Between Oikos and Heritage

The studio addresses our need for physically situated living-together, framing our enquiry through the idea of Oikos -  a Greek word that can mean the family or household; the family’s property or simply, the house. It can also denote larger social entities such as the community, the region, the nation, and so on. It is the root of both the ‘economy’ and ‘ecology’.

Addressing Oikos in both its societal and spatial senses we go beyond narrowly human concerns to embrace and accommodate other-than-human beings – the wider ecology. Each of the projects outlined here delineates a ‘community’ of common endeavour and reimagines a situated ‘house’ for them - a house fit for the current global age.

To complicate the endeavour, we have cited our investigations in World Heritage sites around the UK. Most are located in Bath – a Heritage tourism hot spot that groans under a weight of visitors almost equal to that of Venice. But we also have sites in Durham, Edinburgh, Saltaire, and Belfast. The last of these is chosen for its intangible musical heritage rather than the qualities of its historic built fabric.  Each site offers particular challenges related to the city’s economy and its often ambivalent and variously vexed relationships with tourists – so much courted, so easily resented and occasionally quite obviously damaging.

How then can we build oikos in the embodied space of these sensitive Heritage-rich cities that furthers equitable and ecological living together?

Studio tutors: Dr Neil Burford and Dr Juliet Odgers