Seminar: The Architecture of Real Estate

Fall Semester 2022

Thank You for a Beautiful Scam

by Arturas Certovas

Lecturer: Dr. Marija Maric

Balancing between fiction and reality, this work deals with the physicality of a digital world while specifically reflecting the tensions in the real estate market in Luxembourg. The project features a couple of months of conversations and connections with real estate scammers while trying to find an affordable space to rent. In a context of Luxembourg’s housing crisis, every affordable room or apartment is associated with a scam. A student room for a rent price of 505 euros is chosen as a space that embodies the state of liminality. The spatial installation work in the sixth room at 410 Flat in the 12 Avenue Du Swing house also marks the room’s farewell.

The Madwoman in the Attic. Where did she go?

by Kristina Shatokhina

Lecturer: Dr. Marija Maric

The topic is centred around the history of women’s relationship with property ownership/real estate in the Western world context. Drawing from the history of literature, the project—taking the format of a zine—is divided into 4 chronological chapters. The contents altogether can be seen as a route, an outline for a journey, with each title referring to a particular space:

1. The Witch's House—exploring how the medieval Witchcraft trials evolved around females in charge of property
2. The Madwoman in the Attic—illustrating how economical and social aspects of space in the 19th century shaped the Madwoman archetype
3. A Room of Her Own—following the suffragettes and the 20th-century liberation of women
4. Where is She Now?—the place women hold in 21st-century economy and real estate market and attempting to define a modern-day female archetype shaped by them

Each stage of a described evolution is supported by extracts from literature/media of the time, offering the reader an opportunity to apply a feminist reading to fiction.