the definition of transversal territories coined by Reynolds: ‘catalyzing and transitional space from which new experiences, subjective reconfigurations, and, by extension, dissident mobilizations can emerge’ (Reynolds, 2009 as cited in Kanngieser, 2013, p. 50). What is fundamental here is the importance of the contingent process of collective creation and its capacities to produce intensities of affect through experimentation with everyday spatial and material practices (Kanngieser, 2013, pp. 50–57). Everyday practices constitute a key form of political resistance in the sense that they challenge the logics of the neoliberal system at the level of the lived experience and not only as an abstraction. In the Kanngieser approach, this refers to the group’s capability to determine its own procedures and reflect on how it sustains the collective project, for example, through experimentation with horizontal and consensual forms of decision making or through spatial experimentation to test how they impact group dynamics.

They argue that the types of encounters generated in alternative political spaces have the capacity to generate ‘new relationships and connective junctures between people and environments that agitates systems of value’ (2012, p. 284). They do so by increasing the intensity of the experience through the multiplicity of roles and encounters made possible. By blurring and experimenting with the limits of what is public and private and collective and individual, alternative political spaces are constantly defining what is part of the experience of being in such a space. For example, in housing projects spaces can be domestic at the same time that they are public. This in turns allows the understanding of the ‘domestic’ or ‘intimate’ not as an adjective but as something rather more complex and contested. In addition, these spaces adopt everyday practices which pursue a non-hierarchical composition and recognize their own transient and multiple identities. Through these practices, alternative political spaces could be constituted as affective transversal spaces of resistance where the objective is not the construction of a specific identity with a priori defined objectives, but the commitment to a continuous process of resistance and the creation of alternatives. The transversal territory is constituted as a catalyzing space for the emergence of dissident experiences and subjective reconfigurations.

The notion of a transversal territory resulting from performative encounters is insightful when thinking about how practices and collective compositions of housing projects are able to create openings for new or alternative attachments and subjectivities. It permits us to grasp these spaces in terms of their capacity to disrupt the borders of what traditionally constitutes the political practice and the home. Also, it allows us to appreciate the potential of experimental and radical politics in terms of their ability to destabilize categorical identities and through their adoption of modes of acting which might function as a tool for re-imagining power structures.

Acquiring direction to the collective living project through inhabitation

Ahmed’s (2006) helps us understand how this disruption of borders and norms is organized and negotiated at the level of the household. For Ahmed, ‘queering’ is an approach and a practice that might detach conventional forms of intimate connections and open up space for the emergence of new experiences and attachments. This in turn produces openings to new worlds that might change the way one can think and act. Following the notion that ‘the familiar is an effect of inhabitance’, she argues that ‘the work of inhabiting space involves a dynamic negotiation between what is familiar and unfamiliar, such that it is still possible for the world to create new impressions, depending on which way we turn, which affects what is within reach’ (2006: p. 7). Ahmed stresses the importance of understanding space through inhabitation and the orientations which are being created.

It is possible to illustrate this through the conception of the private sphere of the home in the traditional Western model. In most of the Western world, the house takes on the status of a home when it is understood as the ultimate place of the private sphere where specific practices occur: there is a traditional nuclear family structure (parents with children), with particular structures of habits of sociability and organization occurring in an established materiality (there is one kitchen, the parents sleep together in one room, etcetera). The repetition of ‘orientations’ towards the home implies the assumption of nature; it is natural to attribute those characteristics to the home. This in turn represses the contradictions and troubles that tend to shape the everyday: it ignores, delegitimizes and even rejects those who do not comply with these canons (Pilkey et al., 2015).

It is exactly because of this that the everyday decisions and practices involved in alternative housing initiatives can be understood as a type of micropolitics; they experiment on an everyday basis with the possibilities of what the house can be and how it can open new horizons. By ‘queering the home as a site of domesticity and social reproduction’ (Vasudevan, 2015, p. 114), radical housing initiatives play with the borders of what the home and the shared life entail. Therefore, it becomes necessary to understand the orientations that are being produced through the adoption of different practices and experimentations. By questioning the traditional script of the home, and at the same time engaging in a constant process of discussion and negotiation of what the collective life entails, new orientations are experimented with. In turn, these orientations shape the contours of what constitutes the experience of living together.

