Being a housing association

ENHR WG-20 Social Housing: Institutions, Organisations and Governance

Being a housing association.

(Work in progress)

Rene van de Lustgraaf, Denken Bouwen Wonen, Windbaan 65 Zeewolde

E: [email protected]

abstract

In this paper it tries to give some philosophical shadow to the world of a housing association. There is

a paradox in the work of housing association. Despite their hardworking to establish social housing

for the more vulnerable people in our society, housing association have still to learn to dwell. The pa-

per propose that housing association should engage more with their tenants to make the necessary

change

Keywords: housing association phenomenology strategy indirect action

We walk continuously through uncountable fields and we never arrive. Und never we end at the

final field, that encompasses all (Gabriel Markus).

Introduction

It seems a paradox that in order for being a housing association it has to understand dwelling. We

normally think that a housing association (HA) is almost 24/7 busy with dwelling. But it isn’t the case.

Of course there are exceptions. Most of the Housing associations (HA) are busy with housing and

building without a notion of dwelling

They take dwelling as essential condition for Being more or less as a political statement. Or have it

written in their mission statement. But in their practices they see - as modern corporation ethos tells-

tenants as consumers and they are their providers of housing.

The economic crisis was fully represented in the housing sector. A few scandals of some big associa-

tions did shake severe the housing sector in the Netherlandsi. Not only in economical way but also in

ethical way. Evil came to townii. Mandeville gathers the situation by the writing”

That strange ridic’lous Vice, was made

The very Wheel that turn’d the Trade

But at the end the Trade stopped. At this moment the Dutch government is busy to implement new

legislation to fixate housing association on their core business. And there is working a parliamentary

inquiry about the future of the housing sector. Aedes the organisation who represents the interest of

the housing association promotes in their flyer the recognition of the work of the Housing Association.

The fall is deep and how make yourself appear in dwelling of those who needs their support, tenants

who are in a vulnerable position in society or those who are starting up their own in dependable dwell-

ing.

This paper is a philosophical writing and take the phenomenological thinking of Heideggeriii, with the

main focus of his essay dwelling building thinking, as a base camp. It’s one of the only original philo-

sophical essays what has written on dwelling and has a great influence of the thinking on dwelling..

mailto:[email protected]


In trying to get a better understanding of dwelling it give housing association a frame of thinking how

it can appear and represent in the dwelling of those who need their support).

When Peter King in Private Dwelling working philosophically inside the dwelling, I will look at some

theme’s outside the house, especially with housing associations and how they can dwell.

The first chapter sets the ontological base by setting Heidegger’s way of thinking on dwelling in a new

realism frame. Within this frame the metaphysics of dwelling are put away and make a more under-

standable view of dwelling possible. Main argument is that the world doesn’t exist and therefore met-

aphysics are obsolete. Then I meander through dwelling, authenticity, architecture and strategy to give

some understanding of the fields housing associations appear and represent themselves.

The world doesn’t exist.

The World doesn’t exist is the statement of Markus Gabriel’s new realism: “The world doesn’t exists

and that all the other is there on one exception the world”. In this statement the metaphysics with goes

about the World has lost its ground; there is nothing to discuss about. His arguments why the world

doesn’t exit are quite straight forward, although there a different ways to get the notion. I will start

from the concept of sensefield.

A sense fieldiv is a place where objects anyway appear. Existence is nothing more than the appearance

is a field of sense. But the object must belong to this field to make appearance. This belong is not in a

pure categorical way, but in a mereoligicalv way. A mereological sum is the shaping of a whole by

connecting some parts. You can think about a motor with carburettor, cylinders and cooling system. A

carburettor can appear in the sensefield of a motor, but is will not be able to appear as furniture in a

house.

Image the world appears in a sensefield (S1)vi So the world is enclosed in this first field and is part of

all the different others fields (S2… Sn). In picture 1 it is made visual. You can see the impossibility of

the world as the World. It is rather impossible to be toto within sensefield one and at the same time

being the World where S1 is part of. If the world is S1 where

does it appear. It becomes clearer with the notion that in S2

and S3 the world doesn’t appear. But when the World appear

is S1 then within S1 appears S2 and S3. You have a sincere

contradiction. So the world doesn’t exist. There are only field

of senses.

By filling in the previous example with thinking about the

world. By thinking about the world it exist, it appears in our

thinking and our thinking exist. Ergo the world does exist. But

there is a contradiction; “when the world exists in our thought,

then our thought cannot be part of the world. If then there would be two worlds, on in our thought and

“the world”.

Nothing and nonexistence

This assumption is important but it has to be further developed. The world doesn’t exist, but there are

uncountable sensefields, who are sometimes overlapping and some are far from each other. There are

two important notes to make before I will describe how the sensefields can work as a field for social

housing. First there is the principle that there is no universal principle. It is quit lean. If the world


doesn’t exit, there will not be a universal principle that rules all the world. There are of course princi-

ple in the universe, scrutinize by natural sciences.

