In 2024, the Canadian Centre for Architecture (CCA) launched an ambitious documentary and exhibition series called Groundwork, aimed at exploring new architectural practices in the face of the climate crisis. Among the featured projects, one stood out not because of a striking new structure, but because it wasn’t about building at all.
HouseEurope! isn’t a blueprint or a design—it’s a campaign. A campaign to change how European laws treat buildings, especially old ones. Instead of focusing on steel, concrete, and skylines, the people behind this project are advocating for legal reform that would make renovating existing buildings easier, more accessible, and more economically viable.
The film To Build Law, directed by Joshua Frank and produced by the CCA, documents this unique initiative. It doesn’t dwell on legal jargon. Instead, it tells a very human story of architects stepping outside their comfort zones to engage with policy, public dialogue, and activism. It opens in Berlin, where the first national organizing meeting of HouseEurope! took place. Rather than sketching floor plans, the participants debated storytelling, strategy, and civic engagement. Their goal? To spark a movement across Europe that treats architecture not just as physical construction, but as a social, political, and ecological process.
The heart of the initiative lies in the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), a mechanism that allows EU citizens to propose new laws to the European Commission. But there’s a catch: a proposal must gather at least one million verified signatures from citizens in at least seven different EU countries. That’s a tall order for a group of architects—but they’re taking it seriously.
What makes this campaign especially compelling is how it reframes renovation. As Enlai Hooi from Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects puts it in the film, "You're not just shifting money away from material extraction—you're putting it into intellectual and physical labor." In simpler terms, instead of paying for new cement and steel, you’re paying people—craftspeople, designers, local workers—to bring existing spaces back to life.
It’s not just theory. In Hamburg, for instance, a young architect named Kathrin Werner and her team managed to save a mid-century office building slated for demolition. After long negotiations with the city, they repurposed it into a youth center. Three years later, the building hosts weekend workshops, music events, and community programs. It didn’t need a complete redesign—just a new perspective on what architecture can be.
Architect Arno Brandlhuber, one of the thinkers behind the campaign, puts it succinctly in the documentary: “You can be successful without building a building. Maybe you’re architecting a shift instead.” That kind of thinking expands the very definition of what it means to practice architecture today.
Yet, getting the public on board with a legal proposal like this isn’t easy. The initiative’s organizers, Olaf Grawert and Alina Kolar, realized early on that most people don’t think of building codes or planning laws as things they can influence—let alone care about. So they turned to filmmaking, public lectures, and grassroots engagement. One of the most memorable scenes in the film shows volunteers in Paris setting up a makeshift voting box out of a champagne crate. Standing in the cold, they explain the project to curious passersby, hoping to earn each signature one conversation at a time.
It’s this very human, very personal energy that sets HouseEurope! apart. It’s not a top-down campaign led by officials in suits, but a loose network of architects, students, community leaders, and urban thinkers who believe the way we value buildings needs to change.
In January 2025, the European Commission officially registered the initiative, launching a one-year countdown to gather enough signatures. The goal is clear: shift European legislation away from favoring demolition and new development, and instead prioritize the reuse and renewal of existing buildings.
This effort taps into a deeper question facing cities worldwide: What do we lose when we treat buildings as disposable assets? As housing costs soar and the environmental toll of construction grows, many are starting to ask whether our current model—build fast, sell high, tear down—is sustainable.
To Build Law doesn’t offer easy answers. It ends not with a grand reveal or a glittering new building, but with a quiet moment: a table scattered with marked-up drafts, half-drunk coffee, and a projector ready for the next meeting. No fanfare, just a slow, persistent belief that architecture can change the world—one policy at a time.
Maybe we don’t need to build more. Maybe we just need to learn how to value what’s already here.