Intervals habitats: aproximacions a l'espai de transició de l'habitatge col·lectiu (1990-2007)

Abstract

"Inhabited intervals" is a research about the transition space in collective housing, specifically about the intermediate space located on the way from home to the street. After the work done by Team 10 between the fifties and the seventies about the "threshold's concept" and the "in-between space" in order to improve the collective housing as well as our cities, it seems that the "inhabited intervals" have been forgotten. The big increase in house prices has reduced these spaces to the minimum and slowly they have become a marginal and peripheral element of current architectural projects, being transformed in the wasteland of our housing. This is how this research was born: as a claim for this space and as a research to discover what has remained of Team 10's legacy by analyzing how these spaces are nowadays projected and occupied. This thesis pretends to classify some locations - built between 1990 and 2007- by presenting them as a catalogue or open taxonomy that will allow us to figure out the rules that transform an undefined space into a lively and busy one. To do so, we have visited these spaces in order to discover how they were lived by their inhabitants. The work that we present today is the result of the research of the data and the experiences obtained during these trips. The main characters of this work are not the authors of the projects neither the projects but the inhabitants and their daily moments lived in the "in-between space". Therefore, this is a research on the daily architecture and its inhabitants, on how they occupy and live these intervals. At the same time, the thesis wants to check if these spaces are able to improve our homes and even our cities by expanding and mixing the living that takes place in the house and in the street. About the methodology, we have used ethnographers and anthropologists working systems applied to define a particular social behaviour. Therefore this thesis is the result of combining a field work - that uses a qualitative and phenomenological method based in the experience and observation of the space and the interviews to its inhabitants - with the data obtained from comparing the situations found (the real ones) with the ones projected on the paper (the desired ones). Therefore, the reader will find an introduction of the object being studied as well as its history followed by the description and analysis of the different inhabited intervals types to end up concluding that a new way of enjoying the inhabited intervals is possible. Through the sketch and the explanation of the data obtained in the field work that analyzes the drawing of a particular moment in the space, we obtain valuable information on how this space is lived even though we can only rely on the different objects found and on the experiences explained by its inhabitants. This study leads us to a new vision: the lived space against the imagined or empty one and allows us to have a new perspective and to obtain new conclusions. This is how we discover some of the keys to stimulate the creation of the inhabited intervals and how this thesis invites us to imagine a new way of living in community that still does not exist.