Care(4)Housing
A care through design approach to address housing precarity in Portugal
As repeated throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, marked by the slogan 'stay at home', housing precariousness has once again exposed persistent inequalities. Nonetheless, the pandemic has also revealed the importance of care: 'caring and being cared for' marked 2020, and the interdependence experienced by all confirms that notions of care are particularly relevant in the design of built environments. As expressed in the results of the research project "How to stay at home? Immediate interventions to combat COVID-19 in precarious neighbourhoods of the Lisbon Metropolitan Area", coordinated by LAGES [LagesJorge20], it is urgent to address how Architecture, as a discipline, can rethink and integrate the idea of care into the built environment in response to situations of housing precariousness. The current proposal follows this line. Caring for Housing explores four dimensions of care through design. The first [SPATIAL] is rooted in the idea of TAKING CARE OF SPACE. The second [SOCIAL] follows the principle that we need to TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE. The third dimension, [TECHNICAL], is based on the idea that we must BUILD WITH CARE, questioning how we, as a collective, care for the planet [FitzKrasny19]. The last, [POLITICAL], defines CARE AS A TOOL. As a fundamental right unfulfilled, the opportunity offered by the post-pandemic recovery plan for Portugal — which aims to end housing precariousness by 2026 — this is the moment to discuss Housing for all, both within and outside academia.