Methodology

The arguments of this paper are based on ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in June and July 2018 in two Hausprojekte in Berlin. In focusing on the relationship between everyday experiences, micropolitics and housing, I conducted semi-structured in-depth interviews and participant observation. However, for this article I rely mainly on the material collected during the interviews. They were conducted in the houses and were central to capturing how the interviewees attribute meaning to the experiences of living while referring directly to their environment (Elwood & Martin, 2000).

The selection of cases was limited by my ability to make contact with different houses. Hausprojekte have high entry-level demand, and it is difficult to get a vacant room. My position as a researcher made this situation more difficult because many projects are not comfortable with the idea of being studied from the ‘inside’, and because I was not previously involved in the Berlin radical housing scene. This is why it was essential for my research to have gatekeepers who could put me in contact and present me as a person they could trust. Having lived previously in Berlin, being a German speaker, and having acquaintances and friends living in Hausprojekte were key factors in granting me access. Also, my involvement in other feminist and leftist activist initiatives positioned me as a reliable person, committed to similar values and sharing similar codes.

The search for projects was shaped by differences in pre-established criteria (see Table 1): their architecture (old or newly constructed building), their inner organizational structure (centralized or decentralized), their renting or ownership situation, and their history (former squat or newly created legal project). I consider it essential for houses to show how different physical and organizational structures relate to the experiences of their residents. Although the search for projects was based on these pre-established criteria, the decision was limited by the difficulties of access and my outsider position.

Table 1. Case studies.

	Project Red	Project Black
Construction date of building	1903	2010
Year of establishment	1981	2010
Year of legalization	1985	n/a (not squatted)
Number of dwellers	36	23
Type of tenure	long-term usage contract	MHS member
Borough	Neukölln	Prenzlauer Berg
Internal structure	Decentralised	Centralised

My three gatekeepers were actively involved in housing activism and put me in touch with five inhabitants of different housing projects who had previously agreed for me to contact them. After an informal conversation via telephone with these five people, I wrote an email to their projects, explaining my research and asking if I could stay with them. I was able to learn about the internal and organisational structures of these houses through information that the houses themselves had posted on their websites, information provided by my gatekeepers, and conversations with these five people. Of the five, three houses responded that they were able to receive me. I settled on two of these, discarding one because of its similarity to another project that was able to house me for a longer period.

The first house I lived in was Project Red; a Hausprojekt squatted in 1981 to stop the renovation of the plot by the Senate of Berlin. It is located in Neukölln, a southeastern borough of Berlin (see, Figure 1). In 1985 the squatters negotiated a license agreement with the district. The residents renovated the house themselves with financial support from the state. In 1993, a long-term contract of use was signed with a private limited company, which had meanwhile received the property free of charge. For over 20 years, the house has been managed by themselves. However, they are in the process of trying to secure the property permanently, although as collective property. In its current form, there are 36 residents organized in a decentralized structure of 8 kitchens, that is, people are divided at the kitchen level into small groups, but a large number of organizational aspects are arranged at the household level.

Figure 1. Project Red, photo taken by the author during fieldwork.

In contrast, Project Black, the second housing project I stayed at, is a newer project at six years old, and is the first Mietshäuser Syndikat project built from scratch (see, Figure 2). Consequently some of the initial group left due to an opposition to constructing and not renovating an old building. It house sits in Prenzlauer Berg in the northeast of the city and was conceived from its architectural design as collective housing. The experimental approach to the architecture translates into multiple spacious common areas with ample space for encounters and joint activities, while all the bedrooms have equal dimensions and design. Unlike to Project Red, Project Black is part of MHS which owns the property collectively, making eviction almost impossible. Its organization is communitarian, with a single assembly based on consensus materialized in a centralized structure where the 23 members share all common spaces.

Figure 2. Project Black, photo taken by the author during fieldwork.

Table 1 should go here!

Prior to my arrival at the houses, the residents all knew of my stay and research. I approached people directly to ask them for an interview; this required care and constant attention to avoid being intrusive while understanding the boundaries and schedules of the inhabitants. Some people immediately agreed to participate; others refused outright. Later, after the first interviews, some of those who had initially been hesitant approached me to participate. Oral informed consent was requested prior to each interview. In total I interviewed 20 individuals who lived in one of the two projects, selected to provide diverse perspectives based on age (ranging from 23 to 54), gender (nine women, nine men, and two non-binary persons), occupation (nine were in full- or part-time employment, three were self-employed, two were members of worker co-operatives, three were unemployed, and three were students), and length of residence (ranging from six to 30 years). The majority were white Germans, apart from a Polish woman, a Spanish man, an Egyptian man, and an Italian woman. Given the activist involvements of their residents, the participants and the projects were anonymized. Not having pre-existing, established relationships with the participants, or more time to carry out fieldwork and build relationships with the participants, did indeed present some challenges for my research, and I acknowledge this as a limitation to the depth of insight of this research.

