Studio C.A.R.E. offers radical experiences in interior. They push users out of their comfort zone to discover the everyday differently and explore other possibilities within spatial environments. They trigger real needs instead of decorating space, and demand co-creation instead of making genius-designs. For the second time they are calling for researchers and makers to reside for 5 weeks at their Rotterdam City House Laboratory in the centre of Rotterdam.

Rotterdam City House Lab is a location hosted by Stad in de Maak. Since 2013, Stad in de Maak has taken on the redevelopment of vacant properties in Rotterdam. Offering affordable housing and working spaces in collective ownership and management, they reconsider the act of commoning.
Connected to that, they are researching and realising possibilities of sharing, using and transforming temporarily available real estate. Within this frame they are experimenting with everything from spatial conceptualisation, function, modularity and resource efficiency to beauty and the marketable conditions of the experiment’s results.
With this open call they invite professional artists, designers, architects or researchers, as well as thinkers and makers from any kind of discipline to join the line of experimentation and rethink living in the city while staying in their space. The organisers are absent during the 5 week period of the residency and are fully providing their living and working space for experimental spatial, conceptual and structural changes by the resident(s) – eventuating in a research paper or a prototype or built installation. This result is presented in a public manner at the end of the stay.
They encourage practitioners that have a young family to apply as the house’s infrastructure is currently set up for a family of two adults and three young children.
Please note: During your five-week stay you are asked to take care of two cats in the house and a couple of indoor and outdoor plants, so your stay throughout the whole time is mandatory. If you’re not a cat or plant person at all, this might not be the right call for you.

Research and makers topics: Urban living has an urgent need to develop and experiment with new models for living but there is a shrinking availability for such research to take place. The organisers are opening up their home and studio space to offer the time and space for practitioners to explore a broad range of questions surrounding living and sharing in the city. They are particularly interested in the physical testing and implementation of ideas relating to the current lines of inquiry at the Rotterdam City Lab:

• How can architectural and interior interventions and systems rethink how we use/share shrinking space in the centre of cities?
• How can the common/ shared use of space in the centre of cities become integral part of a shared economy?
• How can (partial) self sufficiency in regards to energy, food and water usage become a role-model for private housing?
• How can low-tech and local solutions to energy become a role-model for private housing?
• What role can an archive have in enabling the ongoing development of knowledge on the subject?