Actor-networks in Le Corbusier’s housing project at Pessac

Summarization: Social housing, from modernist state funded programs to post-war industrial settlements, has long been associated with everyday practices of adaptation and transformation. Although Architectural theory rarely accounts for the incalculable, ad hoc practices by which domestic spaces in social housing are appropriated, used or misused by those who inhabit them, the social studies of technology, we argue, can provide possible methodological tools for such an investigation. We draw on Actor-Network Theory and its related concepts, to suggest that buildings can be conceptualized as spatiotemporal wholes, technological artefacts that mediate actions, inform social behavior while being continuously transformed by social activities (in terms of form, use and meaning). In the light of actor-network theory concepts, such as delegations, translations, inscriptions, de-inscriptions, re-inscriptions and so on, we discuss the well documented practices of appropriation and subsequent restoration of Le Corbusier’s housing estate built in 1926 at Pessac. Besides making a case for the importance of open design and the inclusion of users’ appropriation tactics in architectural research, we also suggest a methodological toolkit to inform contemporary social housing theory, design and research.Presented on: Fusion Journa