In what follows, I present the main findings from the fieldwork carried out at Project Red and Project Black. I examine how these two projects adopt different material and spatial practices as part of constructing alternative housing spaces. In doing so, I emphasize the experiences identified by the household members as a way of gaining insight into how the spatial and material practices help shape the collective life.

Project Red: how to maintain an open orientation towards the house

The ability of the Hausprojekte to try new ways to organize and renovate space is largely because residents are self-managed within their homes. By not being accountable to a landlord and without an obligation to respond to the interventions made in the construction, the freedom of action is much more extensive than in a traditional house. The ability to experiment with the form and the uses of space allows testing of how different layouts create specific social dynamics which work towards or hinder a sense of commonality. Also, through material changes in the house, ways of generating greater fluidity in the movement and greater interaction among residents are sought (Sheridan, 2007).

Project Red is an old building that was not designed to accommodate a collective initiative. However, spaces are wide and allow multiple uses. As the inhabitants pointed out, the break with traditional forms of housing is not as radical as in other Hausprojekte. Nevertheless, there are a series of small spatial interventions that have clear repercussions on the way in which residents claim to feel. The building has two wings that were originally only connected by the attic. However, the residents decided to establish a common living room on the third floor to connect both wings and serve as a common space.

Notably, the apartments do not use internal locks and doors are usually open. This is positively valued by residents and is considered as an invitation to movement and interaction between people; this freedom of movement is associated with the ability to escape isolation and, in case of need, it allows joint action in a quick and effective manner. This could be seen as something ‘architectonically insignificant’ (Sheridan, 2007, p. 116), but in practice it creates fluidity in the house. As noted by Kaup (2011, p. 26), the door is one of the strongest elements communicating boundaries within a space, and experimenting with its use can have strong implications in our perception of the environment. N, a 28-year-old woman who has been living in Project Red for six months, makes reference to this:

N: I like to climb up the stairs to my room knowing that all the flats are open. I know that they are open, the doors are open, and I can get in and be there and ask for something. It’s super different in houses where you don’t know your neighbours, the doors are closed, where it would be weird to just go in there. It feels less isolated and more powerful because you know there are a lot of people to whom you could ask for something in an instant. The barriers to go to other flats are much smaller than in normal flats or houses.

Living in a building with 35 other people where the doors are unlocked creates an atmosphere of openness towards possible encounters and interactions. Experimenting with the movement within the house can be understood in terms of the different relations and encounters made possible. At the same time, B, a 41-year-old woman living in the house for 2 years, explained that having an open house means also being affected by a series of situations that can sometimes be difficult to deal with or even violent:

B: It is a bit more complicated than what I thought at the beginning, it’s not as easy. You need to deal with the problems of other people because they affect you as well. For example, the violent partner of your housemate, this affects her but also the security of the entire house, it affects your personal space. Especially with the open doors.

Living in a Hausprojekt involves negotiating the openness and porosity of the space. In the case mentioned by B, the house adopted a procedure to prevent this person’s partner from entering the house, which required listening, negotiation and coordination. However, these spaces are not immune to the perpetuation of systems of domination, as highlighted by Kadir (2016); a life orientated towards communal life is not without power dynamics, violence, and contradictions.

Despite the fact that Project Red is decentralized, that is to say it is organized around different kitchens for subgroups, it is not the case that people can only use what corresponds to their kitchen (see, Figure 3). D, a 30-year-old man who has been living in the house for the last five years, emphasizes that he feels he can potentially move around the house and use all common spaces.

Figure 3. One of the kitchens of project red, photo taken by the author during fieldwork.

D: At first the two parts of the house were only connected by the attic, but over time modifications have been made and the house is now connected in different ways: for example, the living room of our flat connects with the flat next door. That is new, a year ago, that has made us much more connected and there is a circulation that did not happen before. I have the feeling that I have several kitchens and several bathrooms. I know that in several places I am welcome and if I did not have something to eat, I know there are places where I can go. house, it affects your personal space. Especially with the open doors.

