minimal traditional house floor plans

so, good evening and welcome. just a few words fromme before we get going. there's a lot thatis happening tonight, and i really want to beas brief as possible. but there are lotsof little things that i'd like to just mention. first of all, tonightwe'll have a chance to have a receptionoutside in the gallery. in a way, to celebratethe official formation,

opening of the exhibition,living anatomy. and this is anexhibition that's been going on for quite some timein terms of its preparation. it falls under the rubricof our druker projects focusing on housing. and it was a realpleasure for me to actually get thechance to also collaborate with their curatorial team. i want to acknowledge them.

megan panzano, danielrauchwerger, matt gin, and patrick herron, whowere-- in different ways-- responsible as membersof the curatorial team. a very special thanksalso to dan borelli, the head of our exhibitions,who collaborated with david zimmerman-stuart, tomake the exhibition possible. so we have invitedthe curatorial team to be here, so thatafterwards, also, they can participate inthe conversation

and discussion with all of you. for those of you whohave had a chance to look at theexhibition, you see that the focus of the exhibitionis really to try and present some of the bestpossible thoughts related to the topic of housing today. there is, of course, a certainamount of precedent study, but the focus isreally, what are the kinds of thingsthat are going on that

are important contributions? you see that thosethoughts are happening under a certain set oftitles to try and establish a certain focus on theparticular topics or ways or manners in which the issueof housing is being dealt with. we, as a school,have a long history of dealing with thetopic of housing. many of you whoare new might not know that we actually havea wonderful center here

at the gsd, incollaboration together with the kennedyschool, which is a center for thestudy of housing. it's the nation's-- america's--really foremost center for the study of housing. there have beenmany, many courses taught by variousfaculty members, and lots and lots of studios. more recently, we'vehad a whole variety

of option studios underthe rubric of the dunlop visiting critic, taught bysergison bates from london, gina zuki from italy, spelavidecnik from slovenia, and so on. and these projects continue. there are lots of other ones. there is a very longhistory of housing under the rubric of modernism. obviously housing has beena very, very critical part

of architecture. and we have seen-- just to giveyou a very short synopsis-- we have seen really a kindof period where there has been a critical reception orreaction to modernist housing. and now we see a differentkind of opening up and diversity ofapproaches towards housing. in the process-- as wehave been discussing, also, with the members ofour panel tonight, and our speakers-- there's alsoa way in which architecture,

in some way, haspartly disowned and has been disowned byothers, in relation to this project of housing. so that the way inwhich architecture was such a critical partof the modernist project doesn't seem to besuch a critical part of the contemporarypractice of architecture. why is that? still, we've tried to--of course-- figure out,

pull out the best practices. but part of our intentiontonight in discussion with you is really to findout, what is the next? what is the next thingin terms of housing? where should it go? why is housing so critical? and what are thetopics and issues that we need to focus on? in order to regain, in a way, adifferent kind of perspective,

a different kind of position forarchitecture, design, planning, landscape, in relation tothe discussion of housing. which is always part of a biggerdiscussion of urbanization. i also want to show youthis beautiful booklet that has been produced by themembers of the exhibition. it's made up of two pamphlets,and i welcome-- ask you to, if you wish-- totake some of these. they are on thedoughnut outside, and you'll see it when wego out into the gallery.

tonight, we're going to hearfour brief presentations here from our speakers. and the first speakerwill be niklas maak. niklas maak has been teachingfor us, in fact, last semester in berlin. he's an expert on housing,specifically mass housing. and he is the artand architecture editor of the german newspaper,frankfurter allgemeine zeitung. and we also hopethat niklas will

be teaching a seminar for usin rotterdam in the spring, as part of the remkoolhaas's option studio that will be offered in thespring semester in rotterdam. niklas has written manypublications, many books, and did a phd whichfocused on the work of le corbusier and paul valery. the second speakerwill be hilde heynen. and hilde is actuallyspending part of this semester here with us.

she's a professor ofarchitectural theory at the university ofleuven in belgium. and her work focuses on issuesof modernity, modernism, and gender in architecture. she wrote a beautiful book,published by mit press, called architectureand modernity, which was published in 1999. in which she investigatedthe relationship between architecture,modernity, and dwelling, arguing

that critical theory-- suchas those of walter benjamin and theodor adorno--offer crucial insights when revisiting themodern movement. more recently, she'swritten on issues of gender. she has also been workingon other publications, some of which, i think,will be forthcoming. i know she spenttime here, also, at harvard, working at radcliffeas a visiting professor. then we'll hear fromirenee scalbert.

irenee scalbert is anarchitect and a critic who is based in london,but also teaching in ireland and in italy. i was lucky enough tobe able to collaborate on a variety of differentthings with irenee. one project involved anexhibition, and eventually a publication thatirenee authored on the work of the frencharchitect jean renaudie. and that is a veryinteresting architect

who focused on housing. irenee has also taughtfor us here at the gsd, so i'm very happy thathe's back here with us. lastly, we'll hearfrom eric bunge. and eric is not astranger to the gsd. he studied here withhis partner, mimi hoang. they have an officein new york which is-- their practiceis called narchitects. he teaches at columbia,and has been involved

in a variety of projects. a regular visitor to the gsd. eric is here totalk specifically on their practice'sinvolvement with microunits. recently, as you know,there's been a lot of emphasis on trying to build smallerand smaller dwelling units. a kind of return to theidea of minimum existence, but in a different way. and so we willalso hear from eric

as an architect who's practicingon this topic of housing. so, the plan is thateach speaker will talk for ten or so minutes. we will try to begood timekeepers. and so, after the first 50minutes or an hour or so, we will then invite themto sit here and engage with you in adiscussion before we go to the gallery for a reception. so please welcome niklas maak.

thank you very much. i'm very happy and honoredto be here tonight. and i'm very happy to discovermy berlin crew in the audience. let me quicklystart with a picture which has a lot to do witharchitecture and housing. this was taken some days agoon the motorway in hungary. these are 10,000s of people,refugees from the balkans, from syria and africa, walkingon the motorway to the austrian border and thenfurther on to germany.

germany alone willhave to accommodate more than 800,000 asylumseekers per year now, and the numbers are rising. and of course, the question is,how do we respond to that task? so far, the only two responsesare tent villages and container villages. and as this is notenough anymore, people are even broughtinto empty houses in dying east germanvillages, where

they have to deal with an almosthostile population of people who are still in these villages. so this creates a lot of tensionand problems in germany now. at the same time, it's clearthat many of these refugees will stay longer in germany. so there is aninteresting tendency that the proposalsthat were developed for a more hedonistic context--like the transformation of multi-story carparks-- are repurposed now

as emergency shelters. you see a proposal by augustinernst, a berlin-based office, that proposed this two yearsago as a form of urban dwelling for less-affluent youngfamilies and singles. and now this model isrepurposed as a model to-- of course, reduced in termsof the quality of apartments and materials used. it's repurposed now asa shelter for refugees. so these parking lots inberlin-- multi-story car

parks-- will be transformedto accommodate refugees. i think it's important, when wetalk about the very large field of housing, thatone does not confuse the two crises of housingwe're actually facing. in one case, it'sabout mere survival. in the other, about whatsociety you want to live in, and what the society prioritizesand how it defines privacy and publicness, in general. and what new spaces forthis could look like.

but then again, i thinkthese distinct problem areas have a lot in common,including the lack of ideas for fundamentally new,inexpensive dwellings that could conform tochange social conditions. or-- and this isalso important, i think-- encourage such change. and i think, when we talkabout housing and units, that the discourse onhousing-- at least in europe-- suffers largely from theimposition of the terms

that we use todescribe the situation. this starts with thenotion of the unit. state-funded programsin germany and france mostly focus on providingas much units as possible for young families or singles. but of course, a unitis not a natural given. and even beforethe asylum crisis, there was not much discussion--beyond the academic field-- about how our idea ofa unit or of privacy

or of the publicspace is affected by the shift in socialrituals, by demographic change, and by the dissolutionof the nuclear family. because-- i think it's alsoimportant for this discussion here-- in most europeancities, families are not the majorityof population anymore. in berlin and munich, inthe city quarters-- not on the outskirts, but inthe inner city quarters-- families are now almosta marginal group.