The second is about nothing or nonexistence. We just possible get use to the thought that the world

doesn’t exist, now we have to acknowledge the fact that there is no nothing. But we have the same

sequential as by the world, but now the opposite. Because we can think about nothing it is a fact and

thereby it already exists. But we can frame it in a sensefield. When I go the dwelling and used the

thinking of Heidegger, there is the notion of being thrown in to the world. A world full of meaning,

we try to understand. I will rephrase that we are thrown a diversity of sensefields where we appear,

and within those fields we establish meaning and come into existence.

Field of sense:

I paraphrase Markus when he connate Wittgenstein from his Tractatus Logicus, the fieldvii

of sense is

everything that is the caseviii

. A field is totally of facts, objects appears in a field by fact. How object

appears is dependable on their qualities. But the object always appears in a certain way. Existence is

nothing more than appearance in the world and it is the only way.

When I go the dwelling and used the thinking of Heidegger, there is the notion of being thrown in to

the world. A world full of meaning, we try to understand. I will rephrase that we are thrown a diversi-

ty of sensefields where we appear, and within those fields we establish meaning and come into exist-

ence

In the sensefield of social housing housing associations appear in their social way. The make also ap-

pearance in the field of housing markets when it goes on commercial developments of commercial

renting or selling. In the later field there are other objects to encounter and there are different rules and

relationships in which a HA is at that moment embedded.

Field of senses are not absolute, they are always relative to each other and give shades by their appear-

ance. There is no possible absolute fields of sense and with that an absolute difference between ob-

jects. Markus states ”This is not informative; it only says that the object is only identical with itself”.

It’s the contrast with make the difference and create the necessary information. Commercial housing

and social housing are separate fields but these are relative towards each other but are not part of each

other.

With the supposition that there are no universal laws, it is also the case that not all has a relationship; a

absolute coherency doesn’t exist. The cat who runs through my garden has nothing to do with me be-

ing in the garden, this is an contingency not a coherency. Policy changing is the field of social housing

doesn’t have a full coherency with the housing market.

There is a last term that needs to be elaborated. Realism is an essential part in this ontology and gives

an answer to the pitfalls monism and constructivism. For Markus it is clear when a look at a house

there are at least 2 object to consider. The house at his own and the house as it is perceived by me.

Those can count as 2 facts. In new realism are thought about an object have the same value as the facts

itself. The ontology of new realism differs from constructivism and metaphysics:

“Both metaphysics as constructivism fail in a unfounded simplification or reality, whilst they under-

stand the reality only as a reality without spectators or only as a world by spectatorsix”. If we love it or

not we are part of the world, the world is a world with spectators, with facts and objects.


I can see and feel the house, not the house as a whole, it exist for me in the perspective I have from

where a look or touch the house. It is not a construct who only stays in my mind. And when I am not

near the house it doesn’t disappear.

The sensefield of dwelling.

By reading the essay dwelling building thinking you get a rather strange feeling. One is that you get

unconcealed what is essential of the understanding of dwelling, but at the same time you think your

are in a linguistic labyrinth. Or as Paul W. Kahn stated on interpretation:

”There is always more to me than can be said: there is a surplus. In every interpretation ther is a kind

of asymptotic relationship between representation and identity. Representation strive for but never

reaches, identity”

Oppen, citated in Susan Bernstein Housing problems :

“This night I sat up late, very carefully reading the essay, and after many hours felt I had understand it

– It was very difficult for me to grasp the extreme Idealist Assumption on which it was based. When I

had grasped it, I turned it over and over in my mind for a long time, unable to accept the assumption,

but convinced that a part of the statement was of crucial important to me, of such an importance as to

alter the subjective conditions of my life, the conditions of my thinking , from that point of time”

And Oppen was not the only onex. The essay has made a great influence especially in the field of ar-

chitecture. It gave a kind of ontology on which architects made their thoughts about dwelling. As it

were, it defined a new sensefield for dwelling. The essay gave at the same time fundamental argu-

ments for criticise the modernity in architecture, especially after WOII. Still today it is a meaningful

resource of inspiration for thinking about dwelling.

When we take the new realism viewpoint that object appears in a special way in their sensefield – not

all is visible – the we can state that all thought the object appears there is also absence. When you look

at the front of a house, you don’t see the back. This mode of hide an present and what is present is de-

pendable when and how things are encountered. This is an essential for being in the world of countless

sensefields. Time is for Heidegger nothing more than “a passage of back and forth, between shadow

and light”. When harries see the modernist architecture as a means to go beyond the terror of time, it

this time and not the chronical timexi.

The idea of existence of Markus has a quite similar understanding by Heidegger. For Heidegger hu-

man life is factical and is executed or performed is a specific meaningful situation. Human existence is

in Heideggers words is Dasein (Being there). Dasein is a specific human feature. /

Building, dwelling and thinking.

I will now go deeper in the essay of Heidegger building dwelling thinking on elaborate what dwelling

is in relation to building. Not all the aspect and possible interpretations. Private dwelling of Peter King

offers a beautiful Heidegger based essay on especially dwelling. Also worth mentioning is the work of

Hasse; “Unbedachtes Wohnen,”, although more in style of Heidegger. I will make some connotations

about the fourfold, being authentic and some thought about technology. Dwelling and building will be

more or less treated by becoming a housing association.