In turn, as N describes, this creates a feeling of responsibility for the entire house. This openness of space relies on human judgment and tact; people need to be more aware and empathetic about the boundaries of others as well as their own (Holton, 2017).

N: Besides the flat there are also more common spaces that we have to take care of, like the garden and the common rooms. I feel more responsible for other places in the house as well, not only for my own.

The experiences mentioned by N and D about the openness of space and having different kitchen and bathrooms reveal the multiple orientations emerging in the context of these experimental spaces. However, the attachments towards them seem to be loose, dependent on the practices sustaining them, and the specific moment in the house and the relation among inhabitants. As several of the interviewees declared, there are a lack of interaction spaces. Those who have lived longer there pointed out that there is no longer the movement and the fluidity that was characteristic of the house in the past. They attribute this largely to the lack of physical common spaces, but also to the fact that some people have moved into the house because they are mainly looking for a cheap, well-located and nice place to live, but are not interested in sharing collectively.

In Project Red, the selection process of new housemates is carried out at the level of each kitchen: they can decide autonomously who they want to live with without consulting the rest of the house, which means that there is not necessarily a consensus on the selection criteria. For example, some interviewees moved in searching for a political way of life, while others did so because their partner or friend lived there. Here it is also relevant to place these dynamics in the broader context of the Berlin housing market, which has been shaped by speculation, gentrification and skyrocketing prices (Fields & Uffer, 2014; Holm, 2013). This may partly explain the demand for living in housing projects primarily because of their affordability in perpetuity and why some people continue to live there even though they are no longer committed to living collectively. R, a 52-year-old woman who has been living in the house for more than thirty years, comments on this:

R: The people who come in now actually think these are flats; they do not think about the community, they think they live in flats, normal flats. I miss that very much, yes. People think so small … This is a whole house, with some kitchens. Where you sleep does not matter, you just have to go to a kitchen, it should not matter which one.

This opinion is also held by those residents, like F, a 31-year-old man who moved in two years ago in search of a more collective and political way of living and who has been disappointed by the lack of communality outside the general assembly and a more politically engaged attitude. This, in turn, reinforces the tendency towards a more privatized relationship with space, with people staying more in their kitchens and not often using the common spaces. Although it is still premised that the house is open to renovations, there is no longer the same impetus to experiment with space, and this is associated with a feeling of stagnation and frustration.

F: I think we are really missing a common space. It’s better in summer with the garden and people are just sitting here and you can just interact in an easy way. In winter it’s much more difficult because we don’t have common activities. Not like in other houses where you have a collective bar or a common room. This idea of having a room were you kind of have to work together on a regular basis and you just meet there.

According to the accounts of the different interviewees in Project Red, it seems that it is difficult to avoid habit-forming behavior, leading to stagnation and inertia towards a more privatized feeling of the house and a less fluid and porous use of space. Sustaining an orientation towards the house about a constant evolving project requires a continuous process of resingularization, where the collective and its practices are regularly updated, reworked, and resignified according to the present constitution of the group, its desires, and needs. However, as will be discussed in the next section, this is hard work and can become intensive and overwhelming.

Project Black: when architecture forces the encounter

The second project studied is a member of the Mietshäuser Syndikat, and its architecture was designed from the beginning to accommodate the collective. Although the fundamental structure of the house does not seem to be subject to change, there are ways in which residents continue to experiment with space itself. Unlike Project Red, the Project Black house has a series of large communal areas that are designed especially for collective life: a large kitchen also functioning as a living room and which is the epicentre of the community, two other kitchens on the first and ground floors, a multipurpose room called Projektraum, a children’s playroom, a terrace, and a garden.

As highlighted by P, a 26-year-old man who has been living in the house for one year, the organization of space is also conceived under a collective and equitable logic; the house is not subdivided into apartments, all rooms are the same size, and its configuration makes it almost impossible for residents not to meet. Long corridors connect the eleven rooms on each floor, creating a constant flux of ‘hellos’, chit chat, arrangements of activities, or the general recognition that others are there. The organization of space favors a much more intensive interaction – the 23 residents share a large amount of space. In this case, the house becomes a catalyzing space for the emergence of intensities of feeling resulting from the multiplicity of encounters.

