This project, winner of the prestigious Think-Space | Moral borders competition (ex-aequo) is a theoretical dystopia called

GRUNDRISSE
HOUSING SOLUTIONS FOR THE IMMATERIAL WORKER

For the post-Fordist multitude every qualitative difference between labor time and non-labor time falls short. (P.Virno)

In the post-industrial economy, multinational companies only own the brand and develop the image and philosophy behind the product. Manufacturing is entirely outsourced to partner companies and licenceholders that eventually sell the finished product to the main company at very low prices.

Bringing such a behaviour to its extremes, companies are able to outsource every aspect of their production to independent workers and make a larger marge of profit even on the immaterial aspects of work. From marketing to product design and developement, interior design and engineering, the companies do not need any longer to hire personnel but they rather have the tasks done by a vast mass of subjects working flexibly from home on specific projects.

For the immaterial worker the boundaries between life and work are getting completely faded, his work coinciding with his life. The worker’s entire life is now live labor, an “invisible and indivisible commodity”. (S.Lotringere). Flexible, skilled and able to communicate through email and smart phones, he is reachable around the clock by the companies and the clients he is working for. He is free of choosing his working time and how to accomplish the tasks, but must conform to the performance’s goals identified by the clients or by the companies. Even studying, reading or doing sport become elements connected to his production, since these experiences improve the “knowledge” which informs the immaterial work. (M.Marzano, P.Virno)

Neverending work becomes a moral obligation, a pre-determined path to self improvement as well as a self defense from the social exclusion by unemployment.

GRUNDRISSE is a basin of «immaterial labor», a network of individuals performing on call tasks, adapting their competences for specific projects, assuming their own responsibilities, facing the risks.

GRUNDRISSE is a service company that provides each worker a house where to live and work, rented for only one symbolic euro. Each unit is to be equipped with a technological system of control that keeps the worker in touch with his clients. Some services are integrated, like individual coaching, access to up-to-date technologies, meeting facilities, yoga training, leisure spaces etc., in order to avoid alienation, manage stress, improve the working performance.

GRUNDRISSE’s physical expression is a structure composed by different typologies of cells, all made up by one room, where inhabiting and working are completely merged. The houses are conceived to allow the possibility of working in connection to any other activity and in any possible space.

The combination of interior styles and furniture organization is infinite, providing to the inhabitant/worker the choice of a customized product that corresponds to his own lifestyle. The exterior image, homogeneously white and «pure», corresponds to the need of a minimalist clever design, well advertised and broadly desired, a conforming good of supposed elitism.

In opposition to the functionalist repetition of the cells in the industrial workers’ blocks, houses become here a fashionable individual product for the knowledge urban worker. The fragmentation of the units will prevent social solidarity among the workers while giving them the illusion of an autonomous house in the center of the city: an unfulfilled dream for many other inhabitants.

GRUNDRISSE is a mean of exploitation as well as of social control. It provides the illusion of preventing precarization, keeping the workers always busy for different companies.

The city of Paris is the location for the pilot project. With its ever growing sqm price, the city forces young -knowledge- workers to live in ever smaller units (studios), while renting a flat has become harder and harder for precarious individuals or couples, usually unable to provide stabile economic guarantees to the landlords. Providing a house to the flexible workers will be appealing for an ever growing segment of population.

Huge areas of the city, once connected to the main infrastructures (railroads and highways) were populated by industrial structures that today are being delocated outside of what has become part of the city center.

GRUNDRISSE will occupy these sectors of the city, providing a conversion from structures that hosted manual labor into a strip of land destined to the intellectual labor. The direct connection to the infrastructures encourages the worker to travel in many periods of the year, so that he can fast recover from stress-related problems and be even more disconnected from the urban tissue, both physically and socially.

The project chooses to preserve the context (built and natural) as much as possible, by weaving a delicate relationship with its various elements. At the same time it enhances the features of the site in terms of orientation, topography, identity and difference of open spaces, and their relationship with the access.

The location of the school in the southern part of the site allows for the opening of the main views on the surrounding rural landscape and for the access to natural light throughout the day.

The internal distribution is configured as a continuous excavation leading from the entrance to upper floors through the large central staircase. Expanded to become a true common area, this path becomes a rich sequence of ambiances. On each level, large windows fit different views on the external landscape.

The distribution is designed as a true collective space aimed at meeting and reading. Rich and varied spatially, this area allows a cinematic vision of the exterior on three sides. The school integrates the richness of the surrounding landscape, creating visual links with the territory, allowing a direct and constant relationship with the local context.

