Questions on Dwelling is a publication platform and research collective, focused on modes of urban settlement and habitation. It is managed by Zoë Ritts, with collaborators in Berlin and Toronto.

Our texts can be found at independent bookstores in Berlin, Vienna, Montreal, Toronto, and Los Angeles.

Reprint 01

The ‘Reprints’ series seek to recirculate un- or under-documented writings on the city or space, typically those authored by non-architects. We acquire permission where possible, and publish under
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) copyright.

Reprint 01:
“Bloods/Crips Proposal for L.A.’s Face-lift,” originally written in 1992. The booklet includes an editorial essay for context. Both the proposal and essay are inclued in German translation.

Special thanks to the Southern California Library. Series design by Rita Davis. 24/02/2024

Discourse 02

“Who Is Urban Nature For?” 
Discourse, research, film series
with Sophie Marthe and Question Arch

The discourse series combined reasearch and public (outdoor) film screenings to examine informal or illegalized dwelling in urban green– and infrastructural spaces. Our focus, and site, was Görlitzer Park, Berlin. We screened films  including: “draußen” (Tama Tobias Macht & Johanna Sunder Plassman, Germany 2018), “Die Eisbäderin” (Alla Churikova, Germany 2003), and “Dark Days” (Marc Singer, USA 2000) and held our interviews with landscape architects and urbanists at Question Arch. Our research led us to question the policy, planning, and legal frameworks which determine allowable uses of public green spaces. We were interested in practices and patterns of dwelling outdoors, and in the cultures and politics of such practices. Additionally, this project follows the urban ecology lineage that interrogates dichotomies like ‘nature/culture,’ ‘natural/unnatural,’ and legal vs. illegal uses of urban nature. 

This event and much of our research was documented by Irvandy Syafruddin.   06/12/2021

Research 03

Karl-Marx-Str. 95
Ongoing research

In 2015, Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey proposed the use of former department store on Karl-Marx-Straße for emergency housing to accommodate the wave of asylum seekers entering Germany that year. The Catholic help organization Malteser Hilfsdienst gGmbH operated the temporary accommodation, housing 800 people—including families—between 2015 and 2018. 

The 2015 conversion to accommodation center was troubled, met by some neighbourhood residents with concern. According to the transcript of a town hall meeting documented in a Kiez und Kneipe Neukölln blog post, “Raphael Duetemeyer from "Malteser Hilfsdienst" asked for a little patience. It is not possible to teach people the usual manners in public spaces in this country overnight. This requires some effort,” writes the article’s author. 

The building, originally constructed in the late 1970s and later renovated in 1990, has over 9,200 qm over five floors. In 2020 it was purchased by Ryotaro Chikushi, who founded the Japanese–German cultural exchange group NION, focused on “the Berlin music, art, tech to urban development scene.” Slated to open in 2021, it remains under construction at the time of writing, privately financed by Chikushi and seeking additional donation-based funding. NION, which refers to itself as a “community Kiez design project,” would use the building for “restaurants and individual retailers,” “a start up campus, an area for e-sports and a game center,” offices, companies, daycare, an event space, “gastronomy,” and “an area for neighborhood culture with a café.” (See their website)

During an initial renovation phase in 2021, we were able to enter the building and document artworks and drawings left behind by the refugees who lived there sometime during 2015–2018. We were moved by the beauty and intimacy of this mark-making act. It is our intention to find the authors of these drawings, and ask them about their work. This research is ongoing, and will be documented in a forthcoming publication.



05/12/2021

Discourse 01


“What It Takes to Make A Home” 
Research, film screening, discourse
with Sophie Marthe and feldfünf, Berlin 
Booklet transcript in EN and DE.

The documentary film “What It Takes to Make A Home” (2020, conceived by Giovanna Borasi of the CCA and directed by Daniel Schwartz) follows a conversation between two architects whose work addresses homelessness. Michael Maltzan in Los Angeles and Alexander Hagner in Vienna have both designed long-term housing, exploring and embodying various strategies for social integration, mental health, and inclusive architectural-urban schemes.

We screened the film in full and held a conversation at feldfünf Berlin with actors engaged in homelessness in Berlin. In that conversation, we tried to address the successes and failures of the film, architecture’s role and complicity in exacerbating the financialization of housing, the criminalization of urban space, and its entanglement with the privatization of the city. The transcript of that conversation was documented in a bilingual booklet, previewed here. 


22/10/2020