Disegno astratto di condomini

The essence of collective living

Living together and sharing: this is the essence of collective living. Man has always shared his resources and the need to live together since the beginning of the social model which created the first communities of the stone man in the caves. The evolution of the human species has therefore brought with it in its development and in the courses and recurrences of history the development of living models, each time modulated by the historical, social, cultural and economic context that gravitated around the community.

At this moment I do not take the time to mention the various experiments of sharing living that we can find in human history through the history of architecture. In fact there would be too many to refer to and linked to the geographical and temporal differentiations of the communities that inhabit the world. They are absolutely asynchronously from each other. However, they are linked by the evolutionary process but at the same time by continuity, reciprocity and subsidiarity.

The architect, and before him/her, the figures chosen by the community to wear the role of creator of spaces, has always played a fundamental role in the experimentation and design of the shared space and its changing shape.

Disegno astratto della crosta terrestre che dopo l’apocalisse si coprirà di nuovo di verde

The shared space for the architect has various scales, starting from the infrastructural choices of how to connect the communities, passing from the urban planning that defines the ground as an element of connection and life, down to the architectural one where the entrance door to the building changes the concept of shared space but does not abandon it until the door of the individual housing units, and then repeat it again within them.

Dividing and connecting the public and private spaces are the elements in which the architects expresses all their ability to conceive the living space of man and to move the collectivity of life more or less on one side.

If up to now we have been able to generate more or less collective living models, creating interesting and happy but also bankruptcy and sad experiences like most of the suburbs, it becomes essential to consider collective living for the success of new models of sustainable development of cities and territories.

New soil or recovery and regeneration?

The established concept of land use, which I prefer to call non-waste, and the need to regenerate the existing building heritage create a combination that will ultimately reduce the living space square meter/man by concentrating in the same space that we are used to consider as a number of people and major activities, hence the definitive need to think of a new generation of shared living: the condominium of the future.

Disegno astratto della ricostruzione delle cinture verdi intorno alle città per respingere il deserto che si è creato dopo aver sfruttato il mondo

The stringent concept of the sharing economy for sustainable development has already led our communities to share services first, then mobility, then things and now is also the time for construction and especially living in order to improve living conditions and to make them impact as little as possible in terms of environment and resources.

Once again everything moves according to a disrespectful use of the forces in our past that make a virtue of necessity that of changing our way of life, also passing through our homes: an economic, cultural and social phenomenon now under everyone’s eyes . It is time to rediscover the many models to research, experiment and respond to the requests of a young, but extremely demanding client, who has made the sharing economy the basis of aggregative development between people.

Living in the future after what?

Another theme, therefore, the one of collective living, to which it is necessary to add “of the future”, with which the Architect will have to deal with in order to maintain the unquestionably recognized role in the history of creator of space, in all its exceptions.

Thinking and developing sustainable living models will be the request of young and future generations; clients who will go beyond the concept of the current parcelling of land and private property, in favor of a new model of life that respects the planet and aims to slow down the irreversible process triggered by climate change.

Disegno astratto delle città che diventeranno fortezze galleggiantiquando il livello delle acque causato dallo scioglimento dei ghiacciai sarà salito da coprire tutto il terreno

Climate change and the pandemic must be considered as a war event, as an exceptional event that sweeps away the consolidated certainties of living and our ways of life, as if to prefigure a new post-apocalyptic era in scenarios perhaps even unimaginable and that they leave space for great visions and hypotheses.

 

(text taken from the magazine Largo Duomo n.3)