lablog

LONDON AFFORDABLE HOUSING CHALLENGE
Re.Co.De:
Redesigning Contemporary Dwelling

PROJECT AUTHORS*

Massimo Bricocoli
Gennaro Postiglione
Stefania Sabatinelli
Nicola Sirugo

JURY COMMENTARY
Coliving and cohabitation serve to increase density by reorganizing the layouts of existing buildings for more efficient spaces, and to include shared amenities for larger groups of inhabitants. The designer of this project, quoting STAR strategies + Architecture, states: “the real revolution in housing is indoors.” The proposal rearranges the interior layout of a typical london housing block, as the designer claims, to mirror the growing variety of job positions and of family arrangements. The ways in which people organize their urban lives to afford housing “is to be more closely investigated, as this brings along significant changes in terms of housing cultures, patterns of solidarity/community, and socio-spatial organization.” The design offers a selection of flexible interior organizational components – including the bathroom core, the equipped wall fitted with shelving and insulation, and movable partitions. The layout accounts for a mixture of user profiles, from the single adult student, to the elderly couple, to the divorced parent with child. The jury wonders, in what other building typologies can this project be applied?

*The work is a result of and ongoing design studio-based research (at Politecnico di Milano) over the last three years; colleagues involved: Massimo Bricocoli (Urban and Housing Policy), Giovanni Hänninen (Ethno-photography); Rodrigo Pemjean (Architectural Representation); Gennaro Postiglione (Architecture of Interiors) and Stefania Sabatinelli (Urban Sociology).

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Three Lectures at Malmö University together with the POLIMI-Research group “Constellations. Spaces of Public Action”: