Hull House revisited. The strange case of a co-housing experience in an Italian “middle class” mid-town (Padova, 1949-2014)

The main purpose of this ethnographic research is to highlight, through a case study of "co-habita�on", that gender based prac�ces of housing can help to improve people's lives by giving value to the places and to neighborhood rela�ons, leading to significant economic savings without renounce to privacy nor to individuality. The research describes in deep the case and the common prac�ces implemented by the inhabitants of a small street in a midtown of the North East Italy star�ng more than sixty years ago and s�ll going on today. The story takes place at a crossroad in a semicentral district of the town. The peculiarity of the case is that involves “middle class” people living in a group of “middle class” houses experimen�ng prac�ces developed in the very different context (American Utopist and communitarian Socialism) in a completely different historical context ( the second wave industrializa�on of the XIX Century). Thirteen families in the past, no more than twenty people today - found themselves by chance living one next to the other in the post war ruined suburbia. Very peculiar is the shape of the houses, something that certainly contributed to the development of shared daily life prac�ces: incredibly small, built to be models for a new minimal life-style, inspired by Le Corbusier's minimum standards and mixed with a reinterpreta�on of the American “socialis�c-utopist” way of conceiving “common living”. The main and most curious feature of the houses is that, following the Addams' idea of the strengthening of neighborhood's rela�onships through the sharing of women's skills and their domes�c experience, they have been built without kitchen and without any fixed division of the internal spaces. These characteris�cs give the “village” a very par�cular and even curious shape, leading to a radical interpreta�on of the concept of neighborhood. The houses are, even today, in constant shape-shi�ing –inside and outside- allowing the private as well as the public space of living to adapt to situa�ons and to the prevailing necessi�es of the inhabitants (even house exchange is a common prac�ce). Ini�ally – in the fi�ies- following the needs of single mothers, mostly workers with young children, forced to juggle with difficulty balancing every day the rhythms of produc�on and the needs of reproduc�on, then – nowadays- following the old age and the difficul�es of dealing with new technologies and the urban development of the survived dwellers-mostly women, very old aged and alone. An adap�ve environment based on a set of shared prac- �ces that have proven to outweigh personal situa�ons and individual behaviors, feelings, schedules, even social class differences and showing a gender sensi�ve approach to “care”. Through the means and the techniques of the oral history and of the ethnographic research, this paper summarizes the result of an 18 month of par�cipant observa�on exploring the rela�onships and the links among the inhabitants and between them and their houses, inves�ga�ng how they organized in the past and are organizing now the prac�ces of their “common living”. The village case is an interes- �ng sample of gender sensi�ve housing in which the prac�ce of sharing has improved the quality of life of the women and men, raising the sensibility on the importance of sharing care du�es and with the characteris�c to maintain a high level of privacy and economic sustainability.