their share of all householdsis between 15% and 20% only, which is not reflectedin housing policies. and we do not hardlyknow a setting that will accommodate a group of,say, 80-year-olds who do not want to move intoa retiree home, nor any apartment typedesign to house, say, two single mothers thatshare rent and a gay couple. though this is sometimeswished by the people. so the questionwhat a unit could be

and how it could produceis important already in this setting, but isalso a pressing one given the fact that-- according toan analysis of the unesco-- in africa, asia,and india alone, 1 billion new apartments wouldbe needed over the next 25 years to house migrants whomove to urban agglomerations. 1 billion new apartments. and of course the question is,how will these units look like? as it's plain clear that it'secologically and economically

impossible to build theseapartments in the way we do it today. so of course there were models--and i have not much time, so i'm jumping through thesemodels-- there were models to research possibilities. this is the nomadhome by toyo ito. a more recent one is liulubin's micro apartment, that investigatespressing questions of minimal dwelling ofprivacy and basic protection.

a proposal that relatesto metabolist structures could be stapled in germany. the o2 village is a comparableeffort to staple the microunits and create socialspaces in between. we could discuss this later. i'm jumping throughthe whole history of experimental housing. we can come back to this later. one thing is plain clearthat this model-- this

is the former president ofgermany, christian wulff, who had to step down becauserumors came up concerning the illegalfinancial aid he took from entrepreneurs tofinance his own dream of the nuclearfamily dream home. so this killed his careerand was seen as a symbolic incident, that even thepresident cannot afford this form of dwelling anymore. so what arealternatives in berlin?

we have interesting--this again, i don't have time forthis-- the campaign. that's the campaign. the 19th century campaignfor the nuclear family home. here depicted is thenuclear family cave, as if this was the normal wayto dwell in the stone age. but we don't have time for that. so i would focus, rather,on counter models, the joint building ventures,or baugruppen in germany.

which are interestingbecause a, they point a way forbottom-up strategies to change urban districts. and-- importantpoint, also-- they point the way toself-empower people to be less dependent fromstate-funded projects or private developers. so this is really kindof a bottom-up movement where people say, let'sput our money together, ask

an architect, find something. some land, a lot in the city,and built a house the way we want to dwell. these new collective housingfarms do not exclude families, but they put a focuson other life designs and foster a new idea ofsocial community life. this is r50 by fezer,heide & von beckerath. they have, in the basementhere, a two-story common room that can be used formeetings of the community.

and then, as youcan see, each floor has a wrap-aroundcollective balcony that allows occupantsto pass by all spaces. so clearly, a focuson the communal. the berlin abroadstudio students might remember this buildingby arno brandlhuber. it's a building erected onthe ruin of an investor's project, which combinesworkspaces and living spaces. the berlin studioabroad took place there.

so this is an examplefor also a form of communal living merged intoa workspace, a gallery space. quite an interesting project. and this is another examplefor joint building ventures, by fatkoehl bar and company. they're architects. three houses wherespaces are shared. you have a restaurant-sizedliving room, which is also-- asyou can see here--

used for political gatherings,micro-communal events. it can also be usedfor parties and used as a restaurant-sizedliving room. you have these so-calledoption rooms in the basement. this one is used by a carpenter. others are used bytemporary micro-offices or used as kindergartens. they are quite open intheir definition, which is interesting to see hereother than some projects

from the '70s. it works quite well, also,because many people are actually workingin these buildings, and not only sleeping over. a person who owns a540-square-foot apartment here can use 1,600 squarefeet of common space, including a roofterrace and these fldas. so you can argue that, herethe key to affordable housing and an alternate form ofhousing is a, pre-fabrication.

as you can see, theseelements here pre-fabricated. it's timber frames. and also, the externalizationof many functions. and in this case, also,a state-funded program for energy savingconstruction helped finance the whole project. it has a clear focus oncommunal spaces, you can see. this is a communal kitchen. this is a kind ofcommunal living

room, a communal terrace. this is also collectivespace, but at the same time, everybody has a toiletand a little kitchenette, so it avoids that you're forcedinto a community all the time. the architects werereally influenced-- and i just can showsome pictures here-- by a contemporaryjapanese project. this is on designs office,yokohama apartments. maybe the onlyproject that i would

miss in thisfantastic exhibition that you've mountedhere, because it also relates to questions that you'rerising with the exhibition. it has a transitional hybridspace on the ground floor that can be separated fromthe streets only by curtains. so it's either a publicroofed-over square with a kitchen in the center,or a more intimate living room with a kitchen whenthe curtains are mounted. so like the classicengar one, the space

allows both dissolutionof the living room into a public space,or its protection from it. and it's, i think,an important example for a strategy of verticalizingspatial atmospheres. the kitchen becomesa cafe-like space of encounter for, say,erratically extended family, including the neighborhood. and the dwelling cells becomeeven more intimate and cozy. this is anotherexample from berlin

for a new form ofcommunal housing. kurfurstenstrasse byjune14, sam chermayeff and johanna maya-grohbrugge. it provides spacefor 23 housing units, but they're not units anymore. they're kind ofdifferent things. they interlock acrossmultiple levels, and the occupantshave the option to either completelyisolate themselves

or to merge spaces such askitchens and living rooms together, opening the way forextended post-familiar settings or circles of friendsliving together. this, again, has a counterpartin japanese architecture, riken yamamoto'scommunity area model. same approach, where openstructures can incorporate patchworks of workspaces,offices, day care centers, restaurant-likecommunity kitchens. and-- which is alsoimportant-- studio apartments

can be attached like moduleswhen children or older people are added, orwhen several people want to form a commune. of course, this idon't have to mention. it's clearly a reference for allthese projects, moriyama house. but as we have notso much time, i would come to an end of thisreally very quick presentation by addressing onequestion, which is the question of privacy.

all these new forms of communaldwelling and public living rooms authorize questionsconcerning our idea of privacy. and these questionsare addressed mainly in sociology and philosophy. for example, thephilosopher raimond gaita criticizes the modernconception of privacy that informs ouridea of housing, where the individualself-evidently comes first as the autonomous starting pointfor theorizing and valuation.

and community has, ina way, to find its role in promoting and defending thesecurity and the well-being of the individual. and gaita questionsthis view with reference to the idea of a societythat commits this madness, to say it in a nutshell. but you have theright to retreat to a form of hospitalityand generosity. and this approachfundamentally also challenges

the view on housingof these philosophers. so the question hereis, how does a house relate to the public realm? is it hospitable? does it foster community ordoes it include or exclude? and i think one of themost striking examples for exclusive urbanism,and exclusive housing in the double sense ofthe word, is bond street 40 in new york by herzog demeuron, where graffiti style

fence shields the basementfrom being sprayed. so in a way, thisfence achieves-- in a cynical way-- both,it advertises the flare of subculture whileat the same time, it's the best protectionagainst the real resentment of the culture it references. so i think this will bepart of the architecture history of cynical urbanism. and when we look for examplesfor a more inclusive way

of building houses andof housing, of course you find that, inthe exhibition, it's michael maltzan'sstar apartments. where you do not create adistancing form, but rather a porous, permeable zonewhere public life can spill into the house. same with-- true,i'm jumping again-- for this project,the colony, which was kind of an experimental model.

how you could create aporous, permeable zone also under precarious circumstancesafter superstorm katrina, and other events. so maybe we can comeback to this later. that was also partof the colony, where you have this kind ofpermeable, inviting zone where the city can bepart of the building and like nucleuscells, where you withdraw on the first level.

