Housing

The EAHN interest group on Housing (IGH) was established in 2012 after the second EAHN Conference in Brussels. The aim of the group is to discuss all issues related to the design, the construction and the transformation of houses and domestic spaces. Houses – be they public or private, individual or collective, industrialized or self-built, planned or informal, large or small – are seen as built objects but also observed with reference to the many actors that take part in their shaping: institutions, professionals, entrepreneurs, dwellers, users, observers, each of them with different cultures, strategies, and agencies.

In recent years, architectural histories of housing have increasingly been the result of an exchange between different fields of research, such as archaeology, sociology, the history of material culture, the history of consumption… In fact, the study of housing seems to defy specialistic barriers and to encourage long-term and cross-cultural comparisons. The aim of the Interest Group is to foster interdisciplinary exchange but also to develop a reflection on the specific contribution that architectural history can bring to the study of domesticity.

The group serves as a platform to facilitate the exchange of experiences between existing research centers. Scholars working on any period of the history of architecture, on any geographic area and from any methodological perspective are welcome to participate to its activities.

Over its twelve years of activity, the group has organized thematic symposia, conferences and workshops; collaborated on collective publications (a book and special issues); and coordinated joint teaching initiatives at PhD and master’s level.

Notably, the Group on Housing has served as a testing ground for many of the hypotheses developed in the forthcoming co-edited volume Housing Histories: New Research Strategies for Twentieth-Century Residential Architecture (London: Bloomsbury, scheduled for early 2026).

The biennial meetings of the IGH became important occasions for periodical discussion, bringing together many of the future authors of the book. These scholars have contributed – sometimes repeatedly – by sharing their ongoing research through the HIG meetings and within various seminars, courses, and conferences held on a regular basis between 2012 and 2025, shaping a dynamic research community.

The group also benefited from the participation of members in various international research projects throughout the years, notably: Re-theorizing the Architecture of Housing as Grounds for Research and Practice, funded by the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at Technion IIT (2019-20, coordinated by Yael Allweil, Gaia Caramellino, and Susanne Schindler); European Middle-Class Mass Housing, EU COST Action 18137 (2019-23, Chair Ana Vaz Milheiro, Vice-chair Gaia Caramellino).

Among other initiatives, the IGH enabled the joint-organization of conferences and seminars in collaboration with a plurality of members. Such events include the Conference “Words of Housing: Terms for an Architectural Manifesto” (online, 2020); the seminar “Southern Europe and Beyond. Comparative and Multi-Situated Perspectives on European Middle-Class Housing” (Milan, 2021), and the lecture series like “Writing the History of Post-war Housing Complexes and Neighborhoods. A Take on Research Strategies and Methodologies”, held within the Cost Action MCMH-EU (online, 2022).

Teaching activities – PhD and master courses – further reinforced this exchange, offering a lively context for collaboration with some of the members, most notably the Collaborative Housing Histories course held by Gaia Caramellino and Yael Allweil at Politecnico di Milano between 2021 and 2023 and the Housing History course held by Filippo De Pieri at Politecnico di Torino since 2022.