The open configuration of the common area and of the entrance hall on the ground floor, provides a visual and physical continuity between inside and outside. From the playground on the east it is in fact possible to watch the green space to the west and viceversa.

The topography of the site informs the design, with the goal of a minimum impact on the context: the building is built on two half-levels following the natural slope of the ground, while the roof underscores this relationship with the landscape.

Between classes and common areas, wooden walls include cabinets, lockers and niches. The latter, adapted to the size of children, are often associated with small libraries: close to home’s and more intimate atmosphere, these areas encourage children (individually or in groups) to read in places which are not traditionally supposed for.

The complex is related to the existing context on two main levels. The first is on the landscape scale: The building confronts the mountains at the borders of the city creating a feeling of inclusion within a panorama constantly above the horizon. The height variations reflect the existing skyline, while the excavations relate to the feeling / perception of constant inclusion in a higher context.

At the same time the plan takes into account and reinforces the local urban system, characterized by an alternation of empty and full spaces. The project gives the site a strong and recognizable structure to make the nature of outdoor spaces more clear and readable. Two different types of open spaces are generated by the building: the public ones dedicated to the city, and the courtyards (semi-open spaces), reserved to the students of the school.

Pedagogy of relationship

The building is designed to fully meet the functional program and to reach optimal performance, in terms of lighting, comfort and ventilation for classrooms and other areas. At the same time there is a variety of not specialized spaces intended to encourage meetings and exchanges between students of different classes and between students and teachers. We are convinced that training and knowledge transfer takes place largely through daily meetings in informal situations.

With this concept in mind, the whole building is designed as a series of environments, ranging from spaces dedicated to learning in the traditional sense, passing through more open areas where to meet and discuss, to the different types of open space where users can meet together and, finally, meet the city.

Flexibility and urban relations

The ground floor is conceived as a city street on which major spaces open (courtyards, lobby, outdoor spaces, squares), and where one can find the access to the collective functions.

The auditorium, the study rooms, the administration, the library, the refectory, the gym, all have their entry on this artery that develops itself as an extension of the entrance hall. Some of these functions, the study rooms in particular, can open completely on this pathway, making it a flexible and variable area that can get fragmented or completely opened as required. This section of the school corresponds in facade to alternated elements of transparent and translucent glass, allowing a dialogue and an ongoing relationship with the surrounding urban context.

Pathways and open spaces

A dual system of pathways characterizes the school; interior paths are extremely rational and allow direct access to any area. They coexist with a system of more "free" paths, which cross the outer courtyards and allow a totally different perception of the building spaces, between inside and outside. The design of open spaces then follows the logic of those last paths: it accompanies in a gentle manner the possible movements throughout the complex and opens in areas for meetings and relax.

The courtyards are characterized by green, that give to these areas the shape of a square-garden, working as recreational courtyard. The squares on the outside of the building have a more mineral nature and the design of floor covering guides the movements of the people to the entrance of the single areas on the ground floor.

The main concept behind the whole project is the desire to activate spots of potential relationships between the inhabitants of the building, the neighborhood and the users of the kindergarten, while avoiding conflicts among the different groups.

The idea is to take advantage of a mixed program and the presence of various generations to allow for the growth of a community, destined to be active, united and integrated to the urban context. With the latter, the project aims to build a deep relationship intended to evolve over time.

Volumes-uses-relationships

Different functions are comprised within the same building.

In this unit, each program is interpreted by a spatial configuration and volume coherent with its purpose. The ground floor, which accommodates the public services (kindergarten, medical office and multipurpose room) and the entrance to the apartments are identified by translucent white U-glass.

The three different volumes superimposed to the ground floor, introduce a smaller scale compared to a conventional residential building, while avoiding its possible alienating effects. It alludes to the image and to the meaning of a village in which the housing units are clearly identifiable and community relationships are easier to establish.

The volume hosting the vertical and horizontal distribution of the apartments (translucent like the ground floor) accommodates the common services for the apartments on each floor (laundry, reading room, small play area for children, etc..); it is an area for meetings among the inhabitants and a place to promote sharing and dialogue between tenants.

This space creates a semi-private transition between the intimacy of the apartments and the urban character of the multipurpose room and the courtyard outdoor.

Outdoor Spaces

The volumetric organization allows a complex and varied articulation of the open spaces, which work as real extensions of the interiors.

