RECLAIM PRAGUE

A Collective

Conclusion

The project brief formulates a design task with a vision to provide high quality, affordable, and desirable housing in Prague through collective living. As presented in the research, the Prague housing crisis is rooted in globalised economics which commodified houses into assets rather than homes. From their remote ivory towers, enterprises without a stake in Prague’s living environment have disaffected the citizens of the city, all in the name of protecting profits. This has led Prague to actively address these issues by streamlining building laws and urgently pushing for new housing projects for the city's growing population. However, the source of the problem seems to remain ignored.

As affordable housing becomes increasingly privatised, Prague must make large investments in the renewal of the municipal stock and cooperate with social initiatives in order to launch effective housing policy. The municipal administration has such ambitions. However, the difficulties are the passivity of Prague citizens and the structurally hierarchical nature of Czech housing cooperatives. Cooperatives organized in this strict way find it difficult to create participatory communities. However, without such a rigid structure, there is great difficulty in securing financing from banks. To find a solution to this, the priority is not to design a specific development project but to create systematic structures to allow such projects to become commonplace.

By 2030, Prague expects 90 000 - 160 000 new residents. The city announced a plan to build 10 000 new flats by 2028 in cooperation with private development and housing cooperatives. Meanwhile, the city owns about 60 empty buildings (Empty Houses, 2020) that could be repurposed for a mixed-use program, including housing. If every empty building brings 5- 15 flats after refurbishment, it covers 1% of the future incomers. Is it possible to use empty municipal buildings in order to stimulate civic activity and promote the emergence of high quality, affordable collective housing?

Municipal Empty Buildings

every building is an independent unit in the network network decission making via online platform apartment swap is possible undeveloped plots or nearby flats are could be a future potential affordable collective housing building is part of the network city city provides an empty building for rent people organize money refurbishment of municipal empty building refurbished building property raising in value paying rents wealth pool share in the wealth pool formed collective social investors / new tenants investment paying up wealth pool filling up