you should check out the situation in the netherlands. the is strong squatting scene, and also interestingly an anti-squatting scene (anti-kraak)
anti-kraak is highly organised and legal and houses its members in buildings that are likely to be squatting.
this is helpful to the building owners as it prevents illegal squatting and the problems that come with that.

you get to live very cheap in such accommodation but you may have to move out a a moments notice (eg. when the building gets a real tenant or renovation work starts)
when i first moved to amsterdam i lived in an anti-kraak house, the whole apartment cost 19 euros a month!!!!

probably all info is in dutch but i guess you could babelfish the websites.

http://www.anti-kraak.nl/Default.aspx?page=Home

I have been aware of the squatting situation in the NL, the police raids and all, but hadn't heard of the anti-kraak... sounds interesting and like a potentially major player. Thanks for the info.

The website says the landlord must give 2 weeks notice to these legal anti-kraak tenants, in contrast to the 1 month legally given to squatters. Were you given 2 weeks notice? Did the Anti-Kraak offer you a new apartment?

Considering Amsterdam style apartment squatting has been an active movement for several decades, I am interested in how its been adapted, or in this commercialized.

The C Squat in NYC's Alphabet City has been active for nearly 30 years, I believe, and has been in negotiations with the Bloomburg Admn. to gain ownership. Hard to believe something like that could persist and succeed in Manhattan, one of the hottest real estate markets in the world.

HitW, this sounds like a really cool topic. I'm interested in what you think the design portion will be like, given that squatting is mostly about adapting behaviors to space and structure as a given - will you be designing new behaviors, or designing new spaces and structures that can be inhabitied by different people at different times?

p2an, did you catch any flak for being an anti-kraak? Does it carry any stigma, like being a scab or a strikebuster does in the states?

just dont pee on your feet...

i never knew...

Thanks, mdler, that's great.

Very cool topic! Tijuana is worth looking at as a case study, since a lot of its urbban fabric has been created by squatter settlements that eventually became incorporated. Also, mexican migrant colonias along the US-Mexico border offer another point of reference. If you are interested in this, I recommend reading a book called "From Aztec to High Tech."

Medusa-

Thanks for the info. I just looked into Mexico briefly, sounds interesting. Mexican law says that after 5 peaceful years a squatter will gain ownership. Do you think the physical nature of this type of squatting is important? Do they squat buildings or vacant land?


665-

Thanks for the interest. As for the design part... I am hoping something "other" will come up during the research and help clarify the design.

Perhaps I will find a site that would require some intervention to make inhabitable, such as needing heat, running water and structural reinforcement.

In addition to the empty Condos DT, in Vancouver we have a bunch of people living on boats harboured illegally. Perhaps my design would involve finding new types of unused property. Air rights? BigBox store parking stalls? I'm just beginning the project, lots to learn about first.

the derelict proverty has a role in the free economy, it moderate the market price... any form of government intervention deem to fail in history.

for architects, respect the non-habitual space.

Yeah, aspect, I'm inclined to agree, any attempt to institutionalize and legitimize this kind of quasi-legal (not illegal, just quasi-legal) behavior will just kill it's most interesting aspects.

I'd love to see a way in which graffiti, urban exploration, and squatting could intersect with official mainstream architecture and urbanism in a way that's productive for both parties, but I haven't seen it done yet.

yup, that is the greatest challenge for this type of thesis. they tend to lend themselves to small scale installations, but rarely and only the best, address larger-scale urban issues and strategies.

hole, i would encourage you to really go after the public policy aspect of this thesis. on the broadest level, i think the thesis could be about public (illicit) appropriation of private space. from your post, it seems you're mainly interested in squatters who live where they squat, but another aspect to this is squatters who take over land to set up shop and sell stuff, i.e. hawkers. this is particularly common in mumbai and is a very big policy issue there. in any case, i would encourage you to perhaps open the thesis up to broader issues and conflicts of public and private space. there are so many different ways to squat (as mdler points out); it might be worth broadening your definition.

good luck. it could be a very interesting thesis.

Aspect-
are you speaking to Squatting, or my interest in studying it?

I do not differentiate myself as architect and myself as being in the world.

765-
I agree. I do not want to institutionalize anything. I am more involved in a punk DIY culture than the professional mainstream one of my education. I've been struggling to find my place.

The punk type squatting is inexorably a deliberate statement, its to be listened to and debated, not mythologized as trendy "street culture". Squatters deal with basic architectural problems, structure, heat, water, sense of home, and lots of laws and bylaws. Looking at those issues is one part of a larger project.



I appreciate both of your comments. Keep em coming, it helps me clarify my objectives and articulation.

HoleInTheW ll> rather than going back to the expected architectural conventions about private/public spaces, there is an interesting economic aspect to vacant apartment and Squatting...

when foreign fund invest in real estate, they buy large numbers of lot, usually they resell it to expat or cooperations when the market price goes up... that means when the economy of a country start booming, more rich foreigners will take over the city apartment and the less rich locals start moving away from the city... they happen to any big free economy city like new york, london, shanghai...etc...

architects no need to be judgemental about either pro-squatting or pro-private ownership... those vacant apartments as i said early are the eye of a tornado moderating the fluatuating flow of cash and ppl.

The economic factors of squatting with respect to housing stock and a excess of it are inevitable. Even from a density perspective..
The space will, be used!

How and by whom..Repurposed???

jafidler-
The public/private binary has been well mulled over in architecture, and isn't specific to public use.

I've shared a community garden plot on a derelict Philadelphia lot and will look at non residential use for sure. The Mumbai hawkers sound worth looking at. If you know a good reference, send it on over.

I am interested in the parasitic practices, subsistence on cultural waste. Waste can be the differntial of bylaws or taxes and the market or pre-existing spaces.

In some cases a building may not be renovated or reprogrammed without fulfilling a newer parking requirement impossible on the site. This is the situation in a few zonings of Vancouver, leading to an erosion of building stock and underdevelopment.

While niche, quasi-legal uses/economies fill in those gaps. Sometimes those niches gain enough mass to become dominate. This sounds like the case in Mumbai perhaps. and the Anti-Kraak in NL.

Thanks for the encouragement and comments.

[edit]

The public/private binary has been well mulled over in architecture. I think its too broad of a topic on its own and squatting isn't specific to public use nor do I think it should be. In fact "public space" would imply municipal administration, something perhaps completely antithetical to the ownership tensions in squatting.

well, i'm saying that at the broadest level your thesis will be about public and private space whether you pursue it intentionally or not. there's a reason why it's been well mulled over - because it is one of the enduring themes of architecture and urbanism on par with notions of space and time. i'm only saying to use it as one lens to understand the project. it may help to give your project a larger relevance.

charles correa i believe in the eighties developed a number of strategies to "institutionalize" hawking by creating hawking zones, not only working through a zoning plan, but also analyzing and designing the section through the street to mediate circulation. it was submitted to the city and in areas implemented, but with limited success. i'm certainly not saying that institutionalizing illicit forms of squatting is the correct angle from a policy standpoint, but i believe it may be of interest for both parties to come to a mutual understanding about what ownership really means. unfortunately, i'm not sure the correa study was ever formally published. you may be able to contact the urban design research institute in mumbai, and they might better be able to guide you to a source.

i've worked on a few projects on hawking in india, but they only received limited publication. if you are interested in this as an angle for your thesis, send me an email.

HoleintheWall:

Jafidler makes a good point. My thesis was similar to yours in that it was about something that you cannot really control or dictate architecturally. So, fair warning, your thesis will probably end up being more about researching policy, law, etc. than about an actual design... which doesn't make it any less interesting, but you should have an idea of what you have signed yourself up for. But also, to make it easier for yourself... you might want to focus your efforts on either a specific geographic location or a specific group of people.

Also, I wanted to add... if you looked at Tijuana, check out the work of Teddy Cruz. He is working on a housing complex in San Ysidro where the planning concept is based on the appropriation of space in Tijuana. This is a very good read, as well: http://www.cca.qc.ca/documents/Cruz_Stirling_Lecture.pdf

Medusa...

That article/lecture seems very interesting...

I will post my response once it is read..

there used to be a LOT of squatting in Berlin, especially right after the wall came down. i think they've cracked down in recent years but i think it still exists. i think i remember lonely planet telling me this. i never actually saw any evidence of squatters.

I think the policy/law aspects could actually be way more interesting than the architectureal design aspects. Let's design some building codes, let's design a non-profit ...

oh I completely agree. I'm not shying away from big policy and economic issues, its something I really look forward to. And once you understand those it gives you new lenses to look at the individual cases. I like walking around a city and being able to deconstruct forms and behaviors.

Its reciprocal though. Those policies create specific types of squat-able spaces in each city. How people actually inhabit, in turn informs the policies or creates new markets. Just as legit uses, values and building practices inform building codes, bylaws etc.

Change a typical habit or construction practice, and you could rewrite the policies. - the invention of fire sprinklers reinvented the city.

I def. fear the small discreet design project in school. I don't expect to invent fire sprinklers. Unless it can be rhetorical and elegant enough to be about more than its own design.

But I am 8 months away from the design stage and a full year form my defense.

OK - WOW...its great to be back in the .nect.

- I live in San francisco...where their is a large number of homeless in the city. approx 7,000-10,000 homeless. Alot of which live in Golden Gate Park in tent communities.

- Not sure if this was mentioned or not but you should take a look at Cameron's "design like you give a damn" Ive seen many different designs in that book that explain exactly what you are talking about. EX. In a small unused courtyard next to an apartment building a few homeless people we living out of cardboard boxes. An architect built a series of boxes(single person shelters) that the homeless could escape from the weather in. As well as rest their heads.

- Another which I thought was pretty cool was duct taped clear plastic bags made into a long linear bag that would be attached to an air handler unit on the outside of any buildng. the person would climb into the bag and the bag would fill up with warm air...keeping the person warm.

- there was also many more describing the effects of natural disasters and how the effected have dealt with their new living situations.

- I have always found the camps set up on the side of any trains tracks being particularly interesting....although it may be loud at times, no one seems to bother them and they seem to set up quite the large place to live. I always thought that I were for some reason homeless that this is where I would live.

wearethestones-
If you're interested in the homeless shelters, check out the box homes in Tokyo. Unlike other cities where homelessness is often correlated to drug use and disease, homlessness in Tokyo is very ordered, less abject and has a certain myth of honor. The stuctures are quite sophisticated and describe a social network.



However, I am not so much looking directly at homlessness, homesteading or squatting on public land. Public lands like parks are serving a social service; housing homeless people is one, often tolerated, and occasionally legal, social service they are forced to provide.

I am looking at empty buildings. And the action of squatting them. I am looking at the economies/polocies that lead to vacant property. Yes homelessness is one context for those buildings, but my thesis is not in sheltering them. It is in utilizing those spaces and the markets they create.

alright, I didn't read the whole thread because I don't have the time at the moment, so forgive me if I'm repeating anything.

HITW2:
as much as I hate to say it, check out Crimethinc, they're bound to have some info that could help you out as you dig through things. They're a well packaged anti-consumer group that is disliked by many but serves as a great primer in the topics they cover. It also might be worth checking out the whole gutter-punk scene, as squatting is still alive in that community.

Also perhaps New Orleans post-Katriana? Last time I was working down there I asked a local about squatting buildings because there are so many (and it was something I was/am contemplating). He said that as long as you let the neighbors know your case, work to maintain the property, and participate in the community the locals really don't care. Now I'm sure the politicians feel differently, but its interesting none-the-less.

Oh yeah, there was a squatted community in Portland, Oregon that was featured in ArchRecord a while back. I have jpegs of the article, shoot me an email and I'll send 'em out to you if you'd like 'em.

You have the right to Squat where you please.

PixelWhore-
I have some friends squatting in New Orleans right now actually. You should do it! And document the experience.