Forms for Collective Living: Artefacts for Block Disorder
In recent years, we have witnessed the decay of compact and dense urban areas across the world. This process began through the appropriation and transformation of residential central areas towards the service economy by real estate speculation, and has been accelerated through the widespread urban exodus that the Covid-19 pandemic has provoked.
This phenomenon compromises the liveability of our cities by reconfiguring the once-fundamental areas of social relation within which everyday life unfolds. The gridded area of Eixample in Barcelona epitomises this situation: each inherited block configuration functions as a collection of autonomous, unrelated lots, ready for private investment. The resulting development of these lots often takes place with no consideration for the potential interactions between residents and neighbours, and no provision for the minutiae of collective living.
Under these circumstances, EXP8 proposes to reinvent this existing city block by infiltrating or inserting strategic artefacts of disorder. These artefacts will act as catalysts for collective relations, while resignifying the block as the basic unit through which to facilitate social engagement at the city-scale. Addressing at least a third of the overall volume of the block, these interventions will introduce residential programmes for sectors of the population that cannot access housing or property, in contraposition to the pressing market forces in the area. We will consider supportive models such as co-operatives and social housing to boost affordable schemes and networks of mutual care among the block’s inhabitants.
Finally, the unit will investigate Mediterranean domestic cultures as essential for sustainable collective inhabitation. Outdoor living, transitional and in-between spaces and the rituals they generate will be considered in relation to environ-mental strategies on light and material. Research into local materials and traditional construction techniques will also be conducted within the regional environmental conditions, alongside an exploration of sustainable passive strategies to promote ventilation and the filtering, screening and modulation of light.
https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/academicprogrammes/experimental/8