P: Our house is extremely special because we don’t have a flat structure, so we don’t have different flats, we just are a big flat of 23 people. And like this, I think, it’s much more intensive. I also lived in a Hausprojekt structured in flats and I can tell that this is way more intensive because you’re meeting the people more often, like even the people you’re not so close with. Here is like “pffffff” an explosion (laughs …). I mean this was actually the idea of the whole house to create a community as big as possible which is concentrated on the top floor.

I, a 27-year-old non-binary person who has been living in the house for six months, also refers to this:

I: The architecture makes it impossible not to face your housemates every day, you have to meet them. There’s no choice and that’s how a Hausprojekt is meant to be, that everyone lives together.

The intensive interaction of the project and its structure requires that people who move in must be interested in investing time and energy in the collective project. Also, although the selection criteria for new inhabitants in Project Black are not strict, who is moving in is a decision taken by consensus at the weekly assembly. This partly prevents new inhabitants from moving in solely for economic or friendship reasons.

Living in the house requires people being around people most of the time; this is not always easy and can cause tension. When there are conflicts between the inhabitants the interaction is difficult to avoid because the architecture forces the encounter. P also pointed to this:

P (Project Black): This concentration is forced by the architecture. This is maybe also the reason sometimes for trouble here, because if people are spending a lot of time in the common spaces and they don’t have a good relationship at a specific moment but are still forced to see each other, this can cause trouble.

Neil Smith and Cindy Katz’s understanding of ‘position’ is insightful in this regard; they argue that position ‘implies location vis-à-vis other locations and incorporates a sense of perspective on other places’ (1993, p. 69). Living with and affecting twenty-two other persons requires a constant reflection on how one influences others. However, this does not mean an understanding of space which is limited to ‘my position’, but a thoughtfulness of it in terms of the larger collective dynamics in interplay. As mentioned before in relation to the lack of internal locks in Project Red, the openness of space and, in this case, the key role of communal spaces, requires judgment and constant self and collective reflection. Orienting oneself to community life through this constant need for reflection forced in part by architecture becomes a device to rethink how to negotiate horizontal and open ways of relating to others.

Experimenting with the collective life usually involves contradictions, uneasiness, and tensions. At the same time, sharing spaces with others who are neither close enough to be considered family or close friends nor possible to be ignored (Heath, 2020) requires a constant adjustment of the borders of the relationships of intimacy, kinship, and sociability as a whole. In this sense, individuals who partake in a collective house with a political bent and who are usually involved in different instances of activism tend to share far more than housing. Rather, most spaces and relationships in the house constantly shift between a domestic, intimate mode and a more public mode.

In order to illustrate this blurring of the boundaries of the home I will refer to an initiative that allows an understanding of how the materiality of the building is related to the construction of a sense of solidarity and community among Project Black: the Projektraum. The initial architectural project considered the idea of including a multipurpose room that would hold resident meetings, but also be an open space for the neighbourhood (see, Figure 4). The Projektraum is currently used by a series of activist groups and bands for meetings and rehearsals free of charge. The people who use the room have their own key and go directly to the house. In this way the house breaks with the traditional logic of private space and supports a more fluid link with the outside. In addition, through support for non-commercial and non-capitalist activities, a political positioning is established as a group, i.e., a distinctive collective identity. As described by Z, a 38-year-old man who has been living in the house since its foundation in 2012, the Projektraum works as a constantly changing space that is orientated towards specific goals which are understood by the residents as self-defining.

Z: For me personally, the most important is the Projektraum, the openness to the outside. The thought is, yes, that is being used by the neighbours for doing initiatives which are leftist, anti-fascist and non-commercial. They get the room for free and there’s an info event or concert or whatever you want to do. This is very rare in a city like Berlin. The rooms are getting more and more expensive, the apartments are only ever more exclusive and relatively poor people cannot afford this anymore. We’re in need of these spaces that are free, self-managed and supportive. That was very important for me, to have an open space, especially here, where the gentrification is so radical.

Figure 4. The Projektraum, photo taken by the author during fieldwork.

Z’s account suggests that what works, in this case, is a limited openness to balance the forms of closure that emerge through habit. A room like the Projektraum becomes a minor architectural machine for unsettling and resingularizing the orientations towards the project of collective life.

