Living Together and Apart: An Exercise in Minimal Dwelling and Maximal Living Part 2 Project 2019 Maham Tahir Birmingham City University | UK The home is increasingly becoming an asset itself. With fast growing urban density, living space is shrinking as we enter a new era in which most urban dwellers cannot afford to own property. The standard single-family house is not only no longer suited to the budget, but also the needs and lifestyles of the majority. Social rituals, the demands of work and contemporary lifestyles in general have changed; domestic architecture has not. It only remains to determine how shifts in social habits and the dissolution of the nuclear family affects the domestic sphere. Challenging the dynamics of private developer-led housing at Port Loop in Birmingham, this project explores the origins and the ideology of the modernist Existenzminimum and presents a speculative proposal for the contemporary ‘universal basic space’- a housing typology against individualisation and ownership.The project challenges the patriarchal nature of the household and ideas around property and debt, and questions the role of domestic space as ‘private’ sphere. What happens if the ‘home’ is no longer a commodity but a universal basic right that can be granted to anyone in the form of a universal basic room, regardless of class, gender and age. Maham Tahir Tutor(s) Robert Annable Michael Dring