E8_WS22-23_SAME BUT DIFFERENT / CO-LIVING STRUCTURES

>Focus

The E8 design course aims to work on two issues closely related to the role of architecture today.

Firstly, we propose to reflect on and explore contemporary ways of living and develop an architectural proposal understood as an infrastructure for different ways of living collectively.

Secondly, and in parallel and indissolubly, we will work from material and constructive strategies that respond to criteria of simplicity, flexibility and sustainability.

To this end, we will develop a collective housing project to be built in wood and which will be located in the new urban development of the port of Offenbach am Main.

During the course we will address the definitions of the functional programme, the insertion in the site, the definition of spaces, forms and volumes, as well as their materiality, structure and construction system in detail 1/10.

>Statement

If until the end of the last century or the beginning of this one, the vast majority of collective housing was conceived to solve the housing needs of "typical" families (husband and wife with two or three children), most of them workers; nowadays, the models of living and cohabitation no longer respond to the needs of a typical family in a given country or region. The inhabitants of contemporary dwellings are people of different ages, origin and social function, who live and also work - alone or grouped in different ways - and use home spaces in a very different way to how we did just 20 or 25 years ago.

In addition, the time we live in one place or another is becoming shorter and shorter. People are moving, changing cities, jobs and even families more frequently. Rarely does a person or family remain in the same dwelling for a lifetime; and even less often does a dwelling continue to be inhabited by the children of the previous family.

How then do we design spaces for that diversity, and how do we design for their transformation and adaptability?

On the other hand, given the temporal, economic and ecological effort of any construction, how do we design for flexible and adaptive durability? How do we do so in order to reduce the impact of our actions on the environmental balance?

In this sense, we propose to design with forms, dispositions and materials that demand and consume as little energy as possible. In particular, we propose a timber construction that, together with its richness and spatial possibilities, is adaptable and reversible.