Johanna Muszbek

Co-operatives across the world still adhere to the principles laid down by the Rochdale Society of Equitable Pioneers near Manchester in 1844. Ideals of egalitarianism, representation of individual and collective interest are key to the co-operative ideology. Early housing co-operatives such as the communes of Letchworth Garden City, religious or artist collectives, agricultural or industrial productive co-operatives are all forged around shared values and interests of communities. The current forms of co-operative housing across the world are deeply rooted in their cultural, regulatory context and are charged by their urban, political histories. Unsurprisingly, given their historical link to the garden city movement, British examples tend to follow low density settlement patterns.  

Despite its origins and early innovative thinking, the British history of co-operative housing is a complicated, somewhat hidden story – and one full of disruptions.  Successful housing co-operatives are few and far between, with little impact on the overall housing discourse. The archaic land ownership patterns of Britain and the complex land equity are linked to this disrupted history, resulting in the various unique constellations of co-operative development, ownership and communal housing models. In recent decades, most co-housing developments take place in left-over land that are overlooked by the commercial housing sector. The site constraints resulted in one-off self-contained developments with little urban interface.  

The revival of debates around co-operative housing and various models in self-help developments today are at the crossroads of reduction of government investment in social housing and the dream of sustainable communal experience against urban alienation. In this context, new land ownership models, like the one represented by Community Land Trust, could be key to unlocking Britain's layered land ownership pattern, and spark new outward facing, integrated urban solutions for co-operative housing schemes. 

Juliana Yat Shun Kei 

The history of housing co-operative in Hong Kong seems deceptively simple: since the 1950s, more than 200 housing developments were built by the Civil Servants’ Co-Operative Building Societies. These co-operatives inherited the British model, serving government employees whose income fell through the gap between the public housing provision (that accommodates 40-50% of the population) and the notoriously expensive private real estate. The scales and design of these civil servant co-ops varied, but many can be described as mid to high-rise blocks with “tropical modern” design featuring overhangs, louvres, and perforated concrete. 

However, few have investigated even earlier and larger co-operative housing initiatives, dedicated for fishermen who historically lived and worked across the water of Hong Kong. Funded by the U.S. charity CARE, these fishermen’s villages serve an important case study of how to create housing for people who historically live on water. Moreover, the evolution and adaptation found in these villages, developed since the 1960s, also reveal a much more fraught story about housing co-op, modernisation, and land. 

Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler 

Collective housing types, considered formative in the architecture of Israel-Palestine, reflect key aspects of the development of modern architecture. Probably the most familiar form of collective housing in Israel-Palestine is that of the Zionist kibbutz, a new form of an agricultural socialist settlement first established in 1910. Modern housing architecture, developed by and for the kibbutzim, provided advanced albeit frugal living conditions within an organized communal economic system. In 1948, and more significantly during the 1980s and into the first decade of the twenty-first century, the idea of the kibbutz was also transposed to cities, inviting new postmodern housing designs for urban collective living.  

While the agricultural kibbutz is considered one of the most unique modern architectural forms of collective living, the postmodern architecture of urban kibbutzim has not received ample research. Additionally, the re-purposing and adaptive re-use of urban modernist buildings designed for past collective uses – such as temporary housing for new immigrants – has not been studied. This paper investigates the urban kibbutz, its sources of inspiration and its engagement with historic kibbutz housing, urban housing and the collective’s needs. Moreover, it discusses urban collective housing as a creative and flexible approach to state policies – from the aspects of land use, adaptive re-use and design. By exploring the collective, policies and habitat, I argue that the architecture of the urban kibbutz performs a design idea that appropriates historic kibbutz dwellings while expanding the design principles of the latter to consider the urban scale and contemporary requirements. 

Ádám Pirity 

The purpose of the presentation is to introduce Hungary’s first co-housing project from social, technical, and economic perspectives. The building was completed in 1979 in Miskolc, Northern Hungary, initiated by architecture students at a time when the rapid industrialisation of state socialism created a strong demand for young engineers. To address this need, the city leadership accepted a compromise and constructed the Miskolc Collective House, based on the concept developed by the university’s architecture community, embodying a form of living previously unknown in Hungary. Beyond its unique spatial arrangement organised around shared communal facilities, the building was experimental in several aspects. The plans were prepared through a participatory design process led by the architect, Csaba Bodonyi, involving future residents. The structure employed prefabricated panel technology typically used for five- to ten-storey apartment blocks, demonstrating that it could also be applied to smaller, one- to two-storey buildings. During its years of operation, the building became one of the most significant cultural centres of the Hungarian architectural scene outside the capital. 

Johanna Muszbek, Juliana Yat Shun Kei, Inbal Ben-Asher Gitler, Ádám Pirity 

Elisa Raciti

The presentation focuses on Collettivo Sentieri Immaginari, an ongoing project that employs assemblies, walks, mappings, and collective narratives to work across connections between territory, ongoing collective efforts, and landscape. Developed in collaboration with local activists, anthropologist Luisa Mohr, and soil biologist Agata Garsia, the project brings together different forms of local and experiential knowledge. Within this framework, water is examined as part of a complex and compromised ecosystem—specifically in salt pans and marginalized wetlands—understood as a neglected landscape and a shared space of discussion, capable of reshaping forms of cooperation, conflict, and belonging. 

Through participatory practices and speculative devices, Sentieri Immaginari activates shared learning processes and opens spaces for collective reflection, questioning dominant ways of relating to water, landscape, and marginal ecosystems. The method is currently being extended to the context of Augusta, an area marked by strong environmental and industrial tensions, where speculative design is used as a working tool to negotiate alternative futures and rethink water as a common good within collective environmental contexts. 

