RE-HOME

RE-HOME addresses a central paradox of Europe’s housing crisis: while the need for affordable and adequate housing continues to grow, millions of homes and buildings remain vacant or underused.

The project explores how reusing and adapting existing buildings can contribute to more affordable, sustainable and inclusive forms of housing, while reducing the need for new land and the embodied carbon associated with construction.

RE-HOME brings together four municipalities and their local consortia in Chalandri (Greece), Mechelen (Belgium), La Rochelle (France) and Hrastnik (Slovenia) to co-design place-based strategies for transforming existing buildings and spaces. These strategies will be grounded in the principles of sufficiency and adaptability, as well as the values of the New European Bauhaus.

In Chalandri, the project will focus on the adaptive reuse of refugee heritage housing, exploring how existing spaces can be given new life and respond to contemporary housing needs. The other pilot cities will explore different approaches, including home-sharing and co-living, the division of large underused privately owned homes into smaller housing units to meet the housing needs of more people, densification combined with the design of biodiversity-friendly gardens, and the reuse of vacant municipal buildings to provide housing for groups experiencing systemic vulnerabilities.

Through participatory processes, analysis of local needs and the existing building stock, design and creative storytelling practices, RE-HOME will support municipalities and local actors in identifying and unlocking the potential of vacant and underused buildings and spaces. The project will also introduce housing micro-experiments in 10 additional European cities, based on the methodology developed through the pilot areas. In parallel, it will provide training and support for local actors and develop a methodology and tool for the reuse and transformation of vacant and underused buildings and spaces.

The project aims to identify practices that can be adapted and applied across different spatial and social contexts, contributing to more inclusive and sustainable cities and a fairer approach to housing.

RE-HOME kicks off in Mechelen

RE-HOME officially kicked off with a meeting in Mechelen, Belgium, held on 8–9 September 2026. The meeting marked the beginning of the consortium’s joint work and provided an opportunity to discuss the project’s objectives, pilot activities and next steps.

During the meeting, partners explored how different cities and local contexts understand and approach concepts such as vacancy, underuse, sufficiency and adaptability. A key discussion focused on how these concepts are not defined or measured in the same way across different local contexts. Different criteria, data, legal frameworks and local conditions shape how cities identify and understand vacant and underused buildings and spaces and, in turn, how their reuse potential can be explored.

URBANA leads Work Package 2: Mapping and Diagnostics, which lays the knowledge foundation for the subsequent phases of the project by combining the mapping of vacant and underused buildings and spaces with an exploration of local needs, lived experiences and community perspectives. Through engagement with local actors, participatory mapping and the combination of quantitative and qualitative data, WP2 will contribute to identifying spatial and social opportunities for reuse across the four pilot cities.

The kick-off also laid the foundations for the work ahead, with partners sharing knowledge, aligning approaches and preparing the first steps of the project.