I am happy about my new room, as it is in a shared apartment, and I have been craving sharing space with other people. A few years ago, when I lived in Porto, I had a small studio all for myself; but my vocabulary and inner world had no words for a certain restlessness: not much was happening after work; my house was empty most of the time, and I did not immediately realize I was lacking structures in between. By chance, I found some thoughts on the city, and attended a few meetings and events about cohabitation and housing; slowly but surely I was building an understanding of something.

There was a film screening at one of the events; it depicted how co-ownership of a house took place in Germany, where it was a normal practice for different families (of different structures) to be living under the same roof. This is, too, common practice in Denmark, across generations. At the end, there was a small sharing of impressions and a discussion about the film. I don't remember whether I shared my experience of what essentially was urban loneliness, but I realized this was indeed a problem when an older woman told us about her house, which under the circumstances of a divorce and the departure of her children to university, was nothing but a big and empty building that echoed a fundamental loneliness. How could she, then, repurpose the home as a space for community? "Estou cansada de viver sozinha", she struggled to say — "I am tired of living alone" .