Can cooperative housing be seen as a commons, in isolation from state and market forces? If so, how do we reconcile the active roles of institutions and developers at the various stages of Zurich's cooperative history? In comparing the long-established cooperatives, which historically catered for nuclear families, with the recent, ideologically active cooperatives, which embrace alternative forms of social and multi-generational organisation, this paper hypotheses an original understanding of Zurich's housing cooperative as a hybrid commons.

Irina Davidovici (she/her) is the Director of the gta Archive and led the gta Doctoral Programme from 2019 to 2021. Her research straddles the history of recent Swiss architecture and housing studies, with a focus on urban estates, cooperatives, and collective living.