History
Originally an abandoned and squatted warehouse, a consortium of interested parties persuaded the University of Sydney and the New South Wales Office of Community Housing (OCH) to purchase the property and allow its redevelopment into housing as it is today. In return, Stucco must house only students of the University of Sydney, and is located at 197-207 Wilson St, Newtown, New South Wales. Its name is a contraction of "Student Co-operative" – there is no stucco in the building.
It is a 38 member Housing Co-operative made up of both undergraduate and post-graduate students of the University of Sydney. It itself is split into 8 units, which each share 2.5 bathrooms and a kitchen. The building contains an Art Gallery, A Communal hall, Workshop and Office. Stucco regularly holds events, art shows and parties that involve both the wider University of Sydney community, but also the Newtown Community as well. Stucco also allows community groups to utilise the space for their own events and has had the pleasure of hosting groups such as The Beautiful Minds Project and the Solidarity Choir. Every 6 months Stucco holds massive social events that act as fundraisers for issues and groups that are seen as in need by the co-operative members. In this way Stucco has been able to support political organisations such as Refugee Action Coalition, utilising it's recources and space in the community to benefit movements aimmed at making Australia a better place.
While, for example in the United States, housing co-operatives are a common type of student housing, in its context, STUCCO represents a radical experiment. It is indeed much more radical than most American student housing co-ops, in that no functions of the co-operative management are outsourced, all administration and decisions being made on a Consensus decision-making basis by residents. Two-thirds of the students must be within the income threshold to qualify for community housing. Stucco opened its doors in 1991.
Read more about this topic: Stucco Co-operative
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“History, as an entirety, could only exist in the eyes of an observer outside it and outside the world. History only exists, in the final analysis, for God.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)