In 2020, the OECD estimated that circa 38 million buildings in Europe were empty, exposing underlying governance weaknesses for adapting and reusing empty buildings. This needs to be put into perspective with circa 700,000 homeless youths with different experiences as a result of their ethnicity, identity, gender, histories of relations and work, who live temporarily in emergency, insecure or inadequate accommodations with friends, family or alone with no or limited access to welfare-related services each night in Europe. An obvious societal paradox, therefore, exists between the high availability of empty buildings and youth homelessness, calling for a more inclusive and cohesive social-dwelling model.

This research project aims to critically compare European successful contemporary architectural types-buildings, their morphologies, programmes of activities, design processes, experiences, ownership structures, and governance, offering novel socially inclusive collective dwelling-work-training models for homeless youths through the use of empty buildings.

Involving on-site archival research, post- occupancy, semi-structured qualitative interview, and co-design methods, the research project intends to conceive a theoretical framework on ‘ReYouth Types’ and to implement ‘ReYouth Types toolkit’, a new set of design principles. Thus, the research will provide European educators, urban and architectural designers, local authorities and civil society with a research and design instrument to increase awareness of, while reducing homeless youths’ social exclusion through the adaptive reuse of empty buildings.