The Department of Architecture and the Built Environment at SETU hosted New Habit(at)s, the first major conference funded through SETU’s participation in Building Change.
The conference presented a vision for housing that is sustainable not just in terms of the built form, but also socially and economically. Through presenting community-led means of procurement, the conference exposed the current shortfalls in the Irish system, whereby housing is either developer-led and therefore a commodity, or provided by the state, whereby it is inflexible to the changing needs of the end-user. Community-led initiatives, by contrast, are driven by a shared vision for sustainable housing that will be protected into the future.
New Habit(at)s, was curated and facilitated by SOA, a not-for-profit think tank, formed in 2018 to research and promote cooperative and collaborative approaches to housing in Ireland. The aim of SOA is to roadmap a non-speculative, affordable and democratic means of housing-creation in Ireland
International and locally-based architects and practitioners involved in community-engaged practice made presentations at New Habit(at)s and took part in panel discussions under the topics of Resilience and Community Empowerment, Adaptability and Future-Oriented Design and Tools for Expanded Fields of Practice.
Workshops considered how to incorporate the principles discussed into the architectural design studio: Questions asked were: What can we bring into the curriculum to equip students to work in a community-led context? and What future studio projects might be developed to embrace these skill-sets?
A video record of the conference is available here.
