Sustainability



Sustainability



This is widly know but not always used correctly. The term has become a marketing strategy. Therefor the term needs some specifications in order to create an objective vision of which buildings are and which ones aren't sustainable.

We must create architecture which maintains the current level of prosperity without creating any harm for the next generations. This is quite a goal while our ecological footprint is way to heigh. This means creating architecture that is ecological, cares for the environment, rethinks the way of living, working, leisure and education. We must also see the importance of close and well organised public transport. In order to create a sustainable environment all these elementes must be taken in account.

Participation

Participation

Today there are many buildings that are just build by architects without actually knowing what the dwellers want or what they are looking for. The result are building who aren't used in the way they were designed or that don't completly satisfy the dwellers. Participation between the dwellers and the architect is needed.
There have been designers like Friedman and Di Carlo who where really interested in what the users want . There isn't just one right answer about how to participate with the dwellers. You can act on different scales and levels.
In todays architecture this fact is lost in mass housing complexes although in some country's, you can see some new projects in this direction rising up. This topic is becoming more and more important to create houses for todays dwellers.



Temporary Housing

In the last decades, mobility has become easier; students going abroad, employees of transnational companies moving from one country to another, postgraduate degrees all over the world. This changes demand a different housing, spaces that are not intended to last a whole life but also need to be designed.

Because of the global warming, natural dissasters happen more often, and temporary shelters and refuges become necessaries.

The cost of housing has been rising and with the economic problems, many people can't afford a house. It's part of the architects job to develope options for these homeless people, and economic, temporary housing could be a way to get there.

Flexibility

It is convenient that architects consider flexibility because architecture should respond to the dweller's needs, and a non-flexible building could satisfy these needs in a short term, but a design that allows changes during time, could adapt to the changes in the dweller's needs, doing its function in a long term. Physically, a building's life is longer than the use people does; making it flexible might extend this period of usage.

Flexible housing could be an answer to family cycles, expanding when the family grows and contracting when it reduces. Flexibility could be undestood not just as a matter of size but also as an adaptability characteristic, allowing a house to be suitable for the same people as they grow old.

Tk2_Description

Explain why the analyzed concept (e.g. flexibility, sustainability, ....) should be taken into account by today’s architects.

WHAT IS CONSIDERED TO BE A "HOUSE", TODAY?

What is considered to be a "house", today? To answer that question we would need a unique description to explain correctly what a house is, but it is evident that there is not just one definition that describes everything what each person considers a "house." What one person considers as a definition of a "house", may not be even close to what another person thinks a "house" is.
A universal "house" (with a definition suitable for all houses) would serve as a "house" for all people and all kinds of circumstances, but each dweller fit his/her "house" to his/her needs and utilities to make it their home, producing a great variety and many types considered as houses.
Therefore, the ensuing discussion topic would be, is there a universal adaptation for all the worlds serve to define what a "house" is? Or the solution would be to find a common term in all of them that serves to define what a "house" is today?

Presentation

RIGIDITY vs FLEXIBILITY

What is considered to be a “house”, today?

The architecture is the solution for the people’s needs. Nowadays, in this changing world, needs are constantly evolving at the same pace than the family structure. As Monique Eleb said, there are two routes to face this problem.

On one hand, thinking on a rigid house where people live while their needs fits with the characteristics of the house. Which means that when these needs change they got to move house to one that really fits their needs. On the other hand, conceiving a flexible and evolvable house that is adapted to the dwellers’ needs.

So, which route do architects have to take?

Presentation

In which ways can “technology” be a driving force for the transformation of housing, today?

Nowadays, the space is not only the real but the virtual nature. But what is the real space and what is the virtual space? How does it reflect in todays housing? According to P. Virilio „Architecture will “take place”, in the literal sense of the word, in both domains: in real space (the materiality of architecture) and virtual space (the transmission of electromagnetic signs). The real space of the house will have to take into account the real time of the transmission.“

It is important to realize how the virtual reality effetcs the house and how the developing technology and all the transformations that are still in the process influence or modify the housing in the future.

http://www.oikodomos.org/workspaces/app/webroot/files/deliveries/ssykorova11638_145_oikodomos-task3.pptx