Habiter l’Habitat

Towards an ecological urban lexicon

Abstract

The paper is focused on the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural paradigm of “habitat” - as anthropological and ecological interdependency between domestic space and its environment.

Since the mid 20th Century, our built environment has faced a long totalising-planetary urbanisation process, which urges us to review the old conventional urban-architectural categories we use to describe and understand our cities and countryside. In front of the urgency of a more inclusive understanding of our built environment, this paper sheds more light on the paradigm of Habitat as an interdisciplinary urban lexicon, as it gained momentum in post-war urban thinking and has influenced urban design ever since.

The paper holds that the post-war discussion on Habitat represented a unique moment in which interdisciplinary thinking on the built environment became central. The paper shows alliances and resonances between the post-war CIAM’s discourse on Habitat and other coeval sociological and philosophical studies to delineate a complex theoretical framework. Beyond the parameters and boundaries that have been considered and presumed conventionally within ordinary urban design and social science, the paper focuses on the complex interdisciplinary meanings, interpretations, and translations regarding the paradigm of post-war Habitat as a complex social and spatial notion which encompasses the human settlement as a whole.