The square on Chemin de la Chavanne is intended to become a daily meeting place, an interface between the inter-generational center and the neighborhood, while creating a filter from the main road. The aim is to consolidate the presence of collective space, which is currently inadequate in the district.

The second open space described by the building, is the wide playground of the kindergarten.

A strict internal distribution on the ground floor meets the sober treatment of the outdoor spaces, where small plots of cultivable areas are alternated to mineral areas. Beyond a purely decorative function, they offer to residents, including elderly or disabled, the opportunity for both a leisure activity and work.

The project consists of semidetached houses with various surfaces, ranging from 50sqm to 120sqm, including different types: from 1 to 4 bedrooms or multipurpose and undetermined spaces.

The site lies in a relatively steep stripe of land, slanting from the Vuoreksen Puistokatu avenue (on the west) to the south-east natural environment; providing the future entrance to the Virolainen new urban development.

The plan configuration allows nature to flow through the houses: no clear boundaries are established between the block and the surrounding natural fields; pedestrian and bike paths are in permeable materials, the soil allowing the flows of rain water through it (percolation).

The whole neighborhood is thus conceived in continuity with the environmental area, the houses lying among the same conifers of the near forest.

The conceptual process starts from subdividing the programmatic surface into square units of 7,5m of length, thus defining a regular grid.

Three larger blocks (10m), which host peculiar neighborhood activities, are then inserted: they act as polarizing elements which produce a new equilibrium, determining the various arrangements of the single units.

Small groups of two, three or four units get associated to become different types of dwellings.

The peripheral walls of every house become conceptual and physical double skins, integrating two different levels of insulation: an inner skin (the house structural core), constituted by opaque Poroton® hollow bricks, providing a first level of thermal insulation through Perlite® infills; and an outer skin of translucent Polycarbonate containing Nanogel®, in order to get a complete insulation.

The definition of a peripheral livable double skin produces variations of temperatures and humidity within the domestic spaces: here the research for efficiency is taken as a tool for designing the interiors and the exterior spaces at the same time and for reshaping their logics and structures, improving their livability.

All the buildings are of high energetic efficiency while no special technology is added. The typologies themselves are rethought to reach a minimal thermal dispersion (passive houses) and optimizing the temperature in relation to the needs of the single spaces.

The distance between the inner and outer surfaces is large enough to host inhabitable areas. This space acts as a buffer zone: it thermally insulates the rooms inside from the cold and at the same time it creates unusual domestic ambiances within the house.

In-between the double skin one can find the elements of the house which require a lower level of warmth, like storage rooms and closets, staircases, corridors, or even a winter garden, an atelier, a mini gym or a space with no specific function (or whose function has to be invented by the inhabitants).

Here the double skin loses its original technical purpose to become a real tool for defining, adapting or generating space.

Staying outside, while in the house

The double skin is often enlarged to host winter gardens; those spaces give the possibility to enjoy «staying outside» even when the weather is cold, it rains or snows. The outside layer of the skin, made of translucent polycarbonate with high thermal performance, allows a great light diffusion while the soil inside lets plants grow. Big windows can be opened to let air flow through and direct light come in when wanted.

The winter gardens can be used as ateliers for artists / exhibitions places and can be opened to the public in different moments of the year, letting the sequence of the public open spaces change all the time.

The fragmentation of the plan and its multi directionality gives place to a continuous slightly hierarchized collective space which adapt its shape flowing through the neighborhood; it opens in small squares through pedestrian, bike paths and community gardens, always allowing to choose different directions from each point.

There is a constant interaction between the domestic space, the urban space and nature, terms that interfere one with the other through the whole project. Nature infiltrates the inner space through the winter gardens, while the outdoor squares get a domestic scale and the wall of the houses give urban values to the network of collective spaces.

This project takes part in the new interconnected system of open spaces designed for Philadelphia. The building itself becomes a continuous collective space made up by different areas hosting multiple functions indoor and outdoor.

Its presence acts as a device to enhance urban life in this area of the city.

The surface that covers the sports center take different geometrical characteristics, it bends, rises, becomes tilted from flat, it turns into steps, it becomes an accessible and inaccessible roof, generating a sequence of ever changing spaces.

The building is a continuum with the adjacent soil of the block.

The roof is a public square and a basketball field at the same time, the bar on two floors and dressing rooms are opened on it.

The interior spaces lead to the pools and gym areas.