The Affordable Housing Forum of ETH CASE Centre for Research on Architecture, Society & the Built Environment invites submissions to its 2018 conference, taking place on 12 and 13 November, at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER).

The European Union has dedicated the year 2018 to cultural heritage. This occasion invites us to rethink the ways culture influences our built environment and ultimately the way we live. Despite globalised lifestyles, monolithic star architectures, a financialised world economy and broadly shared neoliberal government reforms, the way housing in the 21st century is constructed, appropriated and used is still place-specific.
Housing is always related to culture – with influences ranging from climatic and geographic conditions, available resources, social conditions, building practices, housing needs and practices of use, to laws and regulations and political idiosyncrasies.

We invite submissions that investigate current forms and models of affordable housing – and their links to cultural and local context. Different thematic panels will be grouped around our four research axes:

Theme 1: The Culture of Affordable Living: About lifestyles, housing needs, preferences and daily practices
Theme 2: Reading Culture in Affordable Housing Plans: Advances in affordable housing projects and their analysis
Theme 3: Cultures of Affordable Housing Systems- The role of culture in understanding affordable housing models, housing supply, affordability and profitability
Theme 4: Towards a Cultural Reading of Policy: Place-specificity of laws and regulations and their link to housing affordability
Theme 5: The Need for Regional Approaches to Affordable Housing: Cross-border living cultures in cross-border territories