MANIFESTO

It was Amsterdam’s Squatter institutions that responded. Unique in this way, Amsterdam’s squatting movement can be distinguished by its quasi-institutional, urban-scale operations critiquing the city’s social hierarchies, housing speculation and political negligence. Thus, the integration of migrants and refugees into the urban environment was bottom-up and organic, turning squatting into a practice that enables anyone, even migrants and refugees, to intervene in the urban environment according to their needs and reconstruct the city according to their desires.

In 2010, Amsterdam outlawed squatting entirely, further escalating the city’s housing and refugee crises.

To re-instate in a legal form, this radical urban and domestic practice of co-producing the city, my thesis proposes a new domestic prototype/typology to counter Amsterdam’s speculative housing market through a reflection on the organic social and spatial commoning tactics of the Squatters. Dubbed the Sharehouse, this domestic typology for migrants and refugees capitalizes on discomfort and friction, promotes negotiation, and leverages collective action to enable domestic assemblage. Rather than merely housing, this thesis reconceptualizes domestic space as a process to co-produce and transform the city.

Influx of refugees and Migrants in the Netherlands amidst

Source

Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA)