Who's Next: Homelessness, Architecture and Cities

<p>Homelessness is a growing global problem that requires local discussions and solutions. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, it has noticeably become a collective concern. However, in recent years, the official political discourse in many countries around the world implies that poverty is a personal fault, and that if people experience homelessness, it is because they have not tried hard enough to secure shelter and livelihood.</p> 

<p>Although architecture alone cannot solve the problem of homelessness, the question arises: What and which roles can it play? Or, to be more precise, how can architecture collaborate with other disciplines in developing ways to permanently house those who do not have a home?</p>

<p><i>Who’s Next? Homelessness, Architecture, and Cities</i> seeks to explore and understand a reality that involves the expertise of national, regional, and city agencies, non-governmental organizations, health-care fields, and academic disciplines. </p>

<p>Through scholarly essays, interviews, analyses of architectural case studies, and research on the historical and current situation in Los Angeles, Moscow, Mumbai, New York, São Paulo, San Francisco, Shanghai, and Tokyo, this book unfolds different entry points toward understanding homelessness and some of the many related problems. </p>

<p>The book is a polyphonic attempt to break down this topic into as many parts as needed, so that the specificities and complexities of one of the most urgent crises of our time rise to the fore.</p>

Daniel Talesnik is a curator at the Architekturmuseum of the Technische Universität München (TU Munich), where in 2019 he curated Access for All: São Paulo’s Architectural Infrastructures, which was later shown in 2020 at the Center for Architecture in New York City and in 2021 at the Schweizerisches Architekturmuseum (S AM) in Basel. He is an architect who studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (2006) and earned a PhD from Columbia University (2016) with the dissertation “The Itinerant Red Bauhaus, or the Third Emigration.” He teaches at the TU Munich and has also taught at the Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile, Columbia University, and the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Andres Lepik is the director of the Architekturmuseum at the Technische Universität München (TU Munich) and a professor of history of architecture and curatorial practice at the TU Munich. He studied art history, graduating with a PhD on Architectural Models in the Renaissance. From 1994 he worked as a curator at the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, where he presented the exhibitions Renzo Piano (2000) and Content: Rem Koolhaas and AMO/OMA (2003). From 2007 to 2011 he was a curator in the Architecture and Design Department at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, presenting the exhibition Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement (2010). In 2011–12, Lepik was a Loeb Fellow at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

Leilani Farha is the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing and the Global Director of The Shift. Her work is animated by the principle that housing is a social good, not a commodity. Leilani has helped develop global human rights standards on the right to housing, including through her topical reports on homelessness, the financialization of housing, informal settlements, rights-based housing strategies, and the first UN Guidelines for the implementation of the right to housing. She is the central character in the documentary PUSH regarding the financialization of housing, which has been screening around the world. Leilani launched The Shift in 2017 with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the organization United Cities and Local Government.

Binyamin Appelbaum is the lead writer on business and economics for the editorial board of The New York Times. Before joining the board in 2019, he was a longtime economic policy correspondent for the Times, based in Washington, DC. He writes regularly about housing issues, including the critical shortage of affordable housing in the United States and the growing number of Americans who are experiencing homelessness as a consequence. He is the author of The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society, published in German translation in 2020 by S. Fischer Verlage as Die Stunde der Ökonomen.

Juliane Bischoff works as a curator at the NS Dokumentationzentrum München at the interface between exhibition and digital mediation. Together with Nicolaus Schafhausen and Mirjam Zadoff, she co-curated the exhibition Tell me about yesterday tomorrow (2019–20). From 2016 to 2019, she worked at Kunsthalle Wien, where she curated, among others, the exhibition Kate Newby: I can’t nail the days down (2018) and also co-curated and organized group exhibitions and discursive programs. Previously, she has worked at institutions like Kunsthalle Basel (2012) and Ludlow 38 at Goethe-Institut New York (2015). She is the editor of the publications Kate Newby: I can’t nail the days down (Sternberg Press, 2019) and Ineke Hans: Was ist Loos? (Sternberg Press, 2017) and is a regular contributor to publications in the fields of art, culture, and society.