Dwelling as a Democratic and Spatial Act

I asked myself what abitare actually was. Not just in its functional sense, but in its most whole, most subtle sense. The word derives from the Latin habitare — "to dwell", "to reside", "to inhabit" — but the implication is far more than mere physical placement. In philosophical theory, particularly Martin Heidegger's, abitare (or "dwelling") exists as a fundamental mode of existence. It is not just a question of occupying space, but harmonizing with it — cultivating it, hearing it, allowing it to shape who we are as we, in turn, fill it with significance.

To abitare is to cultivate a familiarity between the self and the world. It is an act of presence, of taking up space and time, where living is inextricably linked to thinking, remembering, and imagining. It is about purpose — an intentional inhabiting of bodies and spaces and emotional or cultural landscapes. It is about finding or building a sense of home, not as a location, but as a process of identification and connection. And thus, abitare is not just where we live, but how we live.

Architects and urban planners, over the years, have known that to abitare authentically, space must be created not singularly, but in collaboration with the individuals who inhabit it. Cities, communities, and buildings have often been built with the aim of creating a symbiotic relationship between form and life — where physical space returns to the needs, desires, and manners of its dwellers. This approach is central to what we now call Participatory Architecture: a practice founded on dialogue, transparency, and cooperation.

“Architecture must arise from the collective voice – it is shaped not by isolated genius, but through meaningful engagement with the people it serves.”

– Giancarlo De Carlo

One of the most reflective voices of this time was Giancarlo De Carlo, the Italian architect and theorist who loudly advocated architecture as a participatory, inclusive process. In his seminal essay "An Architecture of Participation" (1970), De Carlo replied that architecture would not be improved if it were practiced upon people, but if it emerged from an extended dialogue between architects and the users who would occupy and move through it. For him, engagement wasn't a method or a trend, but a political and ethical stance — a resistance to autocratic design in the name of collective wisdom.

Photo by Lorenzo Zandri

De Carlo believed that every place carries its own history, identity, and social complexity, and that good architecture must emerge from listening to these local narratives. Among his most compelling projects is the redesign of the Villaggio Matteotti in Terni, a housing development created in close consultation with workers and residents, who were invited to shape their own homes and public spaces. The result was not just a functional neighborhood, but a living testimony to how built environments can embody the values of empowerment and self-expression.

Following in the footsteps of Giancarlo De Carlo, several architects across the world have embraced the principles of participatory architecture and socially conscious design — not as a stylistic choice, but as a political commitment to equity, dignity, and access. Quite possibly the most impactful of these is Alejandro Aravena, Chilean architect and Pritzker Prize recipient. Working under practice ELEMENTAL, Aravena formulated the concept of "incremental housing", most visibly realized in the Quinta Monroy development in Iquique, Chile. Instead of fully developed, expensive houses, Aravena built "half-houses" — highly durable, well-finished buildings with rudimentary infrastructure — leaving room for residents to evolve as they might and desired.

“Architecture must serve the many, not the few. 
A home or public space should empower its inhabitants through dignity, adaptability, and community involvement.”

– Alejandro Aravena

This approach allowed poor families to own their living conditions in the long term, creating resilience and ownership at a reasonable cost. For Aravena, architecture is an agent of social transformation — one that can reclaim power for those typically not included in the process of design.

This same design ethos of designing with and not for people is also articulated in some of the most celebrated 20th-century public housing. Not necessarily defined as participatory, these projects wrestled — occasionally successfully, occasionally notoriously — with issues of dignity, accessibility, and community by design. They also present the same fundamental question: what is it to abitare well, together?

Arguably the most renowned — and disputed — is Le Corbusier's Unité d'Habitation in Marseille, completed in 1952. Conceived as a "vertical garden city", the building was designed to house some 1,600 residents, featuring apartments, stores, a rooftop promenade, and community facilities all housed under one umbrella. Le Corbusier sought to remake urban living for the modern age, offering working-class families light, air, and vegetation.

Photo by @gilimerin

“The Unité d'Habitation is a machine for living in, 
a vertical garden city, where the inhabitants live not only in their individual apartments but also in a collective community within the building.”

