Architecture of Appropriation

Book excerpt: The squatting movement in the Netherlands has played a major role in the design of both the urban fabric and domestic interior, and continues to offer alternatives to the dominant, market-oriented housing policies. This book acknowledges squatting as an architectural practice, analysing six locations through drawings, interviews, and archival material to create a record of past and current struggles, spaces, and oral histories, thereby forming the basis for a new governmental acquisition policy. It brings together the expertise of the squatting movement with architects, archivists, scholars, and lawyers in order to discuss approaches to what are often criminalized spatial practices.