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main issue, today, instead, the necessary interventions on the building existing stock for
its management, maintenance and reuse, make necessary to globally rethink the
concept of "low cost", from the mere “construction cost” to the “general cost”.
The cost as the sum of construction cost, running cost and necessary expenses to
ensure the quality of buildings throughout their life cycle (Manfron 2005) and also the
social cost, resulting from the failing match of the housing supply on the market and the
demands of the new demographic structure. The reduction of this “general cost” in public
housing is, therefore, the core concept: to achieve this goal, the buildings must be
designed to meet the needs of adaptability over time of both space and facilities, giving
the right answer to the demand expressed by the current user.
While the final result of giving a real answer to the housing demand expressed by the
population belonging to that "grey area" of the society, the analysis of the current
demographic structure is the fundamental starting point for understanding the typological
needs outlined by new and different ways of living.
Two are the main points deriving from analysis and data aggregation of various
statistical and demographic surveys, useful for the “low cost housing” theme:
o
the elusive contemporary household structure and the resulting distance from the
family “type” that architects consider while designing;
o
the increasing contraction of the living space according to the parallel reduction of
the purchasing power.
Flexibility and changeability are, therefore, the keywords when facing with the
unpredictable in designing and building public housing, if examined together the
statistical and sociological considerations on contemporary changes in the household
structure with the aspects related to the permanence over time of a building and its life
cycle. As already noted by W. Ascher at the end of the 80’s about possible residential
patterns in relation to the demands of flexibility, “a building has a longer life than other
products, often much more than the lives of its occupants. In the field of habitat, the
problems posed by the increasing diversity are even more important since in most
European countries over 80% of the buildings in 2000 already exist and what we build
now should last until 2030-2050” (Ascher 2001). The average life span of a building is, in
fact, about 100 years and designers must face the problem of shaping a space that will
stay over the next century as the “theatre of life” for its future users.
Flexibility became a theme in western architecture when architects embraced mass
housing on the onset of the 20st century. It was the issue surrounding the “minimum
dwelling” in the 20’s and 30’s with the aim of making the most efficient use of space:
foldaway beds, sliding doors and walls enabled houses to have different arrangements
for day and night use. Le Corbusier’s
plan libre
and the
support
concept of the
Foundation for Architectural Research (SAR) are key examples of the concept of open
and transformable living space. The 60’s and 70’s brought renewed interest in flexibility,
when the housing mass production was the main topic of european housing policies:
many studies have addressed the flexibility in terms of movable partitions and
changeable internal layout, together with the growing interest in the issues of users’
participation in the design process.
Much has, thus, been said and done around the concept of flexibility and many
proposals have been developed, some of them only theoretical, others tried and then
abandoned, others borrowed from different types of buildings, though not always directly