– Le Corbusier

On the other hand, Alison and Peter Smithson's Robin Hood Gardens in London, built in the early 1970s, specifically aimed to construct "streets in the sky" — airwalks that encouraged neighborliness and community within dense living. Their utopian and radical social housing scheme sought to retain some sense of identity and human scale within the brutalist vocabulary. Though eventually marked for demolition in 2017, its influence continues to provoke controversy about the value and inadequacies of postwar social housing, and strained relationship between architectural ideal and lived experience.

From a documentary by Thomas Beyer & Adrian Dorschner, 2022

In Vienna, Karl-Marx-Hof, built in the late 1920s during the era of “Red Vienna”, stands as a testament to the power of political will combined with architectural ambition. Designed by Karl Ehn, a student of Otto Wagner, the monumental housing complex offered not just shelter, but a social infrastructure: laundromats, libraries, kindergartens, and gardens — all designed for the working class. It embodied the idea that housing is a right, and that abitare should include access to culture, education, and community.

Also Habitat 67 by Moshe Safdie embodies many of the core principles that resonate with Giancarlo De Carlo’s vision of an Architecture of Participation. Commissioned for Expo 67 in Montreal, the project pushed the limits of prefabricated concrete units as modular building blocks to provide high-density housing that was anything but faceless. Each unit had its own garden, light, and spatial personality — a far cry from the monotonous vertical slabs of postwar urbanity.

Photo by @gilimerin

Safdie's aim was to offer a more humanized alternative to the standard high-rise: a city in the air where individuality, variation, and community could all thrive. Although the project didn't ultimately scale in the manner he'd envisioned — it grew increasingly exclusive and expensive over the years — its architectural language still resonates. With its sculptural modularity, Habitat 67 implies a model of living that places a premium on diversity and adaptability, key themes in De Carlo's thinking.

“The idea that you could have urban living with quality of life – with a garden, openness, air, outdoor spaces near your dwelling, a sense of community – for people, this was magical.”

– Moshe Safdie

Photo by @gilimerin

More recently, Lacaton & Vassal, the French architecture duo and 2021 Pritzker Prize winners, have redefined what it means to upgrade public housing without erasing its soul. In projects like the renovation of Paris's Tour Bois-le-Prêtre, they avoided the demolition wave and positioned instead liberal winter gardens and balconies over the top of standing social housing blocks, boosting livability without disturbing inhabitants. Their approach — less is more, utmost respect — repositions architecture as an exercise in restraint, listening, and empathy.

“The aim was transforming the building into a tower composed of urban villas.”

– Lacaton & Vassal

These examples from history and the present of socially driven architecture are in stark contrast to the trajectory many European cities have taken in recent decades. Milan, Paris, and Berlin — once fertile grounds for public housing innovation and architecture influenced by equity ideals — have increasingly been reduced to playgrounds for real estate speculation and private capital. The built environment, instead of being constructed to fulfill the requirements of occupants, is being created to generate maximum profit, typically at the expense of community, affordability, and long-term livability.

In Milan, the effects are especially stark. Over the past decade, the city has seen a boom in glossy redevelopment projects — vertical forests, luxury towers, and design districts that cater to a global elite. While a visual spectacle and highly touted in international media, few of the changes bear any relation to the needs of the city's actual residents. Neighborhoods are being sold off and redeveloped for overseas investors, who often buy units as a financial investment rather than as a place to live. The result is an increasingly bifurcated city — where speculation drives up the price of housing, displacing long-term inhabitants, and eroding the social bonds that once made Milan a hub for creative and civic vitality.

From radical experiments in dwelling to small, human-scale interventions, a history of resistance and a dream of possibility unfold. They remind us that abitare is never a politically innocuous act: it is always bound up with the politics of space — with the question of who is given the right to live with dignity, and who dictates what "living well" really entails. At its most powerful, architecture is neither spectacle nor stage for control, but a structure that allows life to unfold — freely, unpredictably, together.

So how do we reclaim that power? How do we move beyond cities designed as financial assets, and return to spaces designed for people? To actually abitare again — with presence, attention, and relation — we must not merely go back to the precepts of De Carlo, Aravena, Doshi, and Bo Bardi, but participate and remake the systems that have devalued our cities. The question is no longer whether the world can be saved by architecture — but whether we still believe it should.

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Words: Simone Lorusso