Independent School for the City is happy to announce their collaboration with Stad in de Maak (City in the Making) for a new studio exploring new ways of creating affordable housing and workspaces through community-led development.
Taking place on 19, 20, 26 and 27 June 2026, the studio will focus on a real case and investigate how overlooked buildings can become places for living, working and collective support.
For more than a decade, City in the Making has activated temporary sites across Rotterdam where people can gather, live, work and build community. Created through inventive reuse and collective effort, these spaces offer a rare sense of belonging. But their temporary nature also means they are always under pressure to disappear.
Now the organisation is working towards its first permanent site. During the studio, we will explore an abandoned warehouse in the Koningin Wilhelminahaven in Vlaardingen and ask how it could become what Adam Greenfield calls a “Lifehouse”: a place rooted in its neighbourhood that provides space for solidarity, shared resources and mutual care.
Together we will develop ideas for how such a place could be designed, organised and financed, imagining a modest yet ambitious space where workshops, workspaces, kitchens and perhaps even homes can coexist.
This studio is aimed at anyone interested in community building, alternative property models and the future of collective space. Join us in June to explore how an overlooked building could become the foundation for a new kind of urban commons.
