No Space Like Home at the Swiss Habitat Conference, 12-13th February 2026, Lausanne

Phil Hubbard and Eleanor Wilkinson presented initial project findings at the Swiss Habitat Conference, Lausanne

The Swiss Habitat Conference is organised by social scientists, geographers and architects in Lausanne. Its core objective is to provide researchers with the opportunity to engage with colleagues convened under the broad umbrella of housing justice in Switzerland and beyond. 

We presented our work on small homes in a session on housing affordability, alongside papers from Robert di Capua and Yves Bonard from the City of Lausanne, who outlined their hopes to regenerate housing without encouraging gentrification whilst discouraging urban sprawl; Marco Peverini from Politecnino di Milan and Affordable Housing Observatory who spoke on different measures of housing affordability in the city, and Ismene Ehrler from Zurich University who work focuses on the question of how tenants and owners handle everyday responsibilities regarding maintenance, repair and care of the material and social environment.

There were good questions about housing minima, consumption corridors and the role of new housing models (like Co-living developments) and the research seemed to resonate with the mixed crowd of researchers, practitioners and advocates.