so, i think i should-- i havemy 10 minutes, i'm afraid. and thank you so much. and i'm happy to discussit in detail later. thanks. well, good evening to you all. i was asked to provide a littlebit of historical background to this whole discussion. so chronologically,i'm going back to the beginning ofthe 20th century,

or at least to the '20s. and i thought i should makereally three points that i want to get across. i do not address gender here. that's also an issuethat we should talk about in relation tohousing, but i thought these ones were more urgent. the first one isthat housing really was at the core of the projectof modernist architecture,

of the modernist project. and the second point is thatreally was a story of success, even though itnowadays is often-- or it's in the'70s, '80s, '90s, it used to be framed as failure. i think it's asuccess story, rather. and thirdly, which is, i think,what is at stake in an event and an exhibition like theones we are witnessing here. that there is a needto reclaim housing

as a core concernfor architecture. let me start withthat, first, housing at the core ofmodernist architecture. it's not alwaysframed like that. but i do think, if youlook at the history of modern architecturewith an open eye and you see, forexample, you put central what i tend to do-- efforts suchas those of das neue frankfurt. then you cannot but say, yes,this was extremely important

for modernist architects. frankfurt, das neue frankfurt,it still is, i think, an amazing accomplishment. in five years time, building15,000 housing units-- back then it was still units--15,000 new housing units. which meant thatone out of every 11 inhabitants of frankfurtcould move into a new house. that's really amazing. i don't know ofany other city that

came near to thatkind of performance, in terms of socialand public housing, or even in terms of housingwithout the social aspect involved. so that really wasan important event, an importantaccomplishment, and it was-- the main work was donein the field of housing, but housing was seen as partof a much larger endeavor. it was the idea to establisha new modern, metropolitan

culture that encompassed notjust housing, but also sports and other kinds ofthe visual arts. about education, aboutaffordable housing. das neue frankfurt, thejournal, has had team issues about many differenttopics-- the interior-- so it really was housing asa way to organize living. and that's, i think,also how we want to talk about housing today. of course, you canargue that some

of the models that werethen presented by now might not be so ideal anymore. we have come tocriticize the assumption that the suburban neighborhood,the suburban estate, would really be theanswer to housing needs. but nevertheless,the romerstadt estate that ernst may and histeam designed in frankfurt remains a fantastic examplenot just of housing, but also of housing integratedwith other amenities.

like schools and shops and so onwere part of that whole thing. but you saw, also, in frankfurtthat gradually there was a loss of, let's say,aesthetic sensitivity or aesthetic standards. westhausen is much moreefficient, much more according to existenceminimum standards. much cheaper, muchaffordable because of that. so that was reallythe neighborhood where the blue collarworkers could afford to live,

not in romerstadt. but already, part of thatresidentialization campaign that also boiled downto as much as possible for the least possible money. but existence minimum was atthe core of the investigations of the research, really. i think what we hear nowadaysabout these micro apartments is indeed taking homethat issue again. how to organize livingon a minimal space.

how to make surethat people do have all the necessary amenities,and back then in the '20s, it was social housingwith built-in kitchens, built-in bathrooms. that was amazing for thetime, that this was provided. so it was an enormous step aheadin terms of living standards. but it was done by minimizingthe amount of space. and ernst may really hasan article where he says, what shall we do if-- we havea certain [? burchet. ?] we

choose really to build as manyunits as possible for that particular [? burchet ?] ratherthan provide people with larger houses, but then have lesspeople that we can accommodate. so it was a very, veryrational choice that was made. and the choice, the option wasto go for the minimum amount of space. but very cleverly designed,like the frankfurt kitchen by grete schutte-lihotsky, whichreally was providing everything in a very small space.

very functional, butvery well designed. i think the microapartments of today will also be reminiscent ofthis type of existence minimum, where you had also researchinto furniture that could change a room from being a livingroom during the day to being a bedroom at night. that kind of thing was partof the whole experiment of das neue frankfurt, anddas neue frankfurt also hosted the secondciam conference

in 1929, which was focusedon the existence minimum. the dwelling for the existenceminimum was housed there. and that's why ithink, also-- if you look at the themes of ciamthroughout its existence of 30-somethingyears-- ciam really was arguably the mostimportant organizational of the modern movementin architecture. ciam was very muchfocusing on housing. the first content-relatedconference,

ciam 2 in frankfurt,the minimum dwelling, but also the next one inbrussels about rational lot development. that was really, how doyou organize that housing? the functional city,that was about zoning, and housing was one of the fourfunctions that had to be zoned. dwelling and recreation, againabout housing and how housing relates to other functions. six, seven, eight maybe less about housing,

but ciam 9 again says habitat. we want to make acharter of habitat. so again, it becamea very, very pregnant and urgent issue in 1953. so for that reason,i say really housing was at the core ofthe modernist project. and i do also believethat, in many ways, it has been a success story. it's true that manyof the projects

were criticized and noware problematic zones. in, for example, france. to a lesser extent, maybein the uk and elsewhere. it's true. but one should not forgetthe european welfare state-- and to some extent, alsothe american welfare state, and in far as that existed-- didsucceed in banning shantytowns. shantytowns werepart [inaudible] were part of theparisian urban landscape,

for example, until the '70s. it's thanks to allthese modernist housing projects that they were banned,that they were abolished. so that is a kind ofachievement that nowadays, in all these new mega cities, isnot always easy to accomplish. if we heard niklas talkabout how many housing units cities in the developing worldneed in the coming decades, well, they have be needing suchhousing units in the decades that are just behind us.

but they were mostly providedthrough squatter settlements. so, in that sense, really themodernist housing projects did something. by now, we also nowknow a little bit better how the story of pruittigoe, how to explain that. the postmodernist discoursetended to blame the design and say, look how badly designedit is, and that's why it failed and that's why ithad to be demolished. no, we understand nowthat it was a huge mistake

in terms of planning. that too many housing units werebuilt for the amount of housing that was really dwindling. and of course, if you havea large estate with a lot of housing units, and thereis no demand and there are not enough people really whoare willing to pay the rent for these dwellings, then ofcourse you cannot maintain it. then of course you haveproblems, and then of course the ones that arestill there tend

to leave because the elevatorwould break down, et cetera. so there was a wholeprocess of decay going on that reallyhad to do more with economics and managementand cultural issues rather than withthe design itself. so i really don't liketo hear about the failure of the modernist projectlike it so often is framed. and i do think-- i'm not surethat this book is out there. if it isn't, it should be there.

florian urban has published thishistory of global mass housing, which contains a comparison ofthese modernist housing slabs and towers in chicago, paris,berlin, brasilia, moscow, shanghai, and mumbai. arguing that reallythe histories are very different in all thesedifferent places, depending on the local contexts,the social issues, the economic issuesof affordability, and whether or not there arealternatives available, et

cetera. so it's too easy tosay it didn't work, we need to inventsomething else. my last point aboutreclaiming housing as a core concernof architecture. i think this is really whatthis event and this exhibition is also about, andi think we have been mistaken in architectureby letting that thing go. letting housing go, disowningthe issue of housing,

and let it be the domainof other disciplines. i think that, that processstarted-- disowning housing as a core issue startedin the '30s, when modern architecture wasreceived here in the states. if i look at these twobooks that you are familiar with-- or at least theinternational style you probably know--you should also know the other book, modernhousing by catherine bauer. the internationalstyle, of course,

has come to be the most dominantbook, in terms of the framing and the reception ofmodern architecture, as seen here in north america. nevertheless, if i lookat these two books, i say catherine bauer knew muchbetter what she was talking about than philip johnson. her book, however, came outtwo years after johnson, and she never made it intoa very prominent voice on the scene of architecture.

in the '60s, she was invited toa symposium in colombia, where they were talking aboutdecades of modern architecture, and about the decade inwhich her book appeared. but her book was listed--in the bibliography that was provided for that event--as being not about architecture, but about planning. so she was, on theone hand, acknowledged as being an expert,but on the other hand, she was pushed toward the sideof sociologists and planners,

and not really seen as partof the core discussion that architects were conducting. so that kind of operationhas been going on, and you can point to manymore instances of that. housing was kind of pushed outof the discourse of architects. and that's indeed why--it was mentioned already-- if you now look for--if you're an architect and you invest work on housingand you want to publish in an internationaljournal, well,

the internationaljournals of housing are about housing policy,are about housing and the build environment, abouthousing markets, endless kinds of thing. so real estate,sociology, and planning are now dominating thequestion of housing. and for architects,there is only-- in this type ofpublications-- architects only play a minor, minor role.

so again, that's why i do think. and i'm very glad to bepart of this event here, and to have seen andwitnessed the exhibition. i think that's whyit's really important that a school like gsd claimsownership of this issue, brings it back into theheart of the discussions. because i do thinkthat architecture is about theorganization of every day life for many, many people,not just for the happy few.

so that's what i reallywanted to stress today. thank you. ok. is that working? yeah, i think it is working. you can hear me? yes? no? so i need this one.

i thought it wasone or the other. yeah? now, there clearly hasalways been housing, and there has almost always beenhousing designed by architects. but it's only, i think,in the 20th century that we find housing designedby leading architects, and by architectswho become known for the design of housing. and these architectswere modern,

and the historyof housing design broadly overlaps withthe history of modernism. and this primacy attributedto housing by modernists is evident in thecharter of athens, and also seen in fourso-called functions. and the firstfunction is dwelling, followed by recreation,work, and transportation. and i believe that theorder is highly significant. and here i think i jointhe presentation of hilde.

