Beata Hemer

In my PhD project, I look into the political and material implications of everyday maintenance practices in Danish nonprofit housing, with a particular focus on the late modernist housing stock.

Over the past two decades, the Danish nonprofit housing sector has undergone a series of political and organisational reforms. My research explores how these changes have influenced maintenance management and everyday maintenance practices, focusing on both the material conditions of housing estates and the social arrangements through which maintenance decisions are made, including the tenant democratic system.

Within this system, maintenance decisions are shaped through ongoing negotiations over needs, responsibilities, and value. These negotiations influence not only what is maintained and what is postponed, but also what kinds of places, communities, and futures that are prioritised within housing areas.

The project builds on approaches that understand housing and architecture not as finished objects, but as environments that are continually sustained and reshaped through social and material relations. Maintenance is therefore approached as a critical spatial practice through which built environments are reproduced and transformed over time.

Drawing on housing studies, repair and maintenance studies, feminist and care theory, theories of the social production and reproduction of space, and critical perspectives on neoliberalization, the project examines how everyday practices of maintenance participate in the making and remaking of housing environments. In doing so, it aims to contribute to ongoing discussions about the role of maintenance in shaping housing, everyday life, and urban futures.