The Terms of Dwelling

This thematic issue re-articulates the question of housing as an architectural and planning problem and examines how architecture can contribute to reduce the divorce between housing provision and architectural research. The articles included in the issue investigate the terminology used to designate housing as a way to question the relation between housing, architecture, and planning, and investigate and theorize the language of housing in relation to the emergence of new and varied modes of inhabiting. Built on a heterogeneous corpus of terms, the articles offer a new outlook on the current housing crisis and the role of architecture in it. The papers unpack selected housing terms via close historical inquiry of specific case studies, housing typologies, policies and codes, discourses, and schemes, and contribute to explore the social, economic, political, and design dimensions of housing by inquiring the origin, evolution, codification, and diverse usage and meanings of selected terms. This collection of terms defines a theoretical frame to recasting architecture as a crucial aspect of housing provision, reconnecting design to policy and finance, and laying the ground for envisioning the capacities of architecture in a post-neoliberal society. Specific terms, concepts, and notions are examined by the authors in relation to their understanding in the housing discourse and practice, while other terms are analyzed in relation to their multiple origins and changing meanings, when terms migrated in diverse fields (normative, political, planning, administrative, financial) or across countries, disciplines, and cultures.