now, what we mean bymodernism, i think, has been unfortunately confused. and historians have emphasizedits association with industry and with mechanizationand with mass production, but the essence ofmodernism-- in my view-- was a search not forindustrial standards, but for actuallyliving standards. and this is clearly representedby the unite d'habitation in marseilles.

and at once, the highpoint of modernism. and also, i think, themost influential design in the history ofhousing, full stop. now the apartment of theunite became the standards by which other housing projectswere evaluated, and, i believe, for good reasons. one thing, itsduplex arrangement, its double orientation,the terrace or balconies, the spaciousness, the privacy,and many other things one

could mention. but in the mid 19-- try to moveforward-- no, wrong button. but in the mid 1970s, eventhe most celebrated architects appeared to be outof their depths where it concerned housing. inspired of aldo rossi'sinterest in typologies, and you see hisgallaratese project here. the apartments of thegallaratese building seem impoverishedand regressive.

and those designed byjames stirling at runcorn fared little better. and, actually poignantly,they have actually been demolished 15 yearsafter they were completed. now, the idealism andthe desire to follow through the design of the actualdwellings, i believe, had gone. and the interest shifted insteadto the space around the home and the form of urban space. now, since then,the contribution

by architects to the field ofhousing have been, in my view, negligible. the singular exceptionis in response to the growing individualismand the corresponding demand for diversity inthe housing offer. the most extremeexample, in this respect, is the work of jeanrenaudie here in the screen. and here you see is the plancorresponding to that project. and in it, no dwelling, andno space in the dwelling,

is the same. nevertheless, renaudie upheldanything that is important, the principles set outby le corbusier-- namely, multiple orientation, duplex,spaciousness, and the provision of a garden or a terrace. another figurealso played a role. hammond hasberger, thoughhe builds little housing, had a contribution whichwas, i think, significant. and he proposed--as you probably

know-- a generic form,which he compared to a musical instrument. one that could be playedupon by inhabitants. last, there was, of course,the advocacy of participation. always, i think, a marginaloption-- and that's something which might be worthbearing in mind-- and for which lucien krollwas an eloquent spokesman. now, these three examples ihave just mentioned i think represent threethemes, you could say.

respectively, difference,appropriation, and participation. and they have beenrevisited 20 years later in the 1990s in holland,but the context has changed. developers, not thestates, were the providers, and the social motivationtoo, have changed. the drive for greaterindividuality-- which in the 1970s had beena legacy from youth culture-- became, in the 1990s, thespontaneous expression

of the market. now at borneosporenburg in amsterdam, for instance, within a generictype developed by west 8, a family could-- intheory-- buy or rent a unique architect-designedhouse corresponding to their needs. and at silodam by mvrdv, atheoretically infinite number of apartment types were offeredto satisfy a theoretically infinite housing demand.

now, in a privatizedhousing industry, the offer necessarilyprecedes demand. and the design ofdwellings is-- i think in a fundamentalway-- arbitrary. but then, how could it be atall evaluated, you might ask. now in hindsight, it is hard toescape the sense-- especially when compared with the bestachievements of modernism-- that this design lackedsubstance and commitment. too much difference, ithink, was spread too thinly.

and a comparison between theso-called unite type at silodam with the real unite inmarseilles and elsewhere would, i think, beenough to make the point. now the recession in holland,then the crisis of 2008, derailed this train of thought. the issue became how toreconnect the design of housing with residents, or-- inthe language of the 1970s-- with the users. and what one, ithink, is witnessing

at the moment-- ineurope, at least-- is a re-socialization andre-productization of housing. here i'm talkingabout, of course, what is happening inthe architecture world. now, for the sakeof this discussion, three trends can beidentified today. the first concernsrehabilitation of the modern housingstock, as such it is literally an extensionand a deepening of modernism.

and the best examplei know is a project by a london-based office--the office of adam khan architects-- for theupgrade of this estate, the ellebo estate incopenhagen. and it consists in the replacementof the existing facades, and in careful modificationsof the floor plans-- and here, a simulationof before and after-- and in the addition of an extraflow of dwellings with terraces towards the top of thebuilding, and in the provision

of a so-called garden roomoffering a collective focus to the project. now the approach is sociallyand spatially sensitive, and the details--which are partly inspired by the architectureof peter markli-- i think are unusually fine. certainly for thiskind of commission. the second trend--which is actually shown in the exhibition-- ismore radical in its politics,

and it draws from thecooperative movement which is currently enjoyinga revival in europe. and this project entails arenewal of terrace houses in toxteth, an impoverisheddistrict of liverpool. and here is the proposal,also in the exhibition. and the architects called[? mison ?] mentioned them, but called assemble, anarchitect's collective based in london, are involved notonly in the design, they're also actively participatingwith future tenants

in making the project happen,and in actually building it. the ones in yelloware architects, but perhaps we couldhave guessed that. now in this, theproject, i think, recalls this quartermovement of the 1970s. but in the upholdingof radical principles and the insistence on thepurity of the process, the approach of thearchitects recalls, i think, the occupy movement.

and, unusually in aproject of this kind, the care in the design andin the craft of building is very high. something which i think is veryunusual, and very promising. this project in santafe is under way. i mean, indeed these lasttwo projects are under way. the third trendplaces less demands on consultationand participation, and it may have-- for thisreason-- a wider influence,

i think, in the long term. it aims to establish a universaltype, or at least types that would have a wide appeal. and in amsterdamwest, the office called [inaudible] designed aterrace of identical dwellings, in which individuality isdeliberately limited in order to achieve higher standardsin design and construction. and inscribed in a longtradition of rationalism, the approach draws equallyfrom the classical tradition

and from modernism,leading to what the architects call classicismfor the ikea generation. and here is one. whoops, there has been amix up here of the slides. can i move this? let me see if i can. well, no, two have gonemissing, i'm afraid. you'll have to trust me,that i'm telling the truth. so to this-- ok.

all three trends,which i have shown, i think bears themarks of modernism. and i cannot actually helpfeeling that the issue today is less what makes people-- theissue for architects building housing is less what makespeople different than what people have in common and whatthey actually decide to share. and for instance,the so-called garden room in copenhagen.for instance, a collaborativework in liverpool.

and for instance, the ikeaclassicism in amsterdam west. and so to this extent, at least,in emphasizing what is common rather than what is different,housing after modernism will-- in my view--be modern again. and of course, it goeswithout saying that housing doesn't have to be modern. and in most cases, ibelieve that it will not be. but in respect to housingdesign, modernism, i think, is our beginnings.

in our profession,it is our antiquity. it is ancient greece andancient rome combined, and its influence,i believe, will be felt for decades to come. good evening. 20 years ago today, iwas sitting in this room, waiting for my secondsemester-- second year to start. very good to be back again. so why are we talkingabout housing now?

it was a discussion we werejust having before this talk. it seems that there is a kindof confluence of many changes and different frameworksthat are making this an exciting time--also, a challenging time-- for architects to insertthemselves back into the agency that we need to be claiming. and these probably existacross different frameworks, such as the social framework. we are seeing a greatchange in demographics--

as we heard from niklas. also, in theprogrammatic framework, we are now seeing many changesin how we live and work. and therefore, the typologiesthat we've been trusting for so long are being eroded. in the economicframework, we are now considering differentmodels of ownerships, like the baugruppen that niklashas also mentioned, co-housing, and finally, the sortof physical framework

or the constructive one isalso interesting to consider in terms of new fabricationor construction technologies that might change, again, theway we think about housing. perhaps it's obvious to statethat housing is probably the most constrained of allthe endeavors of architects. hemmed as it is between themarket forces on the one hand, and of course, thecodes on the other. very constrained. and so one could say thatit's a physicalized--

if you will--datascape that reflects the rules and other influencesmore clearly than other types. but however, the clarityof this framework is kind of exciting,too, because it's also possible to be disobedient,or cleverly obedient, within the frameworkthat is clear. certainly a little bit less soin the united states, perhaps in other countries, andnew york especially. so, in our work, i thinkwe situate our own housing

production, or ourwork on housing, within several largerquestions, which are opportunities toinstigate or adapt to changes. we've been interestedin how architecture can adapt to climaticchanges or demographic ones. secondly, thinking aboutcreating different skills of interaction betweendifferent publics, or rethinking who the public is. there's not a generalidea of public.

