Homelessness is a growing global problem that requires local discussions and solutions. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, it has noticeably become a collective concern. However, in recent years, the official political discourse in many countries around the world implies that poverty is a personal fault, and that if people experience homelessness, it is because they have not tried hard enough to secure shelter and livelihood.

 

 

Although architecture alone cannot solve the problem of homelessness, the question arises: What and which roles can it play? Or, to be more precise, how can architecture collaborate with other disciplines in developing ways to permanently house those who do not have a home?

 

Who’s Next? Homelessness, Architecture, and Cities seeks to explore and understand a reality that involves the expertise of national, regional, and city agencies, non-governmental organizations, health-care fields, and academic disciplines.

 

Through scholarly essays, interviews, analyses of architectural case studies, and research on the historical and current situation in Los Angeles, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, São Paulo, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Tokyo, this book unfolds different entry points toward understanding homelessness and some of the many related problems.

 

The book is a polyphonic attempt to break down this topic into as many parts as needed, so that the specificities and complexities of one of the most urgent crises of our time rise to the fore.

Daniel Talesnik is a curator at the Architekturmuseum of the Technische Universität München (TU Munich), where in 2019 he curated Access for All: São Paulo’s Architectural Infrastructures, which was later shown in 2020 at the Center for Architecture in New York City and in 2021 at the Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum (S AM) in Basel. He is an architect who studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2006) and earned a PhD from Columbia University (2016) with the dissertation “The Itinerant Red Bauhaus, or the Third Emigration.” He teaches at the TU Munich and has also taught at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, Columbia University, and the Illinois Institute of Technology.

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Andres Lepik is the director of the Architekturmuseum at the Technische Universität München (TU Munich) and a professor of history of architecture and curatorial practice at the TU Munich. He studied art history, graduating with a PhD on Architectural Models in the Renaissance. From 1994 he worked as a curator at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, where he presented the exhibitions Renzo Piano (2000) and Content: Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA (2003). From 2007 to 2011 he was a curator in the Architecture and Design Department at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presenting the exhibition Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement (2010). In 2011–12, Lepik was a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

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Leilani Farha is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and the Global Director of The Shift. Her work is animated by the principle that housing is a social good, not a commodity. Leilani has helped develop global human rights standards on the right to housing, including through her topical reports on homelessness, the financialization of housing, informal settlements, rights-based housing strategies, and the first UN Guidelines for the implementation of the right to housing. She is the central character in the documentary PUSH regarding the financialization of housing, which has been screening around the world. Leilani launched The Shift in 2017 with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the organization United Cities and Local Government.

 

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Binyamin Appelbaum is the lead writer on business and economics for the editorial board of The New York Times. Before joining the board in 2019, he was a longtime economic policy correspondent for the Times, based in Washington, DC. He writes regularly about housing issues, including the critical shortage of affordable housing in the United States and the growing number of Americans who are experiencing homelessness as a consequence. He is the author of The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society, published in German translation in 2020 by S. Fischer Verlage as Die Stunde der Ökonomen.

 

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Juliane Bischoff works as a curator at the NS Dokumentationzentrum München at the interface between exhibition and digital mediation. Together with Nicolaus Schafhausen and Mirjam Zadoff, she co-curated the exhibition Tell me about yesterday tomorrow (2019–20). From 2016 to 2019, she worked at Kunsthalle Wien, where she curated, among others, the exhibition Kate Newby: I can’t nail the days down (2018) and also co-curated and organized group exhibitions and discursive programs. Previously, she has worked at institutions like Kunsthalle Basel (2012) and Ludlow 38 at Goethe-Institut New York (2015). She is the editor of the publications Kate Newby: I can’t nail the days down (Sternberg Press, 2019) and Ineke Hans: Was ist Loos? (Sternberg Press, 2017) and is a regular contributor to publications in the fields of art, culture, and society.

 

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João Bittar Fiammenghi is an architect and urban planner based in São Paulo with a degree from the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo (FAU-USP) in 2020, where he is conducting research for his master’s degree in the field of architectural history (advisor: professor José Lira). As a researcher, Bittar Fiammenghi is affiliated with a joint Brazil/UK project called “Translating Ferro / Transforming Knowledges of Architecture, Design and Labour for the New Field of Production Studies,” funded by the AHRC and FAPESP, informed by the work of the Brazilian architect and theorist Sérgio Ferro. In this context, he is also a technical trainee with the FAPESP scholarship program.

