Today, the world’s prisons are home to circa 11.5 million people globally, an increase of more than 27% from 2000. Post-incarceration is a major challenge that reflects and contributes to the broader systemic issues within the criminal justice system, expressed by high recidivism rates. This interdisciplinary project proposes to reframe what spatial assemblies, edifices and policies are necessary on the path from prison, addressing the reentry process using housing as an infrastructure of care, incorporating an abolitionist epistemology. HOUSINGFREEDOM aims to: — Develop an innovative conceptualisation for studying housing in the context of post-incarceration, by conducting a far-reaching study of reentry processes. This approach is designed to overcome limitations in global scholarship on the nexus between postincarceration life and housing insecurity. — Map and study how can the narratives of the formerly incarcerated people and their housing struggle facing reentry inform practical interventions, shaping more just urban landscapes, under a ‘abolition by design’ approach, also offering incisive policy analysis to informs policy reform. — Provide a solid conceptual, methodological, and empirical foundation for carcerality studies across a vast range of disciplines, through a participatory approach. Methodologically, HOUSINGFREEDOM offers innovative design-based spatial and visual analysis strategies to reimagine spatial justice and decent housing for those who leave incarceration, along mapping and multimodal ethnography. A research-by-design approach to humanize (not criminalize) by design will engage a Community of Practice with those affected by carcerality, centred in Portugal, Belgium and Norway. Radical and ambitious, HOUSINGFREEDOM bridges the gap between these seemingly distinct fields, carcerality and housing instability, by shedding light on the cyclical nature of poverty, crime, and social exclusion.

The ever-increasing challenge of affordable and adequate provision of housing in Europe calls for collective actions and approaches from different perspectives. Being a social sector, housing requires special attention on the aspects of participation, social cohesion, interaction, and integration in its physical and functional manifestation of space. However, these aspects are ignored since housing is largely driven by its transformation as a commodity. Thereby, lack of co-creation and inclusiveness of civil society in the whole design, planning, and delivery process along with the private and public sector or municipalities involved remains one of the major challenges. In this direction, this project is envisioned to support the transition of the status-quo of housing towards more participatory and inclusive governance, development, and implementation through developing a citizen engagement model.

Training activities with a view of creating the Network of Local Authorities for Equality.

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As clearly seen in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, marked by the motto 'stay at home’, housing precarity showed, once again, persistent inequalities. Yet, the pandemic also revealed the importance of care: taking care and being taken care of, marked 2020, and the interdependency experienced by all suggests that ideas about care are also particularly relevant to the design of built environments. As expressed in the findings of the research project “How to stay home? Immediate interventions to fight COVID-19 in precarious neighbourhoods in Lisbon Metropolitan Area”, coordinated by LAGES [LagesJorge20], it is urgent to address how Architecture, as a discipline, can rethink and integrate the idea of care of/in the built environment, contributing to the construction of better and urgent answers to the current housing precarity. The current proposal follows this line. Care(4)Housing explores four dimensions on care through design. The first [SPATIAL] is rooted on the idea that we need to CARE FOR SPACE. The second [SOCIAL], follows the awareness that we need to CARE FOR PEOPLE. The third dimension, [TECHNICAL], it’s strongly related to BUILDING WITH CARE, consonant on how we, as a collective, care for the planet [FitzKrasny19]. The last one, [POLITICAL] defines CARE AS A TOOL. From the standpoint of an unfulfilled fundamental right, to the opportunity framed by the post-pandemic recovery plan for Portugal, planning to end housing precarity by 2026, this is the moment to discuss housing for all, within the academy and beyond.

The main objectives of the Cascais Ageing project were to develop a study, a strategic framework, and an action plan focused on ageing, old age, and social policies in the municipality of Cascais. The process involved broad participation from experts, practitioners, and citizens—even amid the challenging context of the pandemic. Grounded in action research and co-construction as core methodological approaches, the project was also informed by the principles of critical gerontology. It adopted concepts that reject the notion of ageing and old age as merely a burden to be carried by the "active" segment of society. Instead, the project emphasizes the importance of recognizing the diversity of ageing experiences and advocates for public policies that promote new paradigms—ones that integrate the challenges of sustainable local economic development while fostering inclusion and caring relationships.

‘How to stay home? Immediate interventions to fight COVID-19 in precarious neighbourhoods in Lisbon Metropolitan Area’, was funded by a special line — GENDER RESEARCH 4 COVID19 —created exclusively to address the impacts of the pandemic regarding gender inequalities. The maxim 'stay at home', based on confinement, social distance and compliance with the hygiene conditions, is difficult to guarantee in precarious neighborhoods. The proposal was built upon the participation of women in a program of rapid interventions in space and daily habits, aimed at implementing immediate measures to minimize infection rates in conditions of housing precarity.