and finally, as an opportunityto affect a macro-scale with a minimum of means. and in this case, aminimum of micro-units, a minimum of spatial means. so we've only worked on fourhousing projects so far. we're now working on a250-unit tower in hong kong, but it's still an importantpart of our practice. and the ones in hongkong, by the way, are smaller than theones in new york.

and they don't callthem micro-units, they just call them apartments. and an article in thesouth china morning post last spring referredto our project-- our micro-unit project-- as hongkong-style apartments arrive in new york. so they irony thatwe're now working in new york is not lost to us. so in 2012, we were invitedby the developers, monadnock

development, to join themin a competition for mayor bloomberg's adaptnyc competition to design the first newmicro-unit prototype in new york city. it had to be adeveloper-architect team. so we can talk aboutagency afterwards. we can't do thesethings alone, can't even enter these competitions alone. we were-- mypartner mimi and i--

were a little bithorrified at first, to be quite frank with you. we've sort of drunk thekool-aid a little bit now that we understandthe larger context of this issue of micro-housing,but we were a bit horrified about the idea of designingapartments that ranged from 250 to 350 square feet. i'll explain a little bit laterwhy now we're less horrified. so in the beginningof the 20th century,

jacob riis focused hiscamera on the urban poor, shocking a nation andgalvanizing, basically, the nation to revisit some ofthe laws that would provide proper sewage andproper ventilation to a city of over 3 million. and so the housing reforms thatfollowed over the next decade really encouraged a setof new legal standards for light and air andhealth and safety. now meanwhile, after thesecond world war, housing--

the average size of ahome has practically doubled from about 1,000square feet in 1940s to its apex in 2007--just before the crash-- at about 2,700 square feet. kind of like largecars from the '70s, they seem now a little bit likerelics of another time gone by. because these were tailoredto nuclear families, which as niklas hasmentioned, is really a minor aspect of our society.

in manhattan, we have 46% ofinhabitants are really single. and the single one-to-twoperson household is a very large proportion. dark blue is one-to-twoperson households. and you see that-- ifyou compare it to boston, for instance-- 33% is one. it's a trend across the unitedstates and across the world, even more so in europeancapitals and in tokyo. so this is alsosomething that has

been increasing substantiallyin the last couple of decades. a 30% increase, i believe,in the last decade alone. so what are the optionsto people in at least new york city, wherethere's a large number of illegal apartments thatare in fact micro-units by another name? where one might have no view,or a really insecure situation, or very little space. and the otheroption, i guess, is

to move out and put an extraburden on our transportation infrastructure and continueto contribute to sprawl. so the bloombergadministration-- in conjunction with thecitizens housing and planning council in new york-- initiateda study and exhibition called making room, in whichthey created a body of research that was then used as areference for the competitors in the competition thatwe subsequently entered. so that competitionbasically challenged

developer-architectteams to come up with a micro-unit type ona very small lot, owned by hpd-- housing preservationand development-- right next to a nscha site. and we won this competition bybasically following a brief, and doing something verystraightforward, i think. the site is on 27thstreet in manhattan. so this is firstavenue and 27th street, on a dead end, smallpedestrian street.

and this is our project. so our big challenges,as we saw it, was to design a buildingthat was somehow generic in that itwould be a prototype-- a replicable prototype. it wouldn't really be astandalone building, per se, but that would insertitself within the legacy of housing in new york. for which reason we chose abrick, just to give an example.

but at the same time, theywould express something about micro-living interms of its dimensions, without expressingthe individual. so unlike moshe safdie's habitator other subsequent projects that have tried to equatethe idea of the physical unit with a social unit, wewere very interested in, in fact, thinkingabout how people who live in smallapartments need to be nested into different setsof scales, of social scales.

for this projectto occur, we were granted severalmayoral overrides, the most importantof which were to lift the minimum number of dwellingunits, which is called density in the zoning code. and to lift the minimum area,which in our current code is 400 square feet. the rest were just minorones to do with our project. so again, we thought ofthe project or the resident

as living in a variety ofscales in a nested way. and the very important oneis the amount of social space which we are able tocontribute in a project-- which is not very much butsubstantial for maybe this type. in new york, in any case. and here you seethem distributed. it's a very small building. it's comprised of 55 units. it's nine stories tall.

it's built withmodular construction. and normally developers won'teven let you do these things, but we were able to providequite a few little amenity spaces-- which, of course,we wish there were more. another thing that wethought was quite important was-- since people areliving in very small units-- to connect them veryclearly to their context by providing very large windowsand great ceiling height. so the typical unit, whichis about 300 square feet

on average, has a ninefoot eight ceiling which allows for overheadstorage, and also very tall sliding glass doors which leadto-- or don't really lead, but reveal-- a juliet balcony. we have about fiveto six basic types. seven are shown here, butthey're basically similar. this is the most dominant one,which is quite straightforward. it's very difficultin such a small lot to come up with manydifferent orientations

and configurations, as itwere, that meet the code. and one thing about ourcode in the united states that differs fromother countries is that the interiorof the apartments has to be accessible-- fullyaccessible-- to wheelchairs. the one we're designingin hong kong does not. right at the threshold betweenthe corridor and the unit, you can dispensewith that and have kitchens that are 600 millimeterspace between the counter

and the fridge, for instance. so what it results in isa disproportionately large bathroom and kitchen forthe size of the apartment, but we've tried tosomehow make it efficient. this is the current planof a typical floor, where you see basically four similarapartments facing the south, and then the grainshifts to the west. and we have an efficient core. at the end-- this isvery small, i grant you,

but at the end of every quarterwe have a shared storage. a vestige of something,a grander idea we had, which was to have at every endof the quarter a social space. but this was eroded bit-by-bit--not so much by the developers as by the kind ofvery tight site and the redundancies of modularconstruction, which requires a certain thickness of walls. we're on track to finishthe project in december. this is a rendering,which people

have thought is a realphoto, but it's a rendering that we submitted aspart of our competition. if you want to make somethinglook real, render it under construction, i guess. it looks a lot lessbeautiful under construction in this photo because we haveall this ugly insulation on it. but just to describequickly how we built it was kind of interesting. we used traditionalconstruction for the basement

and the first floor,and modules produced in the factory in the brooklynnavy yard for everything else, including the core. it's about as high as onecan go with this system. i think about 135feet before one needs to have a bracedcore, as i understand it. and so basically,they're modules comprised of steel pipes and achassis like a car, and a redundantfloor-ceiling assembly.

so these are where they're tightand they stack on each other. this is an interior of one ofthe modules under construction. they feel luminousand spacious to me. so this is a typicalday in the factory. it's a short video-- i'm notsure if i'll show it all, it's maybe two minutes--but it shows you how the modules advancealong the assembly line, just like in a model t ford. with differenttrades all unionized,

working, doing the same thingover and over again really efficiently. which, in principle,should really speed up constructionand give it a much higher level of finish. one thing we wereable to achieve is a high level oftolerance, which is very important to this project. we are building tothree millimeters, which

is an eighth of an inch, beyondwhich we would, in fact, not comply with code. we're in such asmall site that if we were to have a slightlysmaller width of apartment, it would basically not comply. so this would havebeen very difficult with traditional construction. so this actually istaking a long time, this building, paradoxically.

but what was veryfast was the stacking, which happened in three weeksand was kind of breathtaking. and i guess one thingthat was really nice was that it really had a verylow impact on the neighborhood, because it's a veryquiet construction. you just hear welding asthese things go into place. of course now we're backto traditional construction as we skin this with brick. we had decided to do that formany reasons, one of which

was just in terms of makingsure we had a good envelope seal, and so on. just quickly-- i forgotto put two slides here. but the four pointsi wanted to make about thinking about units--niklas approached this topic. the housing studio thati'm teaching this semester is dealing preciselywith this issue, that we're sort of prisonersof language in that sense, and am inheriting a lot ofpreconceptions about housing.

which is the type thatit has probably the most number of-- the largestbaggage, shall we say. which is a great thing, too. so what we're tryingto do in the studio is consider what is a unitlesshouse, or unitless housing? and reconsidering the ideaof units in four frameworks. the first is the social unit. for whom are we designing if,in fact, 37% of bronx residents are comprised of singlemothers with a child?

just to give an example. and co-housing isintroducing new types. i think it's-- eventhough we speak about it-- we don't really design forsomething outside of a nuclear family. most of the types thatwe see in the exhibition are still adhering to that,with the exception of a few. and perhaps it's justopportunities we have. the second is theprogrammatic unit.

why call it housing ifwe now work at home, and if we shower in the office,or if we work in a cafe? is it possible now tothink more of amenities rather than program? in fact, take the discussionout of the idea of a dwelling, per se, but thinkingabout new connections that adapt to a morecontemporary and fluid lifestyle. the third is the economic unit.

somebody ownshousing at one point, and you either rent or subletfrom the person or the agency or the company thatowns the housing. but the baugruppenthat niklas also has shown-- which i'm takingmy students to see in three weeks-- offers aninteresting model of bottom-up,arctic-led initiatives, but also new modelsof ownership. in a time where we share carsto go, or citi bikes, or ubers

and so on, is there a newmodel for securing one's right to a dwelling,rather than thinking about owning or renting? and then finally, theconstructive or physical unit. even though we don'tbuild with modules or think aboutmodules all the time, i sense also-- not just instudent work but in general-- that we tend to think ofhousing as a combinatorial game. in which we takepreconceived ideas of units--

whether it's a one bedroom, atwo bedroom, or a townhouse-- and we put them together likerubik's cubes or puzzles. but what if the units reallyare plumbing or shared spaces or balconies orsome other scale, is something i'm interestedin kind of unpacking. and i think the correlationbetween these four frameworks of units-- the social, theprogrammatic, the economic, and the physical-- has led toa standardization of thinking about housing at atime when we can really

think about new things. so we're going to gostraight to questions, because i think it would bereally interesting to open this up as quickly as possible. i think, in the interest ofgetting a conversation also going between ourpresenters, perhaps i could ask you--to those of you who would like to aska question-- maybe we can collect two orthree questions at a time.

and then have ourpanelists basically address those questionsamongst themselves, and also in response to your point. so can i just see-- thereare microphones here-- can i see if anybody has anycomments or questions that you would like to make? otherwise, i'll have to startand i'd rather you do it. any thoughts, please? back there.

wait until you getthe mic, please. hi. so i guess this is specificallyfor the micro-unit as being a really viable option forcities like new york, who are facing extreme housing crises. and it seems like thisproject was primarily a market-rate project. but how do you thinkthat type of construction could be manipulated to startbeing an option for addressing

the affordable housing issue? great. any other comments? please. oh. thank you for the presentation. i think the common framework inall four of your presentations is that, there's this pointin the history of housing and in architecture where themain focus of the discussion

changes from the notion ofhospitality or the quality or the actual domesticcondition of the house, into more about the discussionsof statistics and real estate and how the housing hasto adapt to the market. and so i was justwondering, where do you identify thatshift from that kind of architectural discussion ofthe dwelling to a more almost engineering or statistic-baseddiscussion of housing and the urban?

anyone else? well, maybe we can startwith those two points. it would be great ifyou just-- not only eric, but others maybe ifthere are comments about that. i know irenee is alreadyready to go, so-- well,i could addressthe first question. sure, sure. just a clarification, actually. is this microphone on?

it's supposed to be on. yeah, now it is, i think. so, actually 40% of theunits in our project are, in fact, allocatedto affordable-- are affordable, and can onlybe acquired through a lottery depending on one's income. but i think the question of--and probably this building is not a great example,because it's sort of a one-off, and one would have to understandthe impact of the scale

if one were to introduce manyof these micro-unit buildings throughout the city. but i think the frameworkthrough which one measures these issues andimpact on affordability has to be various, onmany different scales. one of which is looking atthe broader issue of sprawl and transportationnetworks, and sustainability from that framework. but i think whatthe administration

is trying to do is justprovide a few more choices, so that you don't end up withpeople sharing illegally. apparently it's notlegal for more than three unrelated adults to live inan apartment in new york city, for instance. can you imagine? other that students in dorms. so there are a lot of thingsthat the administration was trying to maybe addressin terms of affordability.

but it will take years--and maybe many examples-- to really, i think, assesswhether it has an impact. irenee, you were-- well, it goes withoutsaying that when one designs and builds a house,the relationship between the actualdesign is contingent. circumstance doesmatter, inevitably. however, i think in thecontext of what i understand this exhibition andthis discussion,

i think that the question is,how can one actually place housing at somehow theforefront of at least one of the main concernsamong architects, in the architecture culture? and i think if thiswere to happen, my feeling is thatarchitects need to look not only at satisfyingwhat some market may demand or what tenants maydemand, but they need to be some steps aheadand consider what actually

constitutes good housing. and i mean, ithink-- and perhaps hilde will correctme if i'm wrong-- but in some periodswhich i can think of which have beenexemplary in housing, and in the experiment whichi would regard as exemplary in housing, it hasusually entailed a group of architectsor an architect to ask thatfundamental question.

what constitutesa good dwelling? what constitutesa good apartment? and then it is theresponsibility of the architect to actually promote it. promote it to whomever is arelevant person to promote it. le corbusier was thinkingabout captains of industries, and he was always fighting--like so many architects in the movement--fighting to actually make this situation possible.

what strikes me verymuch at the moment is that architectsare quite passive. we're what one could callnot captains of industry, but captains of the economy. i saying, well, all right,say i have the power. we are going to givethem what they want. well, if you wantto make housing which is generally good, i thinkthis is not the right approach, in my view.

i think if-- just to come backto what you said-- it turns out that one of the main pointswe're discussing here is the question, how can marketinterests-- with also playing a role in micro-unitsand efforts to preserve the socialcity-- can be reconciled? and i think that'salso something that we arediscussing in berlin. a lot of the studentswho have been there have done beautiful proposalsto solve that question.

and for example, wehave one proposal that is to increase themaximum eaves height-- which is currently at 72feet-- to 85, which would allow private investorsfor the construction of luxury penthouses. with the condition thatthey always, in turn, have to commit to rentingone floor out at 60 euro cents per square foot. so that was one proposalto create affordable space

at the same time and geta social mixture, which is also desired. and i wondered-- comingfrom this background-- when i look at your project,i think it's beautiful. beautifully, theeconomic pressure-- which was also on this project. but i saw in theexhibition two years ago, where your project was-- rightlyso-- awarded the best one, that others collapsed.

other architects collapsedunder the economic pressure to create micro-scaleapartments, and then this turns into kindof a hyper-capitalist worsening of the situation. that people are forced tosqueeze more apartments into the same shape. so my interest wouldbe-- once you're here-- to tell us a little bitmore about how could you create these social-communalspaces, and why?

my only question thatmight be a little critical with your project--coming from berlin with all these communalkitchens and option spaces where you have carpentersdoing something with the kids, and you have a gymin the basement. which, at firstsight, looks even as if it would worsen thesituation of the poor new york person who, afterwork has to come home and exercise in his gymto be fit for the next day.

so coming from thishippie-ass berlin background, you would say, why do you nothave a communal kitchen where you invite people from theneighborhood to experience community? the gym is in the bestpart of the building. it's not in the basement,it's the ground floor. the first floor. so it's even more-- it's very public.

