Ricerc@Sapienza

Factories of Shared Living. Designing the Renewal of Housing.

The epochal change the world is undergoing raises questions about urban housing models. This situation also offers a chance to reimagine the question of lofts.
The essence of this model was less about temporary final configurations and more about the desire to investigate dynamic processes for the renewal of decommissioned industrial properties and new forms of participation.
Similarly, the challenge today is to invert the individualist-consumerist approach to housing, founded more on separation than on inclusion.
Analysing the theme of “living in a factory,” the text looks at such examples as the Coopérative d’habitation Station n° 1 in Montreal, the project for Le Chais in Bordeaux, the Torpedo Hall Apartments in Copenhagen, the citadel of social housing in the former Le Blan spinning mills in Lille, the transformation of the Titano ceramics factory in San Marino, the Savonnerie Heymans social housing complex in Brussels, the Passage du Sucre lofts in Barcelona and Lots Road in London. The exploration continues with the Bamboo Micro Housing Proposal presented at the Hong Kong Architecture Biennale in 2014, the ZAC urban project for the Brun cookie factory in Saint-Martin-d’Hères, the Mill Junction Project in Johannesburg, the Can Planell and Kanaal Wijnegem and the recently completed refurbishment of the Fabra i Coats textile factory in Barcelona.
These case studies help us look beyond experimentation to imagine the reconstruction not only of buildings, but also of our very idea of collective dwelling.