Retrofitting extensive suburban and urbanized areas dominated by single-family houses is a critical yet often overlooked challenge in architectural and urban research. While these dispersed housing patterns are deeply rooted in European architectural traditions, urbanization processes, and cultural habits, today’s socio-economic landscape necessitates a fundamental reassessment of this vast housing stock. Key drivers of this transformation include demographic shifts, evolving housing preferences, social change, the environmental crisis, and the growing appeal of cities as hubs for work and productivity.

Imagining an alternative future for the single-family house requires significant creative effort, which can be fostered through design-based explorations. Such explorations must be grounded in concrete technical conditions and strategic planning considerations, including new ownership and management models, institutional actors, innovative production and material systems, and the characteristics of social groups capable of shaping new ways of living. Building on past and current research on this theme, the presentation aims to highlight potential future directions for interdisciplinary applied research.

Sharing data can help create value in science and business – but how can you share your data without losing control of it? Privacy and commercial confidentiality are important aspects of data sovereignty. 'Data trustees' as new intermediaries within the meaning of the EU's Data Governance Act offer new opportunities here.