A ROOF OVER THE HEAD Housing solutions for homeless people in Ghent

This project derives from my Erasmus experience during the last year of university in Belgium. The Erasmus programme EU gave me the opportunity to spend time and be in touch with a different reality from the one I was used to: Belgium and in particular the city of Ghent. In this city, I spent the first semester in KU Leuven university of architecture and I worked in an Atelier where I met Jan Baes, the architect of the studio AE Architecten with whom I did this work. I had the opportunity to work for a competition: design units for homeless people in the north part of Ghent city. The works of my thesis aim to be an effort to study the situation of homeless people and how to find a possible integration through the architecture. To start learning who decided to be an homeless people, where they usually live and how the organisations work with them I decide to explain these questions on the first part of this work. The first part “homelessness” explains the work of the European scenario together with the “European Federation of National Organisations working with the Homeless” (Feantsa) where I was able to find what I needed and to understand how the European scenario surrounding us is going in particular the Belgium situation. Even if there are various definitions of homelessnes there isn’t a single one that is able to provide a precise and accurate meaning. This work shows how the phenomenon of homelessness is still a debate across Europe. The second part concerned the studies to define an enrire view of the complex of the project. The concept of a house was analysed to find a common definition to explain the idea of ‘a roof over the head’. A house is defined as the home of our memory and childhood, the fundamental pillar of our identity, the place from which we left but also the place where we should be able to return. For homeless people, this concept, is more important than others. They need a safe place to be but not only in a physical way but also in a mental way: it should be a place where they can find themself, a point of security and also a part of them where they can be free to live. For these reasons the project includes different aspects: the important of privacy for each units, the quality of living throught the light and air but also a common and green space to stay with the other people. The goal of my work is to find a solution through the architecture to combine the problem of homeless people in a little reality as the city of Ghent.