Time to Access is an Amsterdam-based platform devoted to the development of radical architecture. Together with an evolving team of architects, urban planners and activists, we create participative forms of housing, spatial design and social environments. Operating from within increasingly exclusionary urban fabrics, our aim is to make affordable housing accessible for all.
As architects and process managers we support groups and communities to imagine and build their future houses through a range of co-design and co-production activities . All our projects follow the principles of commoning, accessibility, sustainability and circularity. With our work we seek to establish new ways of designing and building which contribute to healing the environmental, economic and social crises of our cities.
We are Mira Nekova and Andrea Verdecchia, two architects with a solid background in the Dutch architectural scene. For over a decade, we worked at leading Dutch architectural firms designing, managing and overviewing the construction of a wide range of projects at different scales, in urban, suburban and rural settings. Throughout these different experiences we gained an in-depth knowledge of housing and local development processes, as well as having built a strong network of public stakeholders and technical advisors. At the same time, we felt the urge to change the speculative dynamics that regulate the housing market. We believe in a different type of architecture that is not driven by profit but by the principles of commoning, accessibility, and sustainability. We therefore started to look for allies in citizens’ initiatives, housing activists and other stakeholders who share our same vision.
In 2019 we founded Time to Access following our involvement with the wooncoöperatie de Nieuwe Meent in Amsterdam, our first project. Thanks to de Nieuwe Meent, where we are both co-founders and architects, we could put in practice our ideas of accessible, inclusive and sustainable housing, and carve a new path that is respectful of our ideals and ethics.