--questionable to--hang out and party. the original idea, in fact, wasto have a creative communities center that would haveprogramming, with dance classes but our partner pulled out. we had an idea-- when wewent into the competition with the actors fund-- wasthe idea that it would have dance performances and so on. they would be halffor the residents, but also for the public.

unfortunately, this was removed. and this is a questionof the agency. i mean, we have safeguardedmany aspects of the project. and thankfully, it wasbecause we won at competition. i think the developers wouldhave crushed us completely, had we not won the competition. we were able to protect somekey ideas like the great ceiling heights, like theamount of public space, the having this publicmain ground floor rather

than retail, for instance. because it was public,it was made public through the competition process. but no, you're right. one can criticize the context. and the architect, we'repart of that context. as i said, i think you-- can i begin on that? because i think thequestion, as it was posed,

was in terms as ifarchitects have to provide quality rather than quantity. and of course, architects haveto think about the quality of living, absolutely. but in saying an architect'sbusiness is quality and not quantity, you avoid topose the question also in political terms. housing is a political issue. it's a decision of a society.

how to provide forhousing, how much budget is allocated for housing. is it just the market forces? and then, of course, therewill be no affordable housing for a lot of people. or is there a correctionto the market forces? and then the politics step in. the politicians decide toallocate a certain budget for making affordable housing.

there is a kindof logic to that, that has everything todo with politics and not with architecture. and so, this politicalcontext is absolutely crucial. that's why thedecision of the mayor to make this exceptionalcircumstances was very necessary to makethis experiment possible. but still, also there,i think we also-- i hear also voicesthat say, well,

is this not a verydangerous spot to follow with thesemicro-apartment? because now you say, it is meantfor single-person households, and they make up the majority ofthe people living in manhattan. that's true at thismoment, but who says that maybe in acouple of year's time that there will not-- familiesor households of more than one or two people moveinto these apartments and recreate slum circumstancesthat we didn't know anymore

since the beginningof the 20th century. that kind of questionsare also asked, and i think it'sright to ask them. it's a question ofregulation, actually. it won't be permitted tolive in this apartment if you're more than people. and i've askedthe question, what happens if you have a child? how much notice do you have?

but i did have oneopportunity to try to intervene as an architectwithin the spectrum of politics, which is when itestified to the city planning council about themicro-units, and was asked for my recommendations onwhat the zoning changes should entail or include. because we are very worriedthat the city will relax these restrictions onthe minimum dwelling size and the densityof the apartment,

without requiring developersto add something back. which we were ableto do by giving, because we're trying to say,look, it's the same volume. so in fact, if we canget greater density in terms of height-- whichis fine in new york-- we can get a lotmore apartments. and i think it's avery important issue. without sacrificing floor arearatio-- far-- without that. so that plus more storage--we have three levels

of storage in the building. there's in the basement,there's-- in your units, you have more than in athree-bedroom apartment, and then you have every floor. that's very important forpeople in a small apartment, in our currentamazon prime economy. and then finally, the socialspaces, which are so important. the best spaces weregiven over to the public. the ground floor, butalso the eighth floor,

which has the setback, which isthe salon for communal kitchen, actually. the communal space for eating. so each one is programmed. there's an office space, there'sa library with a pool table. and this ismarketing consultants who are all over thisand trying to establish exactly what people want. but actually, ina sense, they've

done a good job becausethey've realized there's a spectrum of uses thatare typically not provided. this is what we fear will notmake it into the zoning code when they make the changes. i know, irenee, youwant to come-- i also want to give daniel, megan, andmatt-- if you have, i wonder, do you want to make someremarks or contribution? there. you're nodding your head.

so maybe we can givethem the mic here, and then we'll go backto irenee and if there are any other thoughts. one of the things wewere most interested in, in our work withthe exhibition, was representing thesimultaneity of scale that is inevitable in housing. the search for the kindof living standard, putting the occupant orvisitors at a one-to-one scale

of living within thesespaces, registering some sense of personality, potentially. sort of filling thesethings at the same time as registering how aggregationor organizational logic might actuallyproduce a form that has a more urban resonance. and i'm wondering--because we are interested in thesimultaneity of scale-- where you all feel thegreatest potency is

for architectural design agencyin what's to come for housing? is it in the kind of mediationbetween these two scales-- the space of seclusion or thespace of engagement, perhaps? and i saw that maybeplaying out in examples across all presentations. or are we now in a realmwhere we're surgically adopting what we're inheriting? sort of where new meets old. so i'm wonderingspecifically, what

is the raw materialof the design world in terms of what wecan actually manipulate with housing to come? where do you see thekind of greatest potency or where does that live? ireene, do you want toanswer that and raise your earlier point? no, i'll just waitfor the next question. which also will--

so thank you. and i think-- justto continue what megan was saying-- i thinkthis exhibition really stems from an understandingthat what we're dealing with is an inheritance of modernismand the modernist idea of housing. and in a way, whatmy question would be-- maybe moretowards you, niklas-- are we reinventingthis wheel, or are we

simply redesigning it? and when we see somethinglike the moriyama house-- that to an extent worksor doesn't work today-- what is this? is this really something new,or are we just redesigning the same thing? well, just to answerthis question quickly, we're not reinventing thewheel or redesigning it. i think we're hovering nowwithout wheels because it's

something completely new. the situation iscompletely new, and i thought you gave a beautifultalk on the so-called failure of modernist proposals. and i think, for the firsttime, these modernist proposals could actually work,because for the first time, people are working-- toa large extent-- at home. and if you go toa [? spafeld-- ?] which is architecturally notthe most advanced project,

but it is working beautifullywell-- because these option rooms are, for the firsttime in architectural history since the startingof modernity, people are enabled to work at home. so there's a social controlover these option spaces. so whereas all these spacesthat we find in the robin hood gardens were notused by the people because most of the peoplehad to work all day long in factories or wherever.

they came home, theywere tired, they were not using these spaces. now in thissituation, people are working in these structures,they're working and living there, and thisleads to the fact that you don't have theseslum-like corners, which are undefined and notaccepted by the population and by the inhabitants. but for the first time,people are actually

working in these spaces,and so for the first time, if you repurpose these sometimesold models of the whole house, of early modernistcommunal spaces, there's a chance thatthey could actually work because our workingconditions have changed. and the conditions under whichwe raise children have changed. and this also a thing thatthese new communal structures-- larger extended families areable to look after children while others are working.

so i think that demographics,the change of life rituals, might lead to the fact thatthese models that were already called dysfunctionalcould finally be the germ for a newform of architecture. and again, i told this tothe students in berlin. this here, i think it'sa very exciting moment that we are forced to developforms to accommodate up to a billion people. and i told that before,in asia, india, and africa

alone-- which is not countinglatin america and america and the industrializedcountries of europe. so this is not aapocalyptic number, but this is a fantastic taskfor architects and planners to work togetherto speculate how these forms could be producedand how they could look like. and again, we seein east germany, it's not sufficientto provide units for migrants and forrefugees and put them

on the edge of littlevillages and say, that's fine. there you are, youhave your units. but you have to create socialspaces where people could meet each other, andspaces of encounter, and new forms ofcommunal activities that bring togethernewly-arrived refugees, old inhabitants, and so on. so we are forced todevelop solutions, and that's a bigchance for architects

to start now their practice. so i would be veryhappy if i'd be as tuned and know that i shouldbe part of this committee to find solutions for that. i would be very positiveabout all these developments. but we will-- we're behindthe question of the wheel. we're now in the air. this is more about aerospace andaeronautics, where you are now. so--

i like very much the kind ofoptimism that is in the air. i'm totally optimistic. but at the same time,i'm not completely at ease with the optimism, inthe sense that in the '90s, we talked about theend of public space as if the social media andinternet and so on diminished the need of people to go outand participate in public space. i think it was avery real issue. it still is a real issue.

that there is a [? leaf ?]in the [? quarter-calls ?], this tendency of[? capsulitization. ?] that people tend to insulatethemselves from others by in their bedroom, lookingbehind their computer, doing a lot of thingsthrough facebook, but not going out face-to-face. i wonder if that's true. i mean, many of usare together alone. it's like the discussionat the end of the 80s about

information technologydisplacing the need for public space completely. and in fact, they'vejust superimposed new kinds of media, newuses upon the ones we have. and now libraries arecommunity centers or work-- they're like offices, basically. but my point was, i'mvery happy that you all pick up thesetendencies and say, this is where the future is.

and i absolutely hope it'strue, but i'm not sure that maybe we are mistaken. a lifestyle that is very much alifestyle of a particular part of the population--young, urban, still single-- that wetake this lifestyle to be the lifestyle of the future. is it not the casethat 80% of the people do not live in this way? in research--

even in northamerica and europe? some research by the chpc--citizens housing planning council-- showed no correlationbetween family size and age or any other kindof social indicator like income and so on. in fact, you have alot of elderly people, of course, who are now alone,or a lot of divorced people. apparently that'sa huge new segment of the single or the one--

and who hate to goto retirement homes because they do not wantto give up their privacy? and retirementhomes are an example of micro-apartments with a lotof social space around, no? but people hate to goto retirement homes. so there is a tension there. --formal take onretirement homes, because retirementhomes are basically hospitals where people have tostay for the rest of the lives.

