Reinhabiting, the House, the Street and the City (original) (raw)
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Reinhabitating, the house, the street and the city
Cities in transformation. Research & Design, 2012
Reinhabiting, the house, the street and the city Introduction: Reinhabiting is a research project that considers existing buildings and public spaces in Spain as opportunities for a new approach to the way we inhabit them. The word involves inhabiting again, in an intensive simple manner, rethinking how spaces can be used-more than undertaking unnecessary alterations. The term "reinhabiting" was developed by Habitar, a research group of the Catalan Polytechnic University UPC, during the years 2010 and 2011, in the context of a R & D project which results where shown in 6 exhibits at Nuevos Ministerios Gallery of Madrid. The project had funding from the Ministry of Housing. The index of the exhibits was defined by 9 themes, episodes, which have become 9 small books. The contents of all exposures can be consulted on-line () and we encourage their observation parallel to the reading of this text. This article will be focused on the proposals that emerged during the preparation of project and will develop the theoretical framework and architectural context from which they arose.
The theme of inhabiting in high-density buildings has been widely investigated since the Mid-Twentieth century. Still, original researches are now opening new perspectives, creating a common ground in which urban planning and architecture increasingly intersect with studies based on participation, urban policies and spatial justice. The failure of some of the iconic Twentieth-century architectures rose a strong debate that often resulted in their demolition. This process was primarily dictated by market logic, by a change in the residents and, above all, by the lack of all the services needed to build a community. Some experimental alternatives to replacing neglect building complexes have emerged especially in France and Northern Europe. The paper presents a selection of residential projects by Lacaton & Vassal, Mikhail Riches and LAN (Local Architecture Network), which use architectural drawings to propose innovative solutions to local administrations, as well as to initiate planning processes involving resident communities.
The Reuse of Housing Buildings in Barcelona. The Versatility of Old Constructive Structures
12th International Conference on Structural Analysis of Historical Constructions, 2021
There are 1,463 buildings in Barcelona, from different times from the first century to the present day, that have changed their functions once or more times throughout their life. This paper analyses those cases in which changes in use relate to housing and it does it in two opposite ways: In one way, examining houses-mostly with building structures of bearing walls-that have endured functional modifications without losing its main attributes. In the opposite way around, studying buildings with other uses than housingmany of them built with isotropic structures or large structural spans-that have been converted into dwellings. On the other hand, and in both cases, the analysis addresses how the urban situation of the building conditions the use to which it will tend to be transformed.
Regenerating Barcelona: re-inhabiting the city and reusing its buildings
2016
This communication is about the capacity that historical architectures have for housing new activities which are distinct to the original ones, maintaining their structural char- acteristics; while at the same time allowing, thanks to the diversity of uses, a greater public ac- cessibility to these entities. Barcelona possesses a few paradigmatic examples that demonstrate the regenerative potential of these strategies: historical complexes converted into tree-lined pas- sageways, cloisters used as arched squares, the interior area of residential blocks transformed into parks or markets used as transit zones. The need to come upon the right selection of activi- ties that these old buildings currently in disuse have to accommodate, maximizing a more po- rous relationship with the city, are necessary tactics in order to keep them standing and at the same time regenerate the indispensable bonds between architecture and urban space, offering in this manner new spheres of social relations...
Arts, 2020
This article presents an analysis of a collective housing project designed by the architects Emilia Bisquert Santiago, Carmen González Lobo, Jose Miguel de Prada Poole and Ricardo Aroca in the Arturo Soria neighbourhood in Madrid in 1975. This project is noteworthy for its architects’ preference for designing flexible and adaptable spaces, both in the interior distribution of the homes spaces and in the common spaces of the building itself. Their main aim was to eliminate the rigid spatial segregation that was a dominant feature of Spanish housing estates promoted by the OSH (House Building Union) during the Franco Regime (1939–1975). To understand this idea, this research proposes a comparison between a Housing Estate promoted by the OSH in 1956 and the Arturo Soria building designed in 1975. The article explains and analyses the different architectural strategies that the architects proposed to achieve that flexibility and adaptability: a permanent structural ‘infrastructure,’ an ...
