Give the ground to the people! Housing explorations on the ground floor in Quartiere San Paolo, Bari.

Purpose The article reflects upon the local reality of social housing in Bari, focusing on Quartiere San Paolo (Schingaro, 2016; Barbanente, 2019) as applied research by design, discussing and proposing “unconventional affordable housing” (Briata, Postiglione and Wolfgring, 2022) on the ground floor, occupying the vacant ground space among the pilotis, under the apartments of the upper floors. This is the assignment for the students of Architectural Design Studio 2, in the second year of the bachelor’s in architecture in the Politecnico di Milano. Design/methodology/approach Quartiere San Paolo is one of many social housing estates in Bari built on top of columns (pilotis) thereby creating a problematic leftover space that residents have started to squat and occupy illegally. This raises interesting questions for research: In times of housing crisis (Bricocoli and Peverini, 2023) what sense does it make to keep this space empty, unused and inevitably degraded? What new housing uses can be imagined and designed for theses spaces? Are there specific users or special uses that could take good advantage of dwelling at ground level, activating the ground floor interface (Zoller, 2014)? Considering an architectural theory of the ground floor (Truby, 2014), we’ll discuss what can be done to redefine this gap (Wolfrum, 2014) and in which ways the space in between (Bates, 2014) can be treated, considering social interactions in the threshold (Janson, 2014) between house and street (Fiedler, 2014). International case studies from Tokyo, JP, Copenhagen, DK, Zurich, CH, Paris, FR, Vienna, AT, Berlin, DE, Amsterdam NL will be discussed in terms of design, policies, planning tools and economic forces as valuable inputs to the student projects. Findings The expected outcomes from the Architectural Design Studio, will be the students’ ideas and design solutions that address the challenge of inhabiting the ground floor, and can contribute with new insights for the existing problems, eventually inspiring new policies for the future. Their different design approaches to the research questions will be analysed, discussed and illustrated in the article as outputs of the research by design methodology. Originality/value Involving architecture students from the second year of the bachelor in a PRIN research project can provide the students with a first valuable contact with academic research within the international UAH! Design Network (Austria, Cyprus, Italy, Netherlands and Portugal). The contact with the harsh social reality of the place will require reflection and innovative design responses beyond the usual academic design assignments. The possibility of a final presentation to the mayor of Bari, local entities and residents, at the municipality, can promote a public discussion of ideas for the future development of the neighbourhood.