CALL FOR ABSTRACTS, JOELHO 17, “Co-Operative Housing”
EDITORS
João Mendes Ribeiro, Nuno Correia, Nuno Travasso
In the next issue of JOELHO we will address topics related with contemporary forms of housing. We use the expression “Co-Operative” both in the sense of alternative ways of having access to a house, and in the sense of alternative ways of inhabiting that house.
For the former, cooperatives are an excellent example, of course, but it is not the only one. We are also interested in exploring different kinds of experiments, many of them bottom-up approaches, when a group of citizens take the initiative and organizes itself spontaneously to solve a problem that affects them all. Or to analyse good practices of housing policies that have proven successful in the fight against speculative markets. Whether those policies assume the form of governmental or local measures.
For alternative ways of inhabiting a house, we think immediately about many recent experiments based on sharing some spaces of a house, where one can perform many daily activities that do not demand so much privacy. A currently popular and growing operating model usually referred to as “Collaborative Living”.
Over the past decade, a severe housing crisis has emerged, affecting diverse segments of the population across much of the Western world. This crisis has reignited public debate around housing policies and prompted a wide range or responses from public authorities. These responses have taken various forms, including renewed public housing promotion, regulatory interventions, incentive schemes, and development of more experimental programmes that explore alternative ways of relating to spatial planning and engaging with the various actors involved in everyday urbanisation processes.
Such initiatives reflect diverse forms of interaction between public authorities and the different stakeholders in housing provision – ranging from efforts to steer or collaborate with the real estate market, to support for vulnerable populations struggling to access housing, and to engagement with self-organised communities proposing collective and innovative housing models. These approaches open up new possibilities for institutional arrangements and collaborative practices.
Indeed, there is a growing debate around these collaborative forms of housing, accompanied by significant architectural research into the concepts of flexibility and adaptability. Many architects and design practices are addressing housing challenges by proposing more versatile spatial configurations, moving beyond conventional solutions tailored to fixed household models.
Ongoing sociological changes compel architects to seek innovative responses, and the key notions of collaboration and adaptability have often proven particularly effective. The traditional family – a couple with children – now constitutes only a minority of all households, prompting a necessary rethinking of canonical housing typologies, originally designed with this normative model in mind. Young adults living alone with limited time or need for large dwellings; elderly people also living alone, who may benefit from shared arrangements offering occasional support; individuals of all ages residing temporarily in cities and requiring flexible, easy-to-adapt housing—all these groups (and many others) call for housing solutions that reflect their specific needs and ways of living.
Furthermore, there are also important concerns related to environmental sustainability and to the growing process of landscape artificialization. Many of the solutions widely acknowledged as effective to improve environmental sustainability also involves the concepts of flexibility and adaptability, and they are often associated with the use of construction systems that can be easily replaced, and easily reused or recycled.
Directly related to that need for environmental sustainability is the climatization of the houses, the necessary energy spent to heat and cool them. The design of the building should take into consideration every climatic benefits of solar exposure and natural ventilation, but there is also a demand for a balanced dimension of spaces. The larger the houses are, the higher the costs of climatization.
In addition, we are currently witnessing a widespread tendency to recover various forms of integrating nature into inhabited spaces. Whether they are private or urban spaces. Block interiors become gardens. Courtyards, rooftops, and public spaces become greener. Urban green corridors are being planted to connect old and new parks of the cities. There is an apparent growing demand from citizens to recover contact with nature and an ancient sense of time that otherwise seemed difficult to accomplish, living in a city.
Another important topic related to environmental sustainability, and also to the preservation of a cultural identity is the adaptive reuse of pre-existing buildings. In many cases, relatively recent buildings. We are not just rehabilitating historic heritage, we are now dealing with the fact that many of the buildings constructed during all the 20th century are no longer fit to fulfil their original purpose. To address the shortage of houses in contemporary European cities, and to address the fast shift in the use of recent buildings, it is almost inevitable to consider their adaptive reuse for housing.
For JOELHO 17, we welcome articles that can help us to framework a series of experiments carried out mostly since the beginning of the 21st century. Although, the main focus of this publication may be the European context, we are very interested in learning more about many different practices that have been tested worldwide.
Since the housing problem we are facing today is deeply rooted in the cultural developments occurred in the 20th century, and many of the answers we are reaching have also important roots in the experiments and debate started during that period, researches related with the historic origins of those crucial subjects can also be very relevant to understand the recent developments of housing policies and new forms of housing.
The analysis of examples and case studies related to public policies, institutional and financing arrangements, participatory processes, evolutionary housing, sharing of collective spaces, etc., is welcome.
We are aware of a series of research projects developed recently related to the housing problem, and the topics we intend to address in the next edition of JOELHO. We hope that this publication will spark the interest of researchers involved in those projects, and that they will be willing to share their knowledge with us.
CALENDAR
Call for abstracts opening – 14th May 2025
Deadline for abstract submission – 28th July, 2025
Notification of acceptance for publication – 29th September, 2025
Deadline for full paper submission – 5th January, 2026
Notification of peer review report – 16th February, 2026
Final full paper submission – 16th March, 2026
Launch – Summer 2026
ABSTRACT SUBMISSION
Authors need to register prior to submitting (https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/joelho). If already registered, simply log in submit an abstract (up to 500) words and a brief CV (100 words).
We draw your attention to the fact that the information for authors made available in the digital platform “Impactum-Journals” refers mainly to the full paper submission.
For any question related with this issue of JOELHO, contact the editors to this e-mail address –
nunocorreia@uc.pt
