Joelho - Journal of Architectural Culture

Rethinking Domesticity

Marta Malinverni

In Belgium during the early 1970s, pioneer cohousing projects emerged advocating alternative living arrangements. These initiatives, typically comprising small communities of ten to twenty households, fostered collaborative ways of living and challenged dominant economic and housing paradigms. Beyond redefining residential models, they also played a key role in reshaping gender roles by promoting women's autonomy, redistributing domestic responsibilities, and expanding their role within their households, their communities, and society as a whole.

This study examines the extent to which cohousing initiatives genuinely contributed to women’s emancipation, adopting a two-generation retrospective perspective. A dual methodological approach is employed, combining architectural analysis of selected case studies with ethnographic research. It assesses whether these resident-driven initiatives effectively promoted gender equity and the redistribution of domestic labour. By evaluating both their successes and limitations, this research explores how collective living arrangements restructured family dynamics, supported feminist objectives, and contributed to enduring social transformations.

The findings reveal that cohousing projects enabled women to challenge traditional domestic roles, engage in more equitable communal living, and cultivate independent lives beyond the home through the structural and social dynamics of their dwellings. A feminist analytical lens highlights how shared spaces in Belgian cohousing projects of the 1970s and 1980s fostered a broader cultural shift toward gender equity and collective empowerment. However, sustaining these egalitarian ideals over time posed significant challenges. This study thus offers insights into the long-term impact of cohousing on gender roles and its continued relevance for contemporary debates on alternative living models.

9 de Julho Occupation: proposal for new housing paradigms

Claudio Valente

Este artigo integra a pesquisa desenvolvida no âmbito da tese de doutorado intitulada [identificação do título e escopo da tese omitida para fins de avaliação cega por pares]. O estudo visa contribuir para o debate sobre habitação urbana por meio da análise da ocupação de prédios vazios localizados na região central da cidade de São Paulo. Com foco na “Ocupação 9 de Julho”, o artigo investiga como essa forma de apropriação do espaço urbano opera como um contraponto à lógica mercadológica e segregacionista da produção e do uso da cidade, bem como seu potencial para a construção de novos paradigmas de habitação.

Commune Archipelago:

Raynsford Anthony

Although scholars have long recognized that the revolts of the 1960s impacted the rise of new forms of cooperative housing in the 1970s and 80s, the mechanisms and processes underlying that impact have never been adequately explained. In the mid-1970s, the City of Berkeley embarked on a series of experiments in municipal socialism, resulting in a pair of cooperative housing developments that sought to bring homeownership to some of the city’s poorest residents: the Savo Island Cooperative Homes, built between 1977 and 1979 by architect Steven Kodama, and the University Avenue Cooperative Apartments, built between 1979 and 1981 by architects Donlyn Lyndon and Marvin Buchanan. In contrast to monolithic housing ‘projects,’ both cooperative complexes were meant to conserve the demographic and architectural textures of existing neighborhoods, emphasizing infill and adaptive re-use over large-scale tabula rasa development while also modeling new forms of collective urban life that would deliberately blend people of differing income levels and social backgrounds. Tracing the cultural and architectural origins of these buildings back to the radical activism of the late 1960s, this article argues that both of these experiments in cooperative housing from a confluence of counterculture radicalism, municipal socialism and the de-centralized politics of community control.

Reframing Domestic Space

Francesca Serrazanetti

Current socio-economic and demographic transformations are challenging the conventional housing model, traditionally based on stable households and standardized dwellings. The precarisation of labour, the diversification of family structures, migration, and the prolongation of biographical transitions have made non-conventional dwelling practices such as house-sharing structural rather than temporary or emergency-based. Nevertheless, these practices largely take place within traditional housing typologies, revealing a profound misalignment between contemporary forms of living and existing spatial configurations. The article presents the results of an interdisciplinary research project aimed at investigating how individuals and households organize domestic space and translating these observations into design strategies for affordable and non-conventional housing. In particular, it introduces the concept of the threshold as a critical device and a space able to redefine relationships between public, collective, shared, and private spaces, and revisits Louis I. Kahn’s notion of architecture as a “society of rooms” in light of contemporary cohabitation practices.

Rethinking Domesticity: Women’s Emancipation and Cohousing in 1970s–80s Belgium

Marta Malinverni

This article investigates the emancipatory potential of cohousing communities in Belgium in the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on their feminist dimensions and their capacity to challenge dominant domestic and social norms. Through the case study of l’Abreuvoir, a cohousing initiative in the Brussels region, the research examines how collective living reconfigured domestic space as a site of political struggle and gender renegotiation. Drawing on feminist theory and combining architectural analysis with qualitative interviews, the study explores how shared spatial arrangements supported the redistribution of care work, questioned traditional family roles, and fostered women’s autonomy. By analysing both achievements and limitations, the article reflects on the transformative possibilities and fragilities of these experiments in the face of generational change, contributing to contemporary debates on alternative housing, gender equality, and the politics of domesticity.