Oikopolis: The Rise of the Cooperative

Academia struggles with mainstream urban housing studios; either they end up being utopian and whimsical or abjectly surrender to economic and regulatory pressures. This studio situated itself between these two extremes, and hoped to nudge mainstream housing design into creating meaningful spaces. The studio was framed through two lenses- oikopolis and the cooperative. Questions of scales of communities in between the intimacy of the oikos and the anonymity of the polis were reflected upon in the explorations of common and shared spaces in housing design. On the other hand, aspects of cooperative housing are witnessing a re-emergence in the form of redevelopment projects. The presence of end users as clients opens up the possibilities of architects engaging with end users in housing design. The studio was structured in two parts- the first 12 weeks consisted of a series of exercises geared towards the final design project that is 4 weeks long .The exercises included a series of 6 one day time problems that privilege decisive action, book readings culminating in a student seminar that provide the theoretical grounding, and an exercise on memories of housing questions the meaning of home.