Anti-community Community
2024
Concept development and Special Mention Award for the Urbanarium Decoding Density competition
Concept development and Special Mention Award for the Urbanarium Decoding Density competition
Anti-Community Community focuses on design interventions that could support diverse housing types and foster affordable, communal, and climate-resilient living. The project explores housing as a living system—adaptable to residents’ needs and desires—and challenges the notion of housing as a purely economic commodity, proposing new strategies for rental models, shared infrastructure, and flexible spatial arrangements.
Team’s manifesto
We are designers, artists, renters, movers, activists, guests, and neighbours.
We are not architects, urban planners, or interior designers.
We are neighbours who complain and who have been complained about.
We know nothing about engineering or codes and by-laws. But we know we don’t enjoy the endless cycles of bureaucracy that limit true creativity and agency.
We are landlorded by dirty carpets and moldy windows. We can’t put up a picture frame without asking for permission.
We live in single-family homes that have been divided and subdivided again.
We are the by-product of post-industrialization, commodification and over regulation.
We are interested in the built environment, how the urban relates to the natural, how the public relates to the private.
We are interested in the systems and dynamics that are formed from the spaces designed for us.
We want to be allowed and encouraged to design our own spaces.
We are anti monocropping of neighbourhoods. We believe in a system of diverse housing.
We are designers, artists, renters, movers, activists, guests, and neighbours.
We are not architects, urban planners, or interior designers.
We are neighbours who complain and who have been complained about.
We know nothing about engineering or codes and by-laws. But we know we don’t enjoy the endless cycles of bureaucracy that limit true creativity and agency.
We are landlorded by dirty carpets and moldy windows. We can’t put up a picture frame without asking for permission.
We live in single-family homes that have been divided and subdivided again.
We are the by-product of post-industrialization, commodification and over regulation.
We are interested in the built environment, how the urban relates to the natural, how the public relates to the private.
We are interested in the systems and dynamics that are formed from the spaces designed for us.
We want to be allowed and encouraged to design our own spaces.
We are anti monocropping of neighbourhoods. We believe in a system of diverse housing.
Jury’s statement: Not all entries came from professionals working in housing design and planning. This entry explicitly presents a stirring counter-perspective. In a powerful call for more diverse housing and more community agency in determining housing forms and options, the collective authors penned a manifesto that calls for housing as a living organism, with food and pollinator gardens and even facades that could foster symbiotic coexistence among species. Their proposal is a reminder that housing forms, governance and communities of care all need rethinking.
Access the full publication and project (p. 77) here
Access the full publication and project (p. 77) here