The essay Building Dwelling Thinkingxii

is written in a more poetic way, it tries to make sense of how

dwelling and building appears in the world (Aletheia). In the poetic way Heidegger unconcealed the


pre-interpreted meaning of dwelling and building. There is in the essay no definition what dwelling an

building is nor how we have to dwell. When you read the essay you have to think in a more meditative

way to experience the multilevel character of dwelling and building. In a later chapter about strategy

thinking about building en dwelling gets a different connotation.

The essay start with the following introduction:

“In what follows we shall try to think about dwelling and building. This thinking about building does

not presume to discover architectural ideas, let alone to give rules for building. This venture in thought

does not view building as an art or as a technique of construction; rather it traces building back into

that domain to which everything that is belongs. We ask:

1. What is it to dwell?

2. How does building belong to dwelling “

Heidegger makes it clear that his phenomenological approach doesn’t go for unconcealing/revealing

architectural ideas, but give rules. But the rules I think are not the guidelines you expect. For

Heidegger is the question. He state them latter. In being and time he poses the threesome, : (1) that

which is asked about, (2) that which is interrogated, (3) and that which is to be found out by the ask-

ing. This line of questions is meant philosophically, as Harmanxiii

“for Heidegger, philosophy is a way

of making things present without making them present. It does this by means of suggestions, hints, or

allusions to the being of things that lies deeper than their presence to our consciousness. Philosophy,

Heidegger insists, is not a theoretical science”. So the rules are given by hint, not by clear statement

and therefore we have to read his essay on a philosophical way.

Normally we place building before dwelling. But Heidegger turn is around and even makes the sug-

gestion that both take place at the same time. In the begin of the essay he states “ We do not dwell

because we have built, but we build and have built because we dwell, that is, because we are dwellers

and later in the essay notes : “Only if we are capable of dwelling, only then can we build.”

Heidegger confront us how we nearly forgot to dwell. To understand how this has happen, how dwell-

ing disappear in our thoughts and activity we just have to study the etymology of both words. The

words building and dwelling are translate in German bauen and wohnen, which have their etymology

in the old Saxon language called wuon and in Gothic wuan. The Gothic wuan is very close to the

word bauen. Both have the meaning of to stay or remain in place. But the meaning of wuan goes fur-

ther tells Heidegger it communicate “to be brought by peace, and to remain in peace”. When we go

further with the association of peace is brings up the word Friede, das Frye and with some steps fur-

ther you get the meaning of spare, to preserve.

Heidegger concludes that dwelling is :

“To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free sphere that safeguards each

thing in its nature. The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving. It pervades

dwelling in its whole range. That range reveals itself to us as soon as we reflect that human being con-

sists in dwelling and, indeed, dwelling in the sense of the stay of mortals on the earth.”

To understand these passage you can imagine what you experience or do at home, you do the garden

(preserve), sitting in the chair and feeling comfortable and secure, you can have your own dreams and

fantasies, without some reality testxiv

; you are home in a place located on earth.


The meaning of dwelling comes to you present-at-hand when you lose your home feeling when the

household breaks up by demise or divorce. At that moment the sensefield of home loses its meaning

and you have to create and think about dwelling to find or re-enact a home, make space on perhaps a

new location.

The fourfold.

Then takes Heidegger the reader towards the fourfold (das Geviert). A genuine dwelling is dwelling in

the fourfolds. Fourfolds is essential for dwelling. The fourfold are build out of mortals, divinities,

earth and sky. We can imagine that when you dwell on earth you are at the same time under the sky.

Mortal are human beings, who, and that’s the pessimistic side of Heidegger, capable of death as death.

It seems a kind of tautology, but for Heidegger death is an essential part of being; when you are born

at the same time death is in your life. To dwell means to acknowledge you’re finitude. The forth is the

divinity, the gods. It doesn’t mean a religion for Heideggerxv

The last element is a difficult one, because when we dwell we don’t think about divinities. But in to-

day’s garden, but also in the living room, you can see a lot of Buddha’s. I think it is not only some-

thing nice to have, it represent more. Divinity is seeing signs of the godhead how to preserve human

being; giving rules for preserve being-in-the-worldxvi

. Heidegger has a more pagan/mystical divinity in

mind in the line of master Eckart. The picture beneath is from the movie Nostalgia directed by the

Russian Andrei Tarkovsky. It’s the opening sequence of the movie. When it is about the fourfold I

think this picture unconceals the notion. It makes also clear the thinking and dwelling as a temporally

stop.


Al lot a philosophers see the fourfold as some cul-de-sac in Heideggers thinking and don’t mention it,

other like Graham Harman , take it very seriously and transform the fourfold in a theory about ob-

jects. But to put in a more poetic way, in Heidegger’s sense it is more able to gather truth.

