Housing as Product

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A house is a product of a complex process. It's not just a machine for living — its form is shaped by politics, regulations, and market mechanisms. Can we better understand our housing system by analysing typical Warsaw apartments built in the same city but within different socio-economic contexts?

Housing has recently become one of the most pressing topics in public debate. There is no doubt that we are currently facing an affordability crisis in all major Polish cities, affecting both rental and sale prices.

The exhibition Housing as Product does not present a catalog of solutions to this crisis — instead, it focuses on revealing its systemic conditions. The exhibition doesn’t focus on the difficulty of finding a roof over one’s head, but also about what kind of roof that is — whether it meets our needs and whether it offers a good place to live.

The curators examined typical Warsaw apartments built under different economic systems, comparing their size and layout, showing that we shouldn’t focus only on the price of new housing, but also on its quality.

The living space affects our life choices, well-being, and health — regardless of whether we’ve spent all our savings to buy it or we’re renting. Yet the construction process often overlooks a fundamental fact: that the final product is not just a new investment — it will be someone’s home.