THE OPEN BLOCK-HOUSE - Andrea De Matteis, roberta rinaldi

INTRO The challenge of the project is to envision a new block, able to act as a central and recognizable key presence for the entire neighborhood and to maintain, at the same time, an high level of comfort for the inhabitants: a new place to live where residential units and collective spaces coexist in a new urban experiment between collectivity and private life. The aim of the project is to preserve the existing amount of residential spaces and to improve the area for collective activities at the same time. The project declines a dense housing block as an hybrid urban block, devoted both to residential and public facilities. The main goal is to redefine collectivity and privateness in a experimental new idea of block, in order to provide density and obtain intensity in urban life at the same time.

View torwards the new Corner Square form Sperberstrasse

FOCUS It’s not time for revolutions in the city any more: we cannot promote any ideal new shape or ideal new model of urbanism, living aside the existing conditions. We are interested in promoting site specific living conditions, starting from some seeds found in the sites. As we consider them relevant for some new possible organization of the urban environment, we push them forward to a new life. The presence in the site of a unique block covering the whole area, together with the extraordinary allotments in the courtyard, defines a specific urban condition which we want to start from pushing it forward to a new status. Developing a block is an opportunity to maintain the typical atmosphere of the neighborhood. Realizing a new permeable block is the chance to evolve it into a new hybrid condition, between private residential spaces and public facilities and services. Therefore, in this “Open Block-House”, density is put together with urban intensity. The existing quality of life developed by the inhabitants in the allotments – between nature and spontaneity of uses will colonize the site and will grow into the block too. The freshness and spontaneity of the actual uses in the allotments will be transferred in some “special rooms”, which will be placed both in the open courtyard and in the dwellings too, in the shape of “boxes” of extra space. These boxes, affecting the internal facades of the building, will be configured as addiction to the living rooms, offering space to implement the personal interests of the inhabitants. At the same time, similar boxes will take place in the internal courtyard at the ground floor, to be fulfilled with collective uses shared by the inhabitants of the Block together with the neighbors. A vibrant atmosphere will be realized in the courtyard: a huge range of uses will populate the space, mutually overlooking one to the other from the facades down to the ground floor.