The Projektraum connects the house to ‘wider geographies of care and solidarity’ that are ‘embedded within the local neighbourhood’ (Vasudevan, 2015: 114). This shows how the complex interaction between bodies and spaces can be achieved both individually and collectively (Davidson and Milligan, 2004), co-producing different forms of interaction and constructions of identity. This initiative shapes the contours of what it means to live collectively in Project Black. Facilitated by the house’s architecture, it is motivated by an understanding of the house’s political role in the neighbourhood. It orientates itself to an understanding of the collective life that exceeds the traditional notion of home and proposes alternatives to the neoliberal urban logics through everyday collective practices.

Throughout the narration of the inhabitants of both houses it is possible to appreciate how different orientations to the collective life materialize in certain spatial practices, generating specific experiences to living collectively in the house. This resonates with the idea that ‘space acquires “direction” through how bodies inhabit it, just as bodies acquire direction in this inhabitance’ (Ahmed, 2006: 12). Hausprojekte are directed towards different ways of living through the way in which individual and collective bodies inhabit space, and at the same the residents are intimately affected by the way they can inhabit, experiment with and experience the houses. In this sense, Project Red and Project Black show that it is not only about finding a house with certain specific material characteristics that allow certain encounters and concomitant feelings, but that practice and repetitions are fundamental to an orientation towards community life. For example, the ability to move freely through Project Red and the associated feelings of community and empowerment only become effective if there is indeed an everyday life practice supporting it. In the case of Project Black, the Projektraum is associated with feelings of solidarity and care to the extent that the interactions that take place in the space are part of the project’s identity.

Conclusion

In examining the everyday experiences of Project Red and Project Black, this article studied how the physical form, the organization of space, and the interactions within it enabled feelings to emerge which shape the communal life. Through the interviewees’ accounts, it is possible to affirm that the notion of the traditional home does not capture the complexity of the forms of attachment and orientation generated by these projects. The different forms of spatial experimentation and the inhabitations made possible shape the encounters and experiences resulting from life in community in these two projects. The transversal affective space is built through these multiple orientations towards the material and organizational aspects of living together. In this sense, the experiences of living in a housing project are in constant negotiation and do not respond to a pre-established identity. This article has demonstrated how experimenting with the physical form of the Hausprojekte can be associated with feelings of openness, communality and support, and at the same time may be a source of conflict and tension because of the intensive interaction, and the constant need for negotiation.

According to Anja Kanngieser, to produce a transformative movement, the procedures and practices of alternative spaces should follow a non-hierarchical structure and be understood as transients, creating and constantly re-creating their own systems of value. However, as the case studies show, the emergence of a transversal territory capable of agitating systems of value and enabling dissident experiences is something that needs to be understood in terms of the negotiation that seems to be required when thinking about the home. Constantly rethinking and reflecting on the internal dynamics and the relationship with the outside can become an exhausting and even frustrating exercise. Sustaining a collective house initiative which pursues a work-in-progress approach requires a continuous process of resingularization where the collective and its practices are regularly updated. However, it seems that it is hard to avoid habit-forming behaviour which leads towards a more privatized feeling of space. This becomes even more relevant in a context where broader socio-economic conditions, such as the rising cost of living and the housing crisis, impact the needs and possibilities of those living in these projects. In this sense, the Projektraum in Project Black is an interesting space in the sense that it works as a minor architectural machine for opening different orientations which create a fluid connection with the outside.

The experiments and everyday practices sustaining these collective housing projects are part of their effort to rethink what constitutes collective life. However, the study of the internal dynamics of these types of spaces and their micropolitics has received little attention in the literature. This article provided an ethnographic account of a specific part of their micropolitics related to their experimentation with space and the emerging experience that shapes what living in these houses entail. In doing so, insight was provided into these spaces’ capacities, challenges, and limitations and contributed to the literature that intersects housing, resistance, and solidarity. Putting energy and effort into understanding how to challenge dominant conceptions of what constitutes the home on an everyday basis is fundamental to taking its prefigurative capacities seriously and thus broadening our understanding of the housing struggle.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank those who kindly and generously helped me carry out this research⎯especially all the residents of Project Red and Project Black. I also greatly appreciate the helpful feedback from Alex Vasudevan, Derek McCormack, Mia Rafalowicz-Campbell, and four anonymous reviewers. “The research for this paper was funded by the ANID PFCHA/ DOCTORADO BECAS CHILE 2019 – 72200082.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Agency for Research and Development (ANID) (Chile) [DOCTORADO BECAS CHILE/2019 - 72200082].