In the line of new-realism, I think that dwelling in the fourfold, with make dwelling genuine and make

place for human to become authentic, has to be revised by sensefields. Genuine dwelling is exist in the

multitude of sensefield, knowning not only your mortality but also as Markus states “ The not exist-

ence of the world makes an explosion of senses possiblexvii

”. As a human being you’re not bound to

one single field, but you can be part of the endless meaning- and sense full life. And be able to change

when you live through the different fields where you appear and exists in different fields.

The authentic housing association.

I will start now from the perspective of housing association itself and place them in a more therapeutic

Heideggerian frame. As I wrote in the beginning the sector is in deep crisis. Most housing associations

have a vision, mission and of course corporate values. But I think most housing association will be

agree with Brendan Sarsfield, chief executive of Family Mosaic

“ The challenge for housing associations is to find solutions that protect the poor and the vulnerable in

this new world. The G15 knows it has to play its part in meeting that challenge. Our critics may not

like the choices we've made – and time will tell us if we were right – but from where I standx the

housing sector has made sensible, practical decisions driven by our longstanding social values and a

desire to do more to help the homelessxviii

”.


Values on their own doesn’t motivate people. Baumanxix

makes clear when it comes to value (ethics) it

will rise at the moment of Need of the Other. The other needs to be near; only when people stand close

to each other moral action can grow. Bauman calls it a moral impulse, what nothing has to do with

values, rules or law. When people follow rules, they don’t feel responsiblexx

. When a housing associa-

tion want to help homeless people, they have to leave their functional ground and Being Responsible

(response = answer). Value driven as stated by Sarsfield have a tendency to become calculative-

instrumental when they will be treated as means for some nonmoral ends; effects or outcomes of social

housing.

With the Heidegger words authentic and resoluteness we come more closer to “deep-felt-need” values

for social housing. Perhaps it is easier to begin with what is not-authentic. With the ongoing business

housing associations busy with their immediate concerns and

“drift along with the taken-for-granted practices of of average everydayness”xxi

At that moment Dasein is “falling and “forgetting”, doing the things the society expect of housing

associations. On that way there is an avoidance of anxiety and threats. Authentic means taking up

Dasein in an integrated and coherent way (p..). In Heidegger terms

“face to face with the nothingness of the possible impossibility of existence (Death in personal life) ”.

A resolute authentic Dasein means to discover the world as well as be open to co-existence others and

taking care (solicitous) of Others. Authentic housing associations shouldn’t hide behind their roles of

rules or taking others for blame; they take responsibility and set their own freedomxxii

for self-

determination. And Dasein is always directed to the future, taking past and present with it, by search-

ing possibilities and choose one to go for.

And in a good relationship with tenant housing association can feel the spirit. Spirit is at stake when it

goes on how we relate to ourselves and to others. We are not only thinking subjectsxxiii

and realtionship

is as Markus calls it a “Wacklige Angelegenheit (rickety matter). We need the other and open to the

other because to realize our self. It’s a different kind of customer relationship. It is meant in a two di-

rectional why, housing association can an have to learn from Other who they are. A closeness can lead

towards arrangance and over confidence. Markus states:

“This opening towards the other is possible, because we are for ourselves also an stranger. …., and in

many occasions other people know us better than we do ourselves”.

And housing associations need to communicate which the others, especially tenant. In that dialog the

organisation can become more aware about itself and by that we change on the way becoming more

authentic. That moment make the organisation also consciousness that it can change, not by consult-

ants, but by those people we work for and with.

Architecture in social housing.

In my experiences with social housing, when we had new projects to develop or to restructure we

always had a great architectural ambition. But architecture in social housing is the possibility that rest

between to realize an affordable rent, a maximum set of space between 65-80m2, a maximum number

of dwellings and all the regulation. And of course the house/building had to be good to maintain over


the next 25 years; built it easy and simple. And the most uphelded sentence in social housing in the

Netherlands is “sober and practical “. Most of the architecture ambition is flatten by those demands.

The famous Amsterdam School in the early 20the century was, I think, more an exceptional momen-

tum than common practice. “Het Schip”( 1914-1921) of Michel de Klerk built in the line of the Am-

sterdam School and where meant to be the palaces for the worker.

I will turn to Harries his thinking on architecture in his book “The ethical function of architecture” .

His quest for ethos by giving “back” architecture a voice to speak is also a question for architecture in

social housing. The murmuring you can hear in most of the buildings is an echo of Le Corbusier ada-

gio of “a house as machines for living”. And with the today changing name of social housing towards

affordable housing the language changes towards commodification, marketing, lifestyle etc. You can

paraphrase it by translating Marcuse One Dimensions man to a One dimensional housing. Or Joë

Bosquet words ” Men with one story”xxiv

. In general terms we can say that a lot of house built by

Housing associations represent Modernistic thought and were, as Peter King noted, Brick boxes and

offered place to reside.

If architecture is an important facet of dwelling; it has the ability to close the gap between building and

dwelling. Architecture as Harries noted:

” Architecture has one source in the attempt to make what originally a strange and alien environment

more our own, to transfer space into place, so that instead of being cast into a strange and alien world

we are allowed to dwell.”