András Kerékgyártó DLA 

How can a single piece of furniture embody the values of collaboration, continuity, and innovation? In this interdisciplinary course, students from different programmes come together to design and realize a large communal table for the university’s research space—a space dedicated to exploring the future, grounded in the heritage of the past. 

The task was not only to fulfil functional and aesthetic requirements, but also to enter into meaningful dialogue with a set of salvaged and now legendary wooden armchairs from the University’s old Auditorium. It was an important part of the project to make a research into these chairs, understand their quirks and their connection to the University’s community. They also served as a starting point and major inspiration, that represents the heritage and past of the University. This project can be interpreted as a metaphor: around this table generations meet, disciplines converse, and ideas converge. 

This process offered more than technical and aesthetic training: it provided a platform for experiential learning in teamwork, negotiation, and shared authorship—core competencies for careers in both design and architecture. Students learned to articulate and defend their ideas, to respectfully challenge and support one another, and to work towards a larger, unified outcome. 

Ágnes Jekli DLA 

This presentation explores how visual communication can function as an intercultural bridge in work with unaccompanied minor refugees. Drawing on over a decade of experience within the frames of Open Doors Hungary—a community-based design programme supporting refugee youth—the research examines how graphic languages and creative methods foster social inclusion. Refugee youth face significant challenges, including loss, trauma, cultural dislocation, language barriers, and xenophobia, which hinder their integration into the host society. Since 2013, participatory design activities such as creative sessions, workshops, and camps have enabled refugee youth and their Hungarian and European peers to collaboratively produce videos, animations, photographs, posters, booklets, and murals. These co-created visual messages reflect the perspectives and choices of young participants. The paper argues that visual communication, as a global language, opens pathways for storytelling, self-expression, and intercultural dialogue. Through collaborative design processes, young people develop new skills, shared ownership, and a sense of community, contributing to more inclusive forms of living together. 

Lucy Tarry, Oliver Langdown, Charlotte Brooks, Ryan Headley 

Housing co-operatives are instruments for finding security in an insecure world. In our research we classified 100 housing co-operatives in UK, Europe and the United States analysing them through the notion of defence from four different perspectives:  

1. ‘DEFENCE’ AS COLLECTIVE AGENCY 

Within the co-operative model, defence emerges through collective agency rather than individual fortification. Shared ownership, governance, and mutual support systems provide protection against external threats: economic, social, and environmental. Co-operatives transform defence into a collaborative structure, where security is maintained through participation and care. Ultimately, defence through numbers is how co-operation prevails.  

2. SCALES + THEMES OF ‘DEFENCE” 

Defensive strategies manifest across multiple scales: 

- Spatially, through thresholds, shared courtyards, adaptable layouts that balance privacy and openness. 

- Socially, through governance structures that distribute power and mediate conflict to foster security. 

- Economically, through collective ownership that protect against precarity. 

These layers together construct a multi-scalar defence system within co-operatives. 

3. ‘DEFENCE’ AS SUSTAINABLE PRACTICE 

Within co-operatives, defence evolves into a form of sustainability. When examined through co-operatives, defence transforms from a reactionary act into a proactive culture of care. Maintenance, shared resources, and adaptive design become long-term strategies of defence, ensuring resilience through care and continuity. This redefines defence as an ethic of care embedded in everyday spatial and social routines. 

4. TOWARDS DEFENDING CO-OPERATIVES 

We reframe the co-operative model as a living mechanism of defence. Defending co-operatives resist insecurity not through enclosure, but through connection, adaptability, and collective stewardship. We recognise that resilience is sustained through openness; through maintaining networks of care that hold communities together even as crises unfold. Ultimately, to move towards defending co-operatives is to pursue an architecture that understands defence as solidarity, security as collaboration, and co-operation as an act of resistance in an insecure world. 

Emese Bukovinszky 

The research explores a lesser-known form of modern slavery in Hungary - a specific type of domestic exploitation. The analysis looks at the factors that draw people into what seem to be voluntary, or “cooperative” arrangements, but which gradually trap them in total dependence and vulnerability. Taking a social design approach, the study uses mapping techniques to trace how people become victims, how relationships evolve, and where design could step in. The analysis explores the social and psychological forces that sustain this kind of exploitation - such as the illusion of being part of a family, control disguised as care, and a sense of hopelessness.  

Supporting an aware society, drawing the attention of potential victims, helping those already in such situations to find a way out, and assisting them in the period after leaving - all of these are opportunities where design can contribute. The findings show that design can play a vital role in intervention, and in raising awareness within society. 

Janka Csernák DLA 

In urban areas, climate change is putting Europe's water resources under immense pressure. The unused potential of rivers and canals to create resilience, provide access to a healthy, green and sustainable city, as well as to improve social cohesion, cannot be ignored. Many European cities and towns are shaped by rivers, yet climate change and urban pressures strain these waterscapes. Rivers are detached from both citizens and nature, worsening ecological challenges or succumbing to gentrification. While strategies exist, the potential of rivers and canals to foster resilience, social cohesion and sustainable urban living remains underused. 

Waterside Voices aims to reclaim urban rivers and canals for, by and with the communities living by their shores. Communities whose visions and involvement are crucial for needs-based action. Through participatory research and design in Brussels, Rijeka and Budapest, three resilient interventions will turn the Danube, Rječina, and Senne into vibrant hubs - incubating green and blue skills and shaping long-term plans.  

The Waterside Voices project aims to investigate how marginalised voices connect to urban waterscapes, in search of ways to increase their spatial agency towards a more equitable and sustainable city-dwelling through culture. The project includes the research, development, implementation and testing of three creative interventions on three distinct European urban waterscapes as the result of extended processes of participatory design research and co-design.