Take 0 is about your own motivation and your first approach to the format »Urban Types: Of houses and people«. In a first step, we are asking you to look at your own house and housing biography; as we go further in the process we will be concerned with studying and undertaking house and housing biographies of others. Proceed in an iterative (repetitive) way. Collect and go through your material several times and interpret it from different perspectives and at different times of your biography.
Ask yourself in the first step: What does living in houses mean to you? How do you define this notion? Where and when does housing take place? How have you lived, how do you live? Where have you dwelled? How and where do you want to live? Which situations occur to you spontaneously when you think about your own living situation? What memories do you have of your housing? Collect material (thoughts, memories, notes, narratives, stories, photographies, ...) either of a housing situation in your childhood (past), your current housing situation (present) or a projection of a possible or desired housing situation (future).
Outline in your descriptions (Geertz 1983; Spittler 2011) both the built structures and the people surrounding them. Note the relations between the people and create a first overview. Then go back to your collected material from your own living situation in a second step and try to make it more precise: Do you notice anything particular, something that repeats itself, something different, …? What do you find interesting? Which aspects come up again and again? Where and how is that visible? Try to articulate these aspects and to translate them into one or several questions. Make a note of these. In a third step, examine your collected and analysed material: What is central in your descriptions? What is important to you? Which aspects are essential? Consider and examine what and how you describe and narrate the specific situations. Think about which aspects you publish and which aspects are too personal for you to share with the class/ the public. Then revise your complete material accordingly.
Jot down the situation using text and visuals. Describe one situation with two sentences or up to 500 words (or more) and choose one meaningful image (Pink 2013). This image can be a photograph, a picture of another context that represents the situation or a collage, a drawing or a sketch that you made and which shows one or several aspects or details of your living at home that are important to you. Collate these materials on an A4 portrait sheet.