Harries tries to elaborate the architectural guidance of Heidegger in giving them more voice. His

questionxxv

of architecture begins by Giedeon (1967), who stated: ”We are still in the formation period

of a new tradition, still at its beginning ….. the interpretation of a way of life valid for a period”. Har-

ries take that as a question for ethos, not ethicsxxvi

. And how can architecture make ethos possible?

Harries represent Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking as a medium to frame this question. And

by that he search for the meaning of genuine dwelling; As Heidegger insist, the kind of building that

provides for genuine dwelling must itself grow from such dwelling. Harries sees architecture not to

make house as a shed with decorationxxvii

. Architecture must as Heidegger state start within dwelling,

making a place in space and enclosexxviii

that space.

In my opinion architecture has to be given a fundamental place within the policy of housing associa-

tion. In giving no room to architecture they will not be able to appear in the dwelling sensefield of

their tenants and make as noted earlier community possible. In Nietzsche sense “a brick become more

a brick”.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Amsterdam_Het_Schip_006.JPG


But what kind of architecture have we looking for. Post-Modern architecture gives room to lost arche-

type form and patternxxix

and it is expressive and sometime persuasive. But as Norberg Schutz re-

minds:

“..it lack a satisfactory reference to our everyday world of things”,

It doesn’t bridge the gap between building an dwelling. It is more like as the Modernist did in their

abstract architecture beating the terror of timexxx

. And that makes it opposite to Heideggers notion of

dwelling

I Think that Harries quest for an ornament need not to involve an ornament, as representing a way of

life (ethos). I have thought it for a long time how such ornament would look like. I think architecture

work as a whole, not only the ornament, have to as Markus states

“The meaning of art (architecture) is that what normally is self-evident, transpose it in a strange light.

Art surprise us with a different meaning and luminate object from a unusual perspective”.

Architecture should like Heidegger quested to transpose our usual way of dwelling to a

“living may get into the questionable and remain something memorablexxxi

”. It has to put our dwelling

out of our normal sensefield in order to make use conscious how we dwellxxxii

. So architecture we

needed is not only an ornament but makes shades about how we dwell. And the ethos is find in the

Heidegger concept of Schonung (mercy, protection, saving). Some call it deep ecological thinking.

Being in the world means that to dwell you have to think also outside you own dwelling. To

acknowledge that u use objects, forces, feelings and obligations outside your house and by that it

“to unfold gently in relation to your world”. At that moment you can In-Dwell (Ein-Wohnen)

As I wrote earlier then you dwell within the fourfold and as Hasse notes you can Be within or visit the

Object/Things and cultivate them and if things don’t grow built them. In that context there is dwelling

building thinking. There is a lovely movie, named after the architect, “Koolhaas HouseLife”. The

move follows the cleaning lady throughout the house and there is only the sound of the nature and the

work. It is a tremendous job to clean to house- it wasn’t built to clean – and things break or doesn’t

work properly. But I think the house not only give resistance to cleaning but also to dwelling. The film

doesn’t show how the owner dwells. This kind of architecture, I think not intend, make a shadow to

make ourselves question dwelling.

But this I don’t advise Housing association to support that kind of architecture, but I a more modest

way as Harries put into words:

“Works of architecture refuse to fit into the pregiven context without speaking up. They stand up to

the context and hold their ground. Whatever the answer (Venturi, Hundertwasser), this is much clear:

any such an attempt should result in a building that would confront and stand up to the modern con-

text, calling us to a different way of life, a different ethos. As a contemporary of old-world building it

would be not another such a building but a work of architecture”(p281).

Architecture have to be in the heart of a housing associations. That architecture has to do more I think.

Housing Association have to work within the antagonism in society, they try to give a house for those

people who need a place and need support by their problems with dwelling. Architecture has to ad-

dress to this antagonism, not like the Black Madonna of Carel Weeber. His statement about “sober and


practical” didn’t stay long. But the architecture may re-present this antagonism and the care housing

associating take for tenant on or near the edge of society.

And which the vulnerability of the tenant in mind I will close this chapter with the adagio from Zizek

in his lecture about architecture and aesthetics he states:

“Recall William Butler Yeats’ well-known lines: “I have spread my dreams under your feet, / Tread

softly because you tread on my dreams.” They refer also to architecture, so my warning to architecture

is: when you are making your plans, tread softly because you tread on the dreams of the people who

will live in and look at your buildings”

Strategy: becoming of a Housing association.

A lot of effort is put into strategy and planning development by housing association. Financial forecast

has a horizon of more than 15 year. Asset management tries make a strategy how to overcome gap that

arise when you confront the housing need of the future with the assets of today. On basis of that con-

frontation you can estimate which and how many new houses has to be build, to demolish and which

stock needs a upgrading or intensive maintenance. Facet management deals with rent- and mainte-

nance policy. And every year the progress is monitored and plans adjusted. Most of this process is in-

ter governed by a management tool as Balanced Score Card.

