House of Annetta
2019–
House of Annetta is a community centre in Spitalfields focussed on land justice and housing rights.
The grade 2 listed house was inhabited in 1980 by architect Annetta Pedretti. Annetta used the space for her experimental way of learning and organising community resistance.
Her areas of interest and exploration were cybernetics and the study of self-regulating systems which she explored through beekeeping, publishing, art-making, political activism and day-to-day conversation. After her death in 2018, Annetta’s house was gifted by her family to Stiftung Edith Maryon, a foundation in Switzerland who appointed Assemble to develop a future for the semi-derelict building.
We initiated the project House of Annetta to develop a centre for research, arts and solidarity work towards transformative systems of change. Over the past years the house has been used by hundreds of different groups, individuals and networks for gathering, eating, talking, exhibiting, listening and making.
House of Annetta CIC was created to manage the building and programme events. Today Assemble and House of Annetta CIC are working to get the building ready for a longer term capital works programme.
House of Annetta aims to benefit individuals, groups, and organisations committed to spatial justice for all, especially those negatively impacted by systemic inequalities – for example by class and/or race.
This includes communities fighting for access to housing, or public space, those negatively affected by the financialisation of land and property; as well as organisers, artists, activists, researchers and educators creating life-affirming work.
The aim is to provide affordable access to space, resources, and platforms – for connection, building knowledge and taking action.