A Female-Friendly Community in Husby

Abstract: Referring from Swedish collective housing, this project is a extension from Beate Holmbakk's project Four Houses, Four women to a community for five typical women. The aim is to study if architecture can be an intervention of diffrent women identities in households situation when it is combined with the urban context of a specific site.  The chosed site is in Husby, a district with an ongoing project of feminism urban planning to have a city planning from women's perspective. The Building Oslo 1 and Oslo 9 are included in the planning proposal to be renovated as a residential community. The main problem for women in Husby is that they feel unsafe in public places and the lack of gathering spots for them. So the main concept of this project is to create a commnuty that can be a safe place for women's gatherings. Redesigned public spaces with reorganized function in the ground floor level and characterized public kitchens in residential buildings are main parts of the whole project. It could be an experiment to study if households public places can be the medium to enable more visble activities of women, so as to improve the safety and discourse of women in a family or in the city.