This call for papers concerns social housing, a rapidly changing and significant field for those who practice architecture, landscape architecture and spatial planning. Present throughout Europe at various levels, from 4% in Romania to 32% in the Netherlands, social housing heavily contributes to urban renewal. Through its material and non-material renovation, as well as the evolution of meanings, stakeholders and populations, new dynamics emerge that influence architectural, urban and landscape forms, modes of living and careers in spatial production. This volume seeks to identify and decode these dynamics through the following three axes.
(co-author, 2020) Inhabited Images: Drawing a New Life for Housing Complexes
EGE Revista de Expresión Gráfica en la Edificación, 2020
Colombo, Cristina F., and Viviana Saitto. “Inhabited images: Drawing a New Life for Housing Complexes”. EGE Revista de Expresión Gráfica en la Edificación 13: 64-77. ISSN: 2605-082X https://doi.org/10.4995/ege.2020.14614 https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/ege/issue/view/1023 The theme of inhabiting in high-density buildings has been widely investigated since the Mid-Twentieth Century. Still, original researches are now opening new perspectives, creating a common ground in which urban planning and architecture increasingly intersect with studies based on participation, urban policies and spatial justice. The failure of some of the iconic Twentieth-century architectures rose a strong debate that often resulted in their demolition. This process was primarily dictated by market logic, by a change in the residents and, above all, by the lack of all the services needed to build a community. Some experimental alternatives to replacing neglect building complexes have emerged especially in France and Northern Europe. The paper presents a selection of residential projects by Lacaton & Vassal, Mikhail Riches and LAN (Local Architecture Network), which use architectural drawings to propose innovative solutions to local administrations, as well as to initiate planning processes involving resident communities. Language: English
The word “nostalgia” is defined as 1: the state of being homesick and 2: a wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to or of some past period or irrecoverable condition. Responding to both definitions, the post-pandemic city in the twenty-first century could encompass nostalgia as a natural aftermath of our irrecoverable condition. Modernity has developed largely as a result of man-made rules and regulations associated with maintaining public health. Faced with a new urban reality of segregation and containment, the lesson of Casa Bloc (Barcelona, 1933) is how to employ confinement as a fragile interscalar balance of order between the interests that shape our cities. Designed by the GATCPAC—Group of Catalan Architects and Technicians for the Progress of Contemporary Architecture—led by Josep Lluís Sert in close collaboration with Le Corbusier, it was the first redent superblock (207 duplex dwellings) built in Europe, in the thirties. This mass social housing project addressed the root cause of the complex relationships between the individual and the collective by means of open inner courtyards with facilities, rue corridors to access the duplex, and the balcony as the threshold that returns virtually to the street, all in an old, successful ecosystem where public and private assist new operative models of social distancing, as the current pandemic has recently shown us in Barcelona. But its lesson dates further back: the utopian ideals of Charles Fourier’s Phalanstère, the cells of Carthusian monasteries or the systematic Roman castrum are all particular images that reoccur over time. From one crisis to another, today like a century ago, post-traumatic regression occurs, offering an escape from the anxiety of seeing no other future than an eternal, cyclical return.
Public housing as urban heritage: experience and research approach in Spain
Conservar Património, 2022
International conservation policies have incorporated the urban dimension of heritage, which considers the city as a historical continuum connected with the territory. However, the social housing complexes built in Europe throughout the second half of the 20th century lack legal entities and tools for their protection. Urban rehabilitation policies have substituted the initial demolition-replacement processes, by way of combining and coordinating protective measures. The rehabilitation of the Caño Roto Housing Estate (Madrid 1994-2004), as a precursor of a type of intervention widespread in Spain, is analysed with the aim of finding the actors, tools and decisions, so that the model can be optimised in future operations. The heritage dimension involves the development of the necessary means to make possible the conservation and functional updating of the buildings, as well as the development of new cultural, socioeconomic and environmental values, in order to add sustainability to the urban environment.