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Housing as Social Infrastructure
BEATRIZ RAMO

IN CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL OBRIST
01.12.2026, 18:00 – HS7 Schütte-Lihotzky

Michael Obrist [feld 72] in conversation with Beatriz Ramo [STAR strategies + architecture] about “Housing as Social Infrastructure".**

A paradox governs housing today: as households become more diverse, apartments become increasingly standardised. Family separations and recompositions, shared living, changing work patterns and ageing have transformed domestic life. Housing, meanwhile, follows an entirely different logic, shaped by markets, regulations and construction economics. Homes reflect these constraints more than the lives of their inhabitants.
Drawing on The Interior of the Metropolis, Beatriz Ramo presents the principles developed to reverse this logic, and their materialisation in START-Ivry, 288 dwellings in Greater Paris. The built project demonstrates that adaptability requires neither extra floor area, higher budgets nor technological systems.
From versatile layouts to apartments designed to be divided into independent homes, the lecture explores housing as social infrastructure: able to support changing lives over time rather than forcing inhabitants to contort their lives to fit fixed spaces.

BEATRIZ RAMO
Beatriz Ramo is a Spanish architect, urban designer and founder of STAR strategies + architecture in Rotterdam. A recognised voice in collective housing, her research and built work challenge the rigidity of standardised housing, developing spatial organisations that accommodate diverse households and changing patterns of living.
With STAR, she has led projects across different scales and programmes, with a particular commitment to collective housing, which she considers one of the most profound and consequential fields of architectural practice. Her work approaches housing as social infrastructure, focusing on adaptability, long-term use and spatial efficiency.
Her work includes housing research such as The Interior of the Metropolis and projects including START-Ivry, 288 versatile and affordable dwellings in Greater Paris; Co-Residence, developed within the Atelier International du Grand Paris for the French government; and The Cabanon, an experimental micro-apartment in Rotterdam.
Ramo is managing-contributing editor of MONU—Magazine on Urbanism and regularly lectures and writes about architecture and housing.
Her work has received numerous international distinctions, including the 2024 ARVHA Women Architects Prize for Original Work. In 2026, she was a finalist for International Female Architect of the Year at the Austrian anotHERVIEWture Award. Her projects and articles have appeared in international publications including The New York Times, The Architectural Review, AA Files and ARCH+.

www.instagram.com/star_strategies_architecture
www.linkedin.com/in/beatrizramo
www.monu-magazine.com

 

www.wohnbau.tuwien.ac.at/wohngespraeche