BY: TYLER FYFE

While glossy advertisements on home decorating magazines might tell you different, home isn’t defined by space, it’s defined by the people who inhabit it. Photographer, Corinna Kern found a community of eclectics living on the fringes of tradition—inside boarded-up warehouses, foreclosed restaurants, and empty workshops. For A Place Called Home, Kern spent months living with people who had chosen to make use of abandoned spaces in London rather than letting them simply decay in industrial districts. They are called squatters, and they thought that money that otherwise would have gone to rent could be put to better use. 

“The Castle” is a former five-story office block in central London. More than 100 squatters live there with their dogs year round. They also use the building to house some of the best underground raves in London.

With the average monthly rent in London hitting £1,500 earlier this year, many young tenants are finding more unconventional living arrangements.

Normally squatting is stigmatized as drug addicts and homeless people living their lives in the shadow of society.

But many squatters are there by choice. Rather than letting their youth wither at jobs they hate for places they can’t afford, they choose to make use of what was just sitting there anyway.

Some squats like Blackfriars have no electricity or running water, and residents live a completely stripped back lifestyle.

But on the other side of the city stands The Garden Centre, built inside an old greenhouse. Residents have surrounded themselves with plant life and rustic furniture.

With limited privacy—sometimes curtains are used to section off rooms— residents are forced to interact with one another.

The lifestyle draws scores of people who see themselves as valuing experience over things and their ethos has created strong community bonds.

Each community Kern visited had a completely different vibe—some more concerned with sustainability, others with music and art.

But after months of embedding, Kern realized something that might be harder to see from the outside.

Maybe London’s squatters shouldn’t be dismissed as economic parasites. Maybe they’re just communities of people drawn to the concept of resourcefulness and a lifestyle of friendship and simplicity.

Sources: featureshoot.com,  lensculture.com