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Giovanna Borasi is an architect, editor, and curator. She joined the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) in 2005 and has been the director of the CCA since January 2020. Borasi’s work explores alternative ways of practicing and evaluating architecture, considering the impact of contemporary environmental, political, and social issues on urbanism and the built environment. She studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, worked as an editor of Lotus International (1998–2005) and Lotus Navigator (2000–04) and was the deputy editor in chief of Abitare (2011–13). One of Borasi’s latest curatorial projects is a three-part documentary film series that reconsiders architecture’s relationship to and understanding of home and homelessness, living alone, and the elderly. The first film What It Takes to Make a Home (2019) screened at film festivals and institutions worldwide.

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Helena Čapková is a researcher, curator, and associate professor of the history of art at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto. She has written extensively on transnational visual culture and architecture in Japan and Europe. In 2017–19, she worked as a curatorial researcher for the bauhaus imaginista project and published an article called “Framing Renshichirō Kawakita’s Transcultural Legacy and His Pedagogy” in the 2019 exhibition catalogue bauhaus imaginista: A School in the World, edited by Marion von Osten and Grant Watson. In 2021, she curated a project to mark a hundred years of diplomatic relations between Japan and the Czech Republic, investigating architectural parallels: “1920–2020 PRAGUE–TOKYO / EXCHANGES, PARALLELS, COMMON VISIONS.”

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James Carse is a cofounder of ALAO with extensive experience leading award-winning projects around the world. Carse is a registered architect, certified urban planner, and accredited LEED Professional. He has served as an adviser for the American Planning Association’s International Outreach Program and collaborated with public and private entities to reimagine the way we live, work, and create. James holds a Master of Architecture in Urban Design with Distinction from Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Architecture from Tulane University. He has taught courses in urban design, architecture, and interior design at Columbia University, Cornell University, Parsons, and Tulane University.

 

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Lluís Alexandre Casanovas Blanco, born 1985 in Barcelona, is an architect, curator, and scholar based in New York and Madrid. He serves as a scientific advisor for the new architecture collection at Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, where he also works as a curator. He was the chief curator of the Oslo Architecture Triennale 2016 together with the After Belonging Agency. His design work has been recognized by several prizes, including the Simon Architecture Prize 2018 and the Bauwelt Prize 2019. At the moment, he is finishing the manuscript of his doctoral dissertation at Princeton University.

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Alejandra Celedon is an architect who graduated from the Universidad de Chile in 2003. She earned her MSc Advanced Architectural Studies from The Bartlett, University College London in 2007 and her PhD from the Architectural Association, London, in 2014. She was the curator of the Stadium, Chilean Pavilion, at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale (2018) and the co-curator of The Plot: Miracle and Mirage at the 3rd Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019). Her recent publications include the book Stadium: A Building That Renders the Image of a City (Park Books, 2018) and the essays “The Chilean School: A Room for Upbringing and Uprising” (AA Files, 2020) and “The Plot: Miracle and Mirage” (Revista 180, 2021). She is the head master of the architecture program at the School of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

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Clara Chahin Werneck is a twenty-five-year-old architect and urban planner with a degree from the Faculdade de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade de São Paulo (FAU-USP) in 2020, having done an exchange program at Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, Switzerland. During her studies, she received a scholarship to conduct undergraduate research on the topics of spatial perception and phenomenology in architecture. Chahin Werneck has worked in architectural firms in São Paulo such as Studio MK27 and Nitsche Arquitetos. She is interested in exploring the combination of practice and theoretical knowledge by engaging in projects on different scales and contexts, with a respectful consideration for the use of resources and materiality.

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Tatiana Efrussi is an artist and art historian currently based in Paris. In 2011, she graduated from Lomonosov Moscow State University with a paper on Soviet connections to the Bauhaus. On the basis of this research, in 2012 she curated the exhibition Bauhaus in Moscow at Moscow’s VKhUTEMAS gallery and graduated with a PhD from Kassel Universiät with a dissertation entitled “Hannes Meyer: A Soviet Architect.” Her artistic work combines archival research and research into the archaeology of spaces with images and fiction. Recent exhibitions include Escapism: Training Program (Fabrika CCA, Moscow) and Eccentric Values after Eisenstein (with Elena Vogman, Diaphanes space, Berlin, 2018). An interest in the contemporary conditions of cultural labor inspired her to cofound the collective Flying Cooperation in 2015.

