Housing Crisis and Regenerative Architecture in Pécs

Text: Tibor Zoltán Dányi

The housing crisis is a global problem with serious consequences for social cohesion, economic stability, and environmental sustainability. In Pécs, it is primarily the lack of affordable social housing that leaves more and more people in a hopeless situation. In my article, I am presenting how the architecture programme at the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology of the University of Pécs strives to implement the Copenhagen Lessons within the framework of a socially sensitive educational programme that focuses on affordable housing while respecting the city’s built heritage. The programme titled Lakni Kell (We Must Live Somewehere), organized by the Solidarity Architecture Research Group at the PTE MIK Institute of Architecture, seeks environmentally, economically and socially sustainable approaches to the complicated and urgent housing needs that affect our region. The aim of this project is to develop an adaptable, flexible and sustainable architectural methodology. In addition to examining the possibility of rehabilitating the city’s significant mining real estate stock for affordable housing as an experimental project, it also aims to set an example for communities with similar industrial heritage and housing challenges. Solidarity architecture is an approach that places the most disadvantaged communities at the focus of design and construction.