Fighting a losing battle? Neighbourhood-based social mobility in times of retrenching social interventions

Social mobility is a key concept in neighbourhood-based policies in Europe and the US. The Dutch neighbourhood approach often implies physical restructuring combined with a range of economic and social mobility strategies such as counselling, citizenship courses, debt relief, work training / placement programs and language courses. However, the...

Alison and Peter Smithson: A Brutalist Story, Involving the House, the City and the Everyday (Plus a Couple of Other Things)

The dissertation looks into the work of the British architects Alison and Peter Smithson (1928-1993, 1923-2003). Their work is regarded as exemplary for the development of modern architecture in the second half of the twentieth century, specifically with regard to the relation between architecture, welfare state politics and the rise of a new...

Social housing organisations in England and The Netherlands: Between the state, market and community

RE-MADE (IN) HONG KONG: Co-(Shop)housing: People's alternative approach to redevelop Tin Shui Wai New Town

In the future scenario 5 years from now, the Hong Kong government decided to help gentrify the whole Hong Kong cities, so decided to demolish all the public housing in Hong Kong and relocate the underprivileged people to “Hong Kong Land” in Mainland China. Tin Shui Wai New Town will be developed once again trying to get rid of the negative image...

On the edge: changing geographies of the global city precariat in London and Hong Kong

Global cities are marked by precarity, yet little attention has been paid to the spatial overlap between work precarity among migrants and third sector organizations that sustain them. In this paper, we estimate the location of precarious work migrants in two global cities, London and Hong Kong, for both the 2001 and 2011 censuses, using a...

The elusive bigness of Bakema

Architecture and democracy: Contestations in and of the open society

In many ways the work and ideas of Jaap Bakema epitomize the best of the architecture of the post-war Dutch welfare state: it is utterly unapologetic about its modernity as well as its drive to be universal and egalitarian. Bakema firmly<br/>positioned his office and its production at the heart of the Dutch welfare state system. Not only did he,...

Malmö: A reinterpretation of People's Home: Towards inclusive public space

This thesis project develops an inclusive design in between Hyllie, Holma and Kroksbäck, in Malmö, Sweden. An investigation of social and spatial processes outlines the ever changing society and urban space of Malmö within the large context of globalisation, migration and urbanisation. The city has been transformed from an industrial city...

There is no Such Thing as a Free Market: Public Planning versus Private Opportunity in Housing

To deconstruct the still hegemonic narrative of free market ideologists in the realm of housing, this article looks at the provocative position of the German-British architect Patrik Schumacher, director of Zaha Hadid Architects. Schumacher’s 2016 lecture on housing at the World Architecture Festival in Berlin, in which he claims that only...

Comparing cities and regions rather than countries?: A research agenda for international comparative housing research 2.0.

International comparative housing research usually takes countries as a unit of analysis. Studies in the field typically connect housing outcomes at the national level to national welfare state and housing regimes. However, as a result of both supranational developments (globalization, financialization, neoliberalization, European Union...

Architecture and Democracy 1965-1989: Urban Renewal, Populism and the Welfare State

Proceedings of the 6th annual conference organized by the Jaap Bakema Study Centre, Het Nieuwe Instituut and TU Delft.

Brutalism and the Welfare State: Histories of Displacement, 1952-2017

Abstract for<br/>The Brutalist Turn conference<br/>Azrieli School of Architecture, Tel Aviv University, and the Azrieli Architectural Archive, Tel Aviv Museum of Art<br/>14-16 April, 2019<br/><br/><br/>My presentation will look into the intersections of New Brutalism and welfare state politics, using the case of Alison and Peter Smithson to...

‘Active, young, and resourceful’: sorting the ‘good’ tenant through mechanisms of conditionality

Governments’ attempts to link the provision of welfare services to (more) responsible self-conduct of citizens (i.e. responsibilization) is seen as a distinctive feature of the post-welfare state. Responsibilization often requires welfare receivers to comply with specific duties or behavioural patterns (i.e. conditionality). Except for UK-based...