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Maria Esnaola Cano is an architectural designer and educator based in Los Angeles. She is a registered architect in Spain and a Fulbright Scholar holding a Master’s of Science in Advanced Architectural Design and a Master’s of Science in Advanced Architectural Research from the Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation in New York. Through her diverse affiliations with Los Angeles city institutions and as a member of the board of directors of the LAForum for Architecture and Urban Design, she seeks to engage in current debates over the future of urban landscapes by studying the city as a physical phenomenon and as a cultural artifact. Esnaola Cano is a professor at the USC School of Architecture and is currently a visiting professor at ETH Zurich.

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Fraya Frehse is a professor of sociology at the Universidade de São Paulo, where she coordinates the Center for Studies and Research on the Sociology of Space and Time (NEPSESTE) and acts as a lead partner of the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS, Technische Universität Berlin). She is an alumna of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, a research fellow of the Brazilian National Research Council, and life member of Clare Hall College (University of Cambridge). Her research focuses mainly on urban theory; space, everyday life, and history; space and time in sociology; body, public space, and urbanization (in Brazil); urban mobility; urban inequality/poverty; cultural heritage; urban visual culture; and sociology of everyday knowledge.

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Jocelyn Froimovich is an architect licensed in Chile and New York State. As an independent practitioner, her work ranges in focus and scale, from collaborative residential projects in New York State to installations such as MoMA’s Young Architects Program COSMO exhibited in 2015 at MoMA PS1. Current collaborative projects include the new Biblioteca Lorenteggio in Milan to be built by 2022. She has taught at Columbia University, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, at the Technische Universität Darmstadt, and the University of Liverpool. Froimovich’s approach has a strong collaborative emphasis, believing that successful designs depend upon the close integration of multiple disciplines and a thorough understanding of the various aspects that constitute the built environment.

 

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Erez Golani Solomon earned his PhD in Architecture from the University of Tokyo. He is currently a senior lecturer in architectural design and theory in the Architecture Department at Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and he also teaches at the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University, Tokyo. His research work encompasses a range of issues concerning the contemporary city, and the ramifications of architectural developments under contemporary cultures and politics. Golani Salomon practices architecture as a partner at the Tokyo-based firm Front-Office. In February 2021, he is expected to take a senior fellow position at the Azrieli Architecture Archive of Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

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Samia Henni is a theorist and a historian of the built, destroyed, and imagined environments, and an assistant professor at Cornell University. She is the author of the multi-award-winning Architecture of Counterrevolution: The French Army in Northern Algeria (gta Verlag, 2017, EN; Editions B42, 2019, FR), the editor of the War Zones: gta papers no. 2 (gta Verlag, 2018), the convener of the 2020 Preston Thomas Memorial Lectures Into the Desert: Questions of Coloniality and Toxicity, and the maker of exhibitions, such as Housing Pharmacology (Manifesta 13, Marseille, 2020) and Discreet Violence: Architecture and the French War in Algeria (Zurich, Rotterdam, Berlin, Johannesburg, Paris, Prague, Ithaca, and Philadelphia, 2017–19).

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Aya Maceda, a Filipino-Australian architect and professor at Parsons School of Design in New York, cofounded ALAO, a practice that bridges design, research, and social advocacy. A registered architect in Connecticut and Australia, she has worked with prestigious practices in Australia, Singapore, and the Philippines on the design of award-winning residential and institutional projects that enhance the public domain. Maceda received her M.S. Advanced Architectural Design and has taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). A mother and a board member of Westbeth Artists Housing and the Gowanus Canal Conservancy, she is dedicated to her advocacies. She has published her writing and built work in publications globally.

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David Madden is an associate professor of sociology and the director of the Cities Programme at the London School of Economics. Madden holds a PhD from Columbia University. He researches housing, urban theory, and urban politics, with a particular focus on New York City and London. He is the author, with Peter Marcuse, of In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis, which has been translated into six languages. His writing has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Guardian, and Jacobin. He can be found on Twitter as @davidjmadden.

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Don Mitchell is a professor of human geography in the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala Universitet and Distinguished Professor of Geography Emeritus at Syracuse University. His work focuses on historical and contemporary struggles over the urban public, homelessness, the relationship between capital and labor in making the geographical landscape, and historical-geographical materialist theories of culture. His most recent book is Mean Streets: Homelessness, Public Space, and the Limits of Capital (2020).

