Creating affordable housing solutions through research and innovation

In 2017, our research team from ETH Zurich was given the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from IPPUR (Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano e Regional) of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro on the three-year project ‘Cooperative Production of Low-Cost Housing – Socio-Technological Innovation for the Provision of Housing for Low-Income Populations’. Exploring practices of affordable housing production to detect the transformative potentials of urban development through community organisations and cooperatives, we traced connections across historical and regional contexts – i.e. Brazil’s social housing programme ‘Minha Casa, Minha Vida’, the Swiss housing cooperative movement, as well as examples from Germany, Uruguay and Ethiopia – and analysed the political, social and economic conditions enabling innovation and improvement in cooperative low-income housing production and design. Drawing on an inter- and transdisciplinary analysis of selected case studies, the research ultimately collected a set of models and approaches that promote innovation for context-specific, affordable cooperative housing production, both across different scales and across regional boundaries.

Our research was conducted through various formats, field visits, workshops and conferences that were primarily aiming at an exchange between researchers from different fields and regional contexts and between diverse actors ‘on the ground’. The inter- and transdisciplinary approach enabled us to establish networks and formulate strategies that would strengthen cooperative housing production across disciplinary and regional boundaries. The experience of these collaborations specifically raised the question of how far practices can be translated from one context to the other, what has to be tied to very specific local frameworks and cultural practices, but also what can be formulated as common goals or guiding principles that would bring together various practices. Based on these manifold experiences of knowledge transfer, we ultimately decided to synthesise the results of our research within the structure of the final publication, which combines essays on specific regional cases with a manifesto covering the most significant claims for the strengthening of cooperative practice on an international scale.

The SNSF was responsible for administering the bilateral research programme by monitoring both research funds and scientific progress through yearly financial and scientific reports. Throughout the three-year period, the SNSF executed this role in a straightforward, transparent, and accommodating manner. Due to a variety of changes during the research endeavour, this managerial approach was immensely helpful and contributed to a successful completion of the project.

Exposing our project through various channels, we aimed at creating impacts on various levels. First, we disseminated our research results with contributions to conferences and exhibitions. We were invited, for example, to host a session at the 2017 International Co-operative Alliance (ICA) Conference in Kuala Lumpur, the largest international gathering of the co-operative movement, addressing the urgency and potentials of increasing the role of housing within the co-operative sector. In 2018, we organised a conference and a workshop in Rio de Janeiro entitled ‘Solidarity in Housing Production: An International Panorama’ (Produção Habitacional Solidária: Panorama Internacional) bringing together practitioners of different field from social movements, technical assistance and academia in order to discuss how cooperative housing models can further be promoted within legal frameworks, financial programmes and capacity building. Furthermore, our research was exhibited at the 12th International Architecture Biennale of Sao Paulo in 2019, displaying our core results as a call for action both in the Brazilian and international context. Second, given the urgency of the global housing crisis, we decided to make our collective knowledge available with an easy to read and approachable book titled ‘Housing the Co-op – A Micro-political Manifesto’. Establishing the core values and aspects for the cooperative model and self-organised communities to succeed for the production of affordable and more inclusive housing, and by inviting authors to describe various successful stories of and around cooperative housing worldwide, the publication aims at reaching people, activists and professionals beyond the academic world. Finally, we naturally strengthened our exchange and knowledge within our research and educational institutions as well – both with our Brazilian research partners and beyond. Our core ETH team is now further building on the project’s results within their teaching and research positions in Berlin, Los Angeles, Boston, and Graz, introducing our knowledge to an even wider audience and the next generation of researchers and practitioners.

The very fruitful bilateral cooperation offered a unique opportunity to build up new networks for knowledge production across national boundaries despite very difficult circumstances related to political and financial instability of the partnering institutions in Brazil. The support by the SNSF enabled an exchange in a moment of closure of scientific funding and therefore contributed to maintenance of academic ties beyond the period of funding and enabled the partner institutions to stay internationally connected.