Spatialising the collective: the spatial practices of two housing projects in Berlin

Abstract

This article delves into the everyday experiences of alternative collective housing initiatives, examining how the physical form, the organization of space, and the interactions within it encourage the emergence of specific feelings. Based on interviews carried out in two collective housing projects in Berlin–one older project that was historically a squat and legalized as an autonomous housing project, and one newer model that extends the culture of squatting and emphasizes collective property rights–this article argues that these initiatives are oriented towards different ways of living through how individual and collective bodies inhabit and experiment with their respective houses. In studying the internal dynamics and the multiplicity of roles enabled by the experimentation with space, this research suggests that these housing projects might be understood as transversal affective/political territories. In line with Sara Ahmed’s use of orientations, it is argued that these housing initiatives foster specific orientations towards the project of collective living by adopting micropolitical experiments with housing spaces. It is also argued that it is not only about designing or renovating a house with certain material characteristics that will allow certain encounters and concomitant feelings, but that practice and repetition are fundamental to their project of collective life.