de Appel Periodical is a biannual online publication by de Appel’s team and invited contributors. It offers reflection and context around our programme and archive in the periods between exhibitions, bringing forward conversations, archival materials, interviews and outcomes of workshops or gatherings that are not always publicly visible. Unlike the regular newsletter, it moves more slowly: looking back, inward and sideways.
This second edition of the Periodical lands in your inbox right after the closing of Building a House Without Bricks, and extends some of the thematic threads that were present in the exhibition, taking ‘shared space’ as its point of departure. Rather than referring to one particular kind of space, making room describes an action: opening, sharing, shaping and sustaining the conditions in which people can spend time, live and act together. It can begin in a living room, kitchen or cooperative building, as well as in a café or another kind of third place. It can also begin in an act of trust, a decision to share responsibility or a collective refusal to leave.
Making room raises questions about who can enter, remain and participate, who makes decisions, and who performs the work needed to keep a shared space open and accessible. It also means attending to absence, displacement and what came before. Between host and guest, the ghost may appear: traces of those who lived, gathered or struggled there before.
Moving across domestic, communal and public spaces, the six contributions explore how ‘room’ is created, used, maintained, questioned and transformed. Space emerges not as something simply available, but as something continually shaped and reshaped. Gabriella Okoobo writes about the house as a space of gathering for othered and marginalised people; Eli Witteman visits architect Andrea Verdecchia at de Nieuwe Meent for a conversation around housing coops; Ilia Pellapaisiotou and Jan-Pieter ‘t Hart interview the ‘collective of collectives’ damdam about their two-year trajectory together; WORKNOT! share videos and writing from their archival research into the housing crisis and collective rent strikes; and Natascha van den Boom asked her friends and colleagues about their needs and desires inhabiting third places.
de Appel Periodical Working Group (Natascha van den Boom, Jan-Pieter ‘t Hart, Ka-Tjun Hau, Gabriella Okoobo, Ilia Palapaisiotou, Sophie Soobramanien, Clarisse Verbeek, Hannah Zeeman)
1. Photo by Harry Cock, Oostum, August 1996, published in Dorpslandschappen: Spanningsveld tussen traditie en vernieuwing deel 5, 2001
2. Here I stay, tracing, changing, photos by Roosje Verschoor, published in The City as a System: Metabolic Design for New Urban Forms & Functions, 2023
3. Community Activism linoleum stamp, source unknown
4. Woningcoöperaties sketch, courtesy of Time to Access architects
5. Umoja Zwarte Vrouwenkrant, 1985, published by Stichting Zwarte Vrouwen & Racisme, Arnhem
6. Documentation of the exhibition Building a House Without Bricks, 2026, de Appel, photo: Sander van Wettum
7. Model of de Nieuwe Meent, a housing cooperative organised around the principles of commoning, 2018-2025, courtesy of Time to Access architects
8. Illustration by damdam collective for Building a House Without Bricks, 2026, de Appel
9. Photo by Harry Cock, Mensingeweer, April 1999, published in Dorpslandschappen: Spanningsveld tussen traditie en vernieuwing deel 3, 1998
10. Sedlec Manor, architectural models by Veronika Frčková (Studio Hradečný-Hradečná), published in FA CTU 2021–2022 diploma projects, Faculty of Architecture, Czech Technical University (FA CTU), Prague
11. Book cover operatie woningcoöperatie: uit de wooncrisis door gemeenschappelijk bezit, Arie Lengkeek & Peter Kuenzli, 2022
12. Gardens and their Manual, architectural drawings by Matúš Berák (Studio Fingerová), published in FA CTU 2021–2022 diploma projects, Faculty of Architecture, Czech Technical University (FA CTU), Prague
13. Map of housing cooperatives in Amsterdam, July 2022, courtesy of Time to Access architects
14. Page scan from Building for the Next Generation, Marlies Rohmer, 2007
15. Documentation of the opening event of the exhibition Building a House without Bricks, 2026, de Appel, photo: Sophia Jiaqi Xu
16. Floorplan of The Kabyle House, published in The Berber House or the World Reversed, Pierre Bourdieu, 1970
17. Photo by Harry Cock, Emmen, August 1991, published in Dorpslandschappen: Spanningsveld tussen traditie en vernieuwing deel 1, 1997
18. Here I stay, tracing, changing, photos by Roosje Verschoor, published in The City as a System: Metabolic Design for New Urban Forms & Functions, 2023
19. We Are Here, Rapenburg 31-33, drawings by B. Carrot, 2018, published in Pak Mokum Terug!: Woonstrijd in een Krakende Stad, 2023
20. Documentation of the performance Through the Window by Repelsteeltje, published in Pak Mokum Terug!: Woonstrijd in een Krakende Stad, 2023
21. Documentation of the exhibition Building a House Without Bricks, 2026, de Appel, photo: Sander van Wettum
22. Drawing by Iswanto Hartono (ruangrupa collective)
23. Documentation of a card game, courtesy of Time to Access architects
de Appel Periodical is supported by Stichting DOEN.
