Housing

The EAHN interest group on Housing was created 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 and strategies.

In recent years, architectural histories of houses 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 group is to foster inter-disciplinary exchange but also to develop a reflection on the specific contribution that architectural history can bring to the study of domesticity.

The group will serve 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. The group will organize a number of thematic workshops and meetings in 2013 and 2014.