To give some shade to this approach I will take the famous example of the German forestryxxxiii

, based

on the work of Scott’s book “Seeing like a State”. Before the scientific approach of forestry; the forest

was divided in equal plots. The amount of plots resemble the ‘assumed growth cycle’. Every year a

plot was cut on the assumption of equal yield s (and

value) from plots of equal size. In modern financial

term every year it was thought generate the same cash

flow and the taxes could be well forecasted. But it

didn’t happen. Over the plots there was no equal dis-

tribution of the most valuable trees, the problematic

measures of the age of the tree and the poor mapping

of the forest. The results were not satisfying for the

fiscal planning.

Then as Scott writes that the fiscal urges a different

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way of forestry. In the late 18the century there was a growing shortage of wood and therefore less in-

come from the fiscal exposure. But that was not the only threat. When the shortage were increasing,

the peasants would go by themselves to the forest to cut wood for the fireplace.

Johann Gottlieb Beckmann introduced the scientific methods for optimisation of the forestry by intro-

ducing a standardized tree. With this tree and a classification system which good measure more exact-

ly value of the tree and using the good seeds only, there was in the first years a high revenue, but at

the same time the forest became more and more uniform. When the trees were cut, the plot was seeded

in straight line and the number of species was reduced.

“The German forest became an archetype for imposing on disorderly nature the neatly arranged con-

structs of science . The normal baum became the abstraction to reality ” . But this is not the end of the

story. When the second rotation of the tree came for harvesting, the second generation of tree had an

amazing regression. The production lost was almost 30%. The explanation was easy to give.”.. the

whole nutrient cycle got out of order and was eventually stopped. By the refinement of trees the natu-

ral habitat was fully disturb or even destroyed.

This story of the German forestry is not strange when we look especially in development on big social

housing estates. In the Netherlands can the Bijlemeer set as an example. In England you have the fa-

mous Byker Wall. In the film Koyaanisqatsixxxiv

you see the demolition of the Pruitt-Igoe housing

project in St. Louis. The largest public housing estate with high rising building Robert Taylor Homes

were demolished after 10 yearsxxxv

. They were a monoculture of a housing forest. In the beginning

there were high expectation of this type of development, based on the notions of Corbusier, but at the

end it went totally wrong. People weren’t able to dwell. Still we are working to change these forests by

calling for differentiation; mixed income, mixed ownership and mixed dwellings. The cost for these

restructuring of these stock are immense.

Most of the strategy makers place themselves outside the system to gain objectivity: “we construct our

own role as detached observers, analyst and strategist, moving people, assets and resources around the

‘territory’ as if on a chess boards”. We see the stock and tenants through our excel sheet, as countable

an manipulating entities. And as Peter King stated: ”Yet.. that policymakers and professionals do not

talk about dwelling, nor they concern themselves anymore with housing; they are concerned with

homes. Both private developers and landlords built houses; for them there is only one level, with any

nuance between dwelling, house and home occluded into one entity”.

King is sober when it is about strategy/policy making. He defines theirs effort in a strict domain “ In-

deed it is hard to see what role any public agency can play other than “provide enough brick boxes and

ensure people can afford them”. And they must lower their ambitions :”Or course this is not a particu-

larly negligible one – we can do little unless the dwelling are there first- but still it is a limited one.

The problem is that politicians, policy-makers and practitioners either do appreciate this or simple re-

fuse to accept it.”

In my opinion strategy can do more to do then lay bricks and of course dwelling is private. But I do

not endorse Kings notion “ There is no possibility of policy or even an individual practice so fine-

grained as to actually articulate the varied needs and choices of all, or even many households”.

I will use the thoughts of Chain cs to come towards a strategy approach which enable housing associa-

tion built a strategy from within dwelling. It will take some steps and empathy.

First we have to distinguish in the different kinds of knowledge. Chain takes Aristotle as his anchor.


For Aristotle there are three kinds of knowledge:

• Episteme: a fixed set of information possessed by people; a system of understanding or a body

of ideas which give shape to theoretical knowledge

Technē: what people can do; a state of capacity to make; the rational method involved

in producing an object or accomplishing a goal or objective

• Phronesis: the capability to consider the mode of action in order to deliver change, especially

to enhance the quality of life; some believe it includes the ability to reflect upon; it is practi-

cal wisdom, knowledge of the proper ends of life, in contrast to sophia - involving wisdom

concerning universal truths; science

.For the development of a dwelling strategy the emphasis is on phronesis not as in most strategy mak-

ing the episteme and techne. We have to search for knowledge to can touch dwelling on a way that it

don’t disturb it and acknowledge the private and subjectivity.

Where King uses Heidegger to stop strategy at the door of the dwelling, Chain makes us of

Heidegger’s Building Dwelling Thinking to make a real connection to dwelling.

Chain states “ To identify two distinct modes of engaging with the world strategically that , following

Heidegger, we term the ‘building’ and ‘dwelling’. Heidegger himself conceives these modes as being

naturally sympathetic. But he also suggest that modern life, and notably the rise and spread of techno-

logical sophistication, has wrested them apart, making them almost antithetical”

Building and dwelling are different modes of strategy making and Heidegger didn’t online gave guide-

line for architects, but you can also include strategy/policy makers.

