During the pandemic, I focused on researching solutions to the housing crisis. I had been particularly interested in Open Systems Lab’s work and their genius approach to solving problems in the built environment.

With support from a €3,000 Professional Development Award from the Irish Arts Council, I undertook a three-month part-time collaborative research residency with Open Systems Lab. Our work centred on Fairhold: a form of ownership that allows people to own a home as a place to live rather than a financial asset - by redesigning the legal contract of how a person holds rights (and responsibility) to a place. We defined a broad research scope, gathering case studies from across history and around the world, including a deep dive into Ireland’s pre-colonial legal system, Brehon Law.

From this collaboration, the Atlas of Ownership emerged as a project in its own right, and I feel - this thing took on a life of its own, aided by the insight, skills, and work provided by Sarah - in software development, Alastair - inventor, CEO and graphic designer, Helen - operations & human resources and Cleo - data analyst and Dr of Neuro-Urbanism. I led the research.

The Atlas became a digital, open library of land-ownership models, unbundled and classified to reveal patterns across societies, eras, and legal traditions.

Its aim is to make known, almost, universal principles of how humans relate to land — grounded in social wellbeing, ecological balance, and economic fairness - and to communicate them in plain english, so that you don’t need to hire a consultant to understand laws relating to the land.

It is currently used as a research tool in MArch Diploma Unit 9 at the Architectural Association in London, which focuses on the possibility of universal free housing.

While collaborating with the Open Systems Lab team (collectively based from our home offices in the west of Ireland - Bundoran, east London, and Los Angeles), we uncovered recurring universal concepts of home and conflicts that a monopolising land system was playing out in our neighbourhoods, on an everyday basis but also through desktop research, gathering case studies from different countries. Our research showed how modern private property systems — often upheld through the threat of eviction — remain extractive, exploitative, and tied to colonial legacies still embedded in nation-state governance - but also being powerful tools for the transfer of wealth and freedom to the individual. We discovered that indigenous societies had a lot of similar patterns to contemporary co-housing examples.

Invited by Nicholas Simcik Arese, myself and Ollie Zhang from Open Systems Lab presented the Atlas of Ownership & Fairhold at an academic event at the department of Architecture in Cambridge University February 2023.‍ The two-day research event, organised by PEAK Urban, brought together theorists and practitioners from around the globe around the topic of Experimental Properties.

https://atlasofownership.org/