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Stephen Przybylinski is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala Universitet. His current research concerns justice theorizing in geography. His ongoing research focuses on property, political rights, houselessness, and the justification for liberal democracy.

 

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Trude Renwick is a scholar of architecture and urbanism in Thailand whose research examines the intersection of the built environment, globalization, and spirituality. Her dissertation is an ethnographic study of the intersection of commercial and spiritual space in Bangkok. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a PhD in Architecture and currently holds a position at Hong Kong University in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities.

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Valentina Rozas-Krause is a postdoctoral LSA Collegiate Fellow in the History of Art Department at the University of Michigan. She is both a professional architect and a historian of the built environment with a focus on global cultural practices across the Americas and Europe. Rozas-Krause holds a PhD in Architectural History from the University of California, Berkeley, a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning, and a B.Arch, both from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She has published two books: Ni Tan Elefante, Ni Tan Blanco (Ril, 2014) and the coedited volume Disputar la Ciudad (Bifurcaciones, 2018).

 

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Aditya Sawant is an architect and urban designer and practices as a researcher and academic in Mumbai. He is particularly interested in issues related to housing for low-income groups in urban India and was the research director for the State of Housing India exhibition held in Mumbai in 2018. He completed his Bachelor’s in Architecture from the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute of Architecture (KRVIA), Mumbai University, and his Master’s in Architecture and Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. He currently works on research projects about housing with the Architecture Foundation India and is an assistant professor of urban design at KRVIA.

 

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Luisa Schneider is an assistant professor in anthropology at Vrije Universiteit and a research partner at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in the Law & Anthropology Department. She holds a DPhil in Anthropology from Oxford University and is working on the anthropology of violence, intimacy, and law. Since 2018 she has been conducting research with rough sleepers on how they can live privacy and intimacy if these rights and protections are tacitly tied to housing.

 

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Nicolas Stutzin is an architect who graduated from the Universidad de Chile in 2006. He holds a MSc Advanced Architectural Design and Diploma in Advanced Architectural Research from the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP) at Columbia University (2011). He was the co-curator of The Plot: Miracle and Mirage at the 3rd Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019). His publications include More Permanent than Snow: The Photographing of Aldo van Eyck’s Playgrounds (AA Files, 2014), Cerro Sombrero: Mirages of Modernity (Andinas, 2017), Ahead of Their Time (ARQ, 2018) and The Plot: Miracle and Mirage (Revista 180, 2021). Stutzin is an associate professor in the School of Architecture, Universidad Diego Portales, and an assistant professor at the School of Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

 

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Elena Vogman is a scholar of comparative literature and media. She is the principal investigator of the research project “Madness, Media, Milieus: Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe” at the Bauhaus Universität Weimar. She is the author of Sinnliches Denken: Eisensteins exzentrische Methode (diaphanes, 2018) and Dance of Values: Sergei Eisenstein’s Capital Project (diaphanes, 2019). Vogman was a visiting assistant professor of history at New York University Shanghai and held postdoctoral research positions in the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) project “Rhythm and Projection” at the Freie Universität Berlin and at the Internationales Kolleg für Kulturtechnikforschung und Medienphilosophie, Weimar. Together with Marie Rebecchi and Till Gathmann she curated the exhibitions Sergei Eisenstein: The Anthropology of Rhythm at Nomas Foundation, Rome (2017), and Eccentric Values after Eisenstein at espace diaphanes, Berlin (2018).

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Zairong Xiang is an assistant professor of comparative literature and the associate director of art at Duke Kunshan University in Suzhou, China. He is the author of Queer Ancient Ways: A Decolonial Exploration (punctum books, 2018). He was the chief curator of the “minor cosmopolitan weekend” at the HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2018), and the editor of its catalogue minor cosmopolitan: Thinking Art, Politics, and the Universe Together Otherwise (Diaphanes, 2020). As a member of the Hyperimage Group, he has co-curated the 2021 Guangzhou Image Triennial. He is working on two projects, both dealing with the concepts of “transdualism” and “counterfeit” in the Global South, especially Latin America and China. He was a fellow at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (2014–16) and a postdoctoral fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Training Group called “Minor Cosmopolitanisms” at the Universität Potsdam (2016–20).

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