The building mode of strategy making works within the more scientific oriented sensefield. It has it

parallel with the Modernist movement. Chain define the building mode as “is exemplified by the

agent-strategist consciously constructing mental representations and models of the world and only act-

ing upon them”. The characteristic of this modes are common to most housing associations

The dwelling mode of strategy making runs parallel with the way genuine dwelling works and how

Harries sees the effort architects have to make by learning to dwell. Chain defines the dwelling mode

as mode of engagement: “ it is local adaptions and ingenuity in everyday practical coping that are of

particular interest”. Translated in terms of new realism, the strategy appears in the sensefield of dwell-

ing and can thereby truly exist. And like Harries call by architects, the strategy must encompassing

some ethos of how we can dwell. Strategy in the field of dwelling is helping to understand ourselves

by unconcealing how to realise a place for genuine dwelling.

We need to take two more steps to develop a strategy who is capable of working in the field of dwell-

ing.

Wayfinding.

Chain distinguish two ways of approaching a strategy process. He takes the metaphor of navigation.

When we think of navigation we plan a point at the horizon, were we want to go, search for the most

efficient road and organize the needed supply’s. In this mode you see the world from a bird eye view.

When you use a navigational system for traveling, you type the address you want to go to and when

you drive you see the world through the map of the system. Wayfinding as a mode “view treats the

agent as intimately immersed in and inextricable from contexts, and, as such his or her actions ema-


nate from within the constantly evolving circumstances. In every step you make there will be new op-

portunities. At that moment you there is the temporaly Dasein, which is capable of seeing possibility’s.

As a stated in the beginning of this chapter and make some remarks about strategy development by

Housing association, most of them are working on navigational systems: “Organizations are typically

populated by navigational routines that are regulative; they tend to look to specific and fixed in ways

that concentrate organizational activity within the narrowing confines of measured performance, com-

pliance, control and risk reduction”. There is no path finding.

Way finding as Chain noted is about the experience of living in an organizational territory and appre-

hending situations in terms of their potential rather than their position. And this a different kind of

strategy which holds the mind of Porter which states “strategy as the creation of an unique and valua-

ble position, involving a different set of activities. It requires you make trade-offs in competing – to

choose what not to do. And it involves creating “fit” among a company’s activities”

Indirect action.

I agree with King that “All the notions we connect with dwelling, such as privacy, security and inti-

macy, are concerned with the preservation and conservation: about keeping what we have and in the

manner we wish to keep it. Dwelling is thus not about transformation, but tranquillity : it is not change

we seek- to be better people – but stability – to be the type of people we choose to be.

It is prognosis we have to look for as a Housing association but only as it is needed and not in a direct

action. Chain gives the example of the new appointed director of the metro in New York. At that mo-

ment the metro was in a terrible state with high crime rates in the stations. His only policy was the

keep clean the stations. In the beginning no one believed it would worked. But at the end it was a suc-

ces: A strategy by indirect action of silent efficacy. You see some Housing association do it by force

tenants to track their gardens.

“…that somehow , paradoxically , it is these locally initiated spontaneous responses, the ad hoc mak-

ing dos that often prove more efficacious, and that the efficacy of such indirect forms of action”.

But still most of the organisations go for direct action, go for the building approach, which presuppose

“ widely pervasive commitment to the belief that the best approach to adopt in dealing with affairs of

the world is to confront, overcome and subjugate the external world to conform to our will, control

and eventual mastery”

Blandness.

We are not at the end of making a suitable strategy. Most of the housing association put a lot of energy

and money in making them self-present in the public sphere and by their tenant. Most homepages are

well designed and are capable of organizing and automate a lot of workflow. It is a kind of paradoxal-

ly way of relate to the tenant. The aim is to let the tenant know you care about his home and at the

same time by this technology the tenant as Heidegger puts it make him for the organisation a stock-

piled present at hand thing.


“Despite the proliferation of call centres and internet-based services, housing is not a transactional

business. Our tenants are often with us for life, and it pays us to get to know each otherwise” , is a re-

mark made by Kate Davies is chief executive of Notting Hill Housing.

Blandness makes a different turn. It is a strategy with a minimum on strategy and a maximum on

openness and contextuality. It is as if housing associations are going back in time and watch the work

of Octavia Hill and read her letters. Chain says about blandness

“To understand and recover the bland is to abandon positions, to withdraw from standard preference,

to shy away from once fervidly held commitments, and instead nurture a curiosity for everything in

whose meanderings our actions and thought eschew both infatuation and indifference the temptation

of hanging on to whatever present itself as fixed and so distinct from the flow of life; Heidegger

speaks of learning to dwell amid things whilst still confined by the pragmatic and theoretical frame of

our ordering technology.”

Blandness is an essential part of the work of Octavia Hill, her approach had a number of distinctive

qualitiesxxxvi

. Octavia worked strongly within the local context and tried to “in the redevelopment and

enhancement of existing properties. And by weekly visiting and rent collecting: she had a real concern

collecting the rent, not only to pay her rent but also as a learning opportunity for changing their live

(phronesis) By collecting rent she could give that help what was really needed.

