Living in the future

As the line that separates the private and public spheres in our urban environments has become increasingly blurred, so do the boundaries between life and work.The question is whether this paradigm shift will serve to re-politicize leisure, work and social relations in the domestic space. A process of empowerment and construction of new collective and individual freedoms, or loss of rights and increased inequality.

Approaching this issue from a typological analysis of housing, we find different examples that make the inequalities visible due to the ways in which life and work are distributed and organized in our houses and cities.
At present, Dogma problematizes the imaginary of intimacy and genuine relationships still present in the home today as one of the ingredients that makes possible the idea of ​​“domestic work” as a task associated with privacy and family duty, and therefore, unpaid . On the other hand, it reflects on the consequences of an increasingly precarious labor market and our current relationship with work, which is difficult to fit into rigid housing typologies.

Others also express in their work their interest in the typological analysis of housing, seeking to de-hierarchize the domestic space and incorporate new spaces and circulation structures that allow rethinking uses related to productive and reproductive tasks in the home.

On considering other debates on an urban scale around the compact and density city model, also traversed by contemporary particularities of a global nature, such as the Covid19 health crisis or the climate emergency situation, we see collective housing as a central issue that requires of new typological solutions.

To speak of collective housing is to speak of life in common, and consequently, of conflict as a tool that builds us socially. Assume said conflict as a natural part of the intermediate space that arises between two or more parties.

Much of the residential architecture of recent years has chosen to deny that space of conflict. However, and as we have seen, there may be ways of assuming it and working with it. The home of the future will thus be the one that materializes as a permanent discussion. Recompose that binomial (life-work) established by the industrial city and renounce the imaginary of a dormitory house in favor of a new idea of ​​shared space in which to live, work, enjoy and care with others.

Ultimately, contemporary collective housing will be such yes, and only if, it is capable of responding to that social condition of life in common.