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.




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