Spatializing Hospitality : A design exploration on how to provide spatial agency to immigrant households in Sweden

Sammanfattning: The thesis investigates how a host country can apply ethics of hospitality to housing that allow refugees and asylum seekers spatial agency. The necessity of doing this is to reduce the passive state of being “guests” for refugees when they are waiting for answers of asylum application approval. The research comes from architect and artist Sandi Hillal’s theory that hosting is power and explores how architecture can amplify the notion of hospitality as a threshold between the refuge home and their sociopolitical agency in the public sphere. To do this the thesis investigates an unexplored Swedish typology called bokal, a combined word of bostad (residency) and lokal (premises). This is a live-work typology, with a spatial and legal justification. This grants the refugee a direct connection to financial, social, and therefore political context but as hosts and owners of the space, instead of guests. Therefore, it becomes relevant to explore. The typology has in past projects had some success in the in increasing community, economy, and political agency to the residents of that and most of all, the bokal owners as hosts, but it has always been a top-down controlled project so far which enables little right of the resident to reprogram the spaces which has made the bokal a further temporary function. Therefore, one main aspect is to maximize the potential of bottom up and user control of their own space to achieve spatial agency and empower the resident as host. The research investigates theories of hospitality, spatial agency, and live/work and compares it briefly to its historical and contemporary function to resist the modernist large scaled urban ideas and focus on a soft-city approach. It thereafter investigates the five case studies and connects elements and strategies back to the theoretical background to further identify and learn from bokal and live/work elements. The following discussion highlights the street, courtyard, adaptability, affordability, and community enhancing features that are explored in the following proposal. The proposal depends heavily on making the housing affordable. Therefore, factors of management and ownership tenancy contracts as well as the possibility of the module to grow over time is explored. In social terms the border condition of the bokal is crucial to address. The Swedish northern Swedish context due to the cold climate most of the year demands climate shelter, while the social possibility to connect neighbors require openness. Therefore, the project deals with balancing closed and openness as well. Finally, further sociopolitical aspects are addressed in neighborhood scale dealing with the transition from the home and public reach. The public sphere is crucial for the refugee immigrant to demand political agency, as well as reach economic opportunities. Therefore, the neighborhood strategies are partly complementary in scale to the dwellings, as well as closely developed based on the theoretical background of community establishment. The conclusion summarizes the main findings and reflects critically on the project development regarding the methods used and the limits of the bokal typology created in financial, social, and political terms and additionally in its limit of spatial agency to the user it does offer.