I don’t give the example of Octavia Hill to give a renaissance of her thought in today housing practice.

But it is an important part of the history of social housing and an example of a strategy-less approach.

Being –There (Dasein) as a housing association, means in Heideggers sense, making your existence in

the dwelling senseworld of those how need support in dwelling. Every tenant will gives from his or

her perspective meaning on the associations appearance and vice versa. And both get not a complete

picture of each other.

Concluding remarks.

Peter Kings (p172) refrases that “he has no particular wish to change anything. I merely seek to open

up a new series of questions….dwelling allows us to mitigate change, to fight against it and hold it

off”. In order to let the tenant dwell, housing associations have the plight to learn to dwell. One of the

most efficacious way of learning is engaging with their tenant with a strategy without design. Hous-

sing associations should be more the ever embedded in the local community and bring building and

dwelling together.

Thinking in the threefold with Build Dwelling should not be making a point at the horizon and plan-

ning a rational way to get to that point. Thinking is meditative and in a mode of pure listening to what

perhaps the godhead gives as sign.

But in the line of King housing association should open up new questions about the meaning of dwell-

ing. I want to end this more or less philosophical paper which thinking is need and I paraphrase Hasse

that when housing associations question the meaningfulness of dwelling a new possible way of dwell-

ing will appear. In pursuing the question- the thinking of social housing should be staying as fragwur-

diges, questionable- housing association will encounter a multitude of sensefields and will never be

arrive

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i In the Netherlands there is a financial support WSW forOur view of "almost certain" likelihood that the State of

the Netherlands and

the Dutch municipalities would provide timely and sufficient extraordinary

support in times of stress ii Mandeville in Thomas Sedlacek; The economy of good and evil (p.224)

iii On his philosophical shoulders. His whereabouts in Nazi Germany and his brown tagebucher are known to me.

And I distance myself from that thinking and those activities. It gives a double feeling on working with the

thoughts of Heidegger. iv In German it is called a Sinnfeld, in his article Gabriel translated is with of field of senses.

v This is a field logic who deals with the formal relationships between whole and their parts p265.


vi I follow literary here Markus his arguments.

vii First Markus defines objecterea’s (Gegenstandbereiche), but objectarea’s cannot contain next to countable

objects non countable iridescent phenomena viii

Zie p48 ix

Sowohl die Metaphysik als auch die Konstruktivismus scheitern dagegen an einer unbegründeten Vereinfa-

chung der Wirklichkeit, indem sie die Wirklichkeit entweder einseitig als die Welt ohne Zuschauer oder ebenso

einseitig als die Welt der Zuschauer verstehen p 15) x Be careful if you want to read the essay.

xi Heidegger makes a differentiation betwee chronic and karionic time uitwerken

xii There are no comma’s between the words to make the words be treated at the same level.

xiii Graham Hartman, explaining Heidegger, p28

xiv Peter King private dwelling

xv “HEIDEGGER AND CHRISTIANITY” Thomas Sheehan Stanford University,

http://religiousstudies.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2-2010-HEIDEGGER-CHRISTIANITY.pdf xvi

Heidegger has a more pagan/mystical divinity in mind in the line of meester Eckart

xvii

“Die Nichtexistenz der Welt lӧst eine Sinnexplosion aus“ p254 xviii

http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2014/may/30/housing-associations-killing-social-housing-

affordable-rent (underscore by me) xix

(Bauman) xx

(Bos et al.) xxi

(Guignon) xxii

We are free to the extent that we find ourselves enmeshed in contexts of shared meaningfulness that make it

possible for us to grasp what situations demand from us and which options make sense. Heidegger's language of

"loyalty" and "authority

xxiii

Zie Markus p xxiv

P26 Bachelard the poetics of space xxv

Heidegger Being and Time; Heidegger claims in Being and Time that every question has three parts: (1) that

which is asked about, (2) that which is interrogated, (3) and that which is to be found out by the asking. xxvi

Heidegger doesnt acknowledge that there are fundamental ethical principles. Ethos is the most you can get,

see also Zygmunt Bauman, Postmoderne Ethiek. And Gabriel Marcus on principles. xxvii

Zie Kant xxviii

See Umfriedung xxix

Christian Norberg Schulz; On the Way with figurative Archtecture; places, volume 4 , nr 1 xxx

Harries p… xxxi

„das Wohnen möge in das Fragwürdige gelangen und etwas Denkwürdiges bleiben“

xxxii

Zie Markus p xxxiii

In Saxon and Prussia. xxxiv

Life is out of balance, a film Godfrey Reggio 1982 xxxv

See also the story of DOROTHY GAUTREAUX, in waiting for Gautreaux xxxvi

http://infed.org/mobi/octavia-hill-housing-and-social-reform/

http://www.theguardian.com/housing-network/2014/may/30/housing-associations-killing-social-housing-affordable-rent

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Being a housing association

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