and if you look at the redesignof homes for the elderly, it's interesting to see thatyou come to this communal model again and thatworks beautifully. to come to the secondpoint you mentioned, i'm not sure whetherwe do not have to differentiatemore what's happening with the impact of electronics. also, in the thirdworld, if you look at africa, the chancesthat are given to people

who have internetaccess-- this changes not only the industrializedcountries, but also it changes africato a large extent. and so i think we haveto rethink and redefine our definitions ofprivate life, public life, because even innigeria or in kenya-- where i was recently--many things that were done on the marketplacein a physical way 20 years before-- likeselling goods, buying goods,

exchanging information-- is donevia the internet now in africa. and that helps largely todevelop areas and villages. and so i think that we have asuperimposition of these two levels, which isvery productive. and the only thing that ischallenging is that you cannot really tell anymore, whensomeone worked for eight hours in his bedroom on a computerselling things, buying things, exchanging information. if he leaves his apartmentto have a walk in the street,

is he going from a privatesphere to a public realm? or is he ratherdoing the opposite? is he escaping therealm of communication to have a moment ofimmersion in what we still call public space? i think the binarity of thesepositions-- private and public, inside and outside--it's not working anymore. --movie where the guygoes into a very small cubicle to quickly eat.

yeah. and i think it lies achance-- and you said this, i think-- just tofinish that shortly. you said that we'retrapped in language. and i think thisis a crucial thing. we cannot repeat this oftenenough, that architects-- when they're asked to designa four-story high building-- they think of stacking andaggregating four boxes of three meters high.

and then you have theexample of the house na by fujimori in theexhibition, where he says, no, four storiescould also mean 20 levels. and i think, thisis a liberation of fault from theconstraints of language, which is veryimportant in that time where we have these changes. i mean, my theory inthat is conversations, that housingactually can respond

to very specific circumstancesto do with, for instance, disability. for instance, old age. for instance, evolution ofhouseholds over the years, this, in my view, is aluxury of certain questions, certain countries inthe west and elsewhere. what strikes me at the momentis that there is an absence of a general theory of housing. there is no, for instance, book.

which i'm not sayingthat this is one, but i mean, there is nobook which is equivalent, for instance, to the book--which was written presumably here-- by [inaudible],can our city survive? which was an attemptto actually theorize how we mightapproach the problems in cities, and specifically inhousing on a very large scale. and i think, in myview, architects have perhaps a responsibilityto think about those things.

now to my mind,this kind of work needs to take place upstream,and after that, [inaudible] one wants to have agenerally significant impact on the future of housing. and that everything to do withbeing specific in addressing the offer happens afterwards. i mean, in thoseinstances where other guys have had reallysignificant effects on the development of housing.

we didn't answermegan's question. we're getting there. i think, without actuallyfundamentally changing the structuralthings that define housing asorganization-- the ideas of the family, the units--we're just chiropractors. we're just moving things aroundand compositionally changing things. but can we sketchout and imagine, just

take on the issue oforganizational concepts? what organizes housing, right? orientation, solar orientation,horizontal distribution of circulation,structure, plumbing. if you just take those things. what if we come up witha new idea of plumbing? or what if we don't usewater to evacuate waste? would it actually liberate coresto become not vertical anymore? would it liberaterepetition of floor plates?

new models of structure. i mean, we canthink of a lighter building, more lightweight waysto build buildings, and so on. i think there'san optimistic way to go in and look at everysort of structural thing that's defining housingas we know it now, and that can be thesocial-- dimensionally can be the idea of program. and we can just takethe physical elements.

i'm optimistic. any other thoughts or comments? maybe we'll have-- thereare a couple of hands. three hands, four hands. can we ask you to be brief? i really want everybody tostill be able to go outside and mingle andsee the exhibition and have a glass of wine. so please, go ahead.

i actually had a directquestion to hilde. hilde, you were talking aboutthis concept of isolation that's been more prominentever since social media set in, and the whole use of publicspaces become obsolete, almost. and i guess my questionto you is-- as a designer, as an architect--would you think of responding to thatisolation, and in the future, designing forspaces that support that kind of living as just areality that we're accepting?

or would you think about-- asan architect-- stressing more on community spaces, ormore communal spaces, where people getto actually go back to that sort ofsocial interaction? i think i would gofor the second option. i think this tendencyof individualization is something-- aninsulation of the individual is something that is verycharacteristic of modernity. the fact that we have somany single households

is evidence of that. why do you havesingle households? because people can afford to nolonger live with their parents, to have a divorce. if the economic situationis very, very bad, you don't have as many divorces. because yeah, for along time, women simply could not afford toleave their husbands. so they didn't.

they stayed, and then therewere less single families or single households. so the tendency clearlyisn't that direction, and as architects, weshould not ignore that. but i do believe thatit's very important. as people, we have thisneed to be ourselves, to be our own person. we do desire an amountof individual space. apparently many of us wantto inhabit our own space

without bothering aboutother people living with us. apparently that's what we do. but at the same time, we are,of course, social beings. and i think that'swhy i found one of the most interestingcommon issues here-- that all of usaddressed-- is this need to make interactions possiblebetween the private space and the public realm. and to make intermediary spacesto encourage people to be

part of a larger community. and that's where architecture--in terms of organization of spaces-- have agency. it makes a difference,whether you really make isolated bubbles, wherepeople have trouble getting out of, or whether you givea similar amount of space but in a way that is muchmore transparent and much more encouraging tohave this ferocity and to engage with theintermediate spaces,

the outside world. and i think it's veryimportant to have all these different scale levels. that it's not privateand public and nothing in between, that you havethese communal spaces that are this gradient ofprivate towards public. i think that's veryimportant, and that's an architectural issue. so in that sense, ithink the things that

have been on the tabletoday are very important, because they show differentways of organizing this contact betweenthe private realm and the public realm andeverything in between. so i would not go forthe option of well, ok, if people want to be individual,let them be individual. but i'm not sure that the termsprivate and public-- as useful as they have been at aparticular time-- i think those terms were introduced inthe '70s in architecture speak,

and they actuallyreplaced a term which seems to memuch more useful-- at least at the present time--which previously people were talking aboutthings being social. how social is a housing project? and already, inthis idea, you don't have this contrast between--on the one hand, the private and the public, andtherefore that you can address the public, butyou can't address the private

because private is, bydefinition, private. i think one is a bigissues is, of course, is the seamlessnessof those two domains. and there is alsosomething that is very nice about the idea of thesocial, in that you can address housing in the contextof the whole society or the whole social development. and i think it'simportant for you to remember thatthis is a highly

idealogized and politicaldiscussion we're leading. and if the city of new yorkand the mayor of new york decides to go formicro-apartments for singles, this is kind of anormative decision which excludes the idea ofcreating similar structures for communes. and you could arguethat if you have a large part of thepopulation being single, that you could foster buildingsthat could accommodate groups

of six. and i know it fromsome of my students who spend a summerwith six people in a single-bedroomapartment in manhattan-- which sounded excitingand chaotic to me. but there is clearlya demand in society that consists of single--exist does not necessarily demand for single apartmentsand providing single apartments. and again, i think your projectis a seminal and important

project, but i wish you wouldhave been demand, also-- apart from what you did-- tocreate communal buildings. because i couldimagine that all you said about the unit-- whichis replaced by a dwelling form which is notseparated into units-- could be a valuablething to respond to the need to dwell together. singles might live together. and this also relatesto what you say.

of course people are, in a way,insulated by their technology, but that could alsomean there could be a demand for communal forms. and if you fosterthis demand, then you could come up withnew dwelling forms beyond the classic decisioneither to have a nuclear family apartment, or an apartmentfor the single person. and i think this isfar too few addressed, and it's the politicaldecision to say,

we define a society ofconsisting of singles or families, and not to proposethat people might live together by [inaudible] or acircle of friends. that's what wesee in berlin now, that people are respondingto that by saying, we tried to self-empowerus by buying some land and asking an architectto build something for us. and we pour moneytogether, and then we have this communal project.

and this is a-- but this kind of project--at least in belgium, and i think in similarother elsewhere-- are very oftenmade very difficult because there is no legalformat for this kind of communal property. how do you construct thelegal aspects of property if you decide-- with a groupof 40 people-- to buy land and to build a communalbuilding like that?

that's not easy. that's quite a challenge. in new york, you're not allowedto live like that, right? well, i think you cancreate a cooperative. but it's true. we'd like to find a way todo what [? spafeld ?] has done in brooklyn. sure. so, as you cansee, our panelists

have been so wonderfulthat i'm sure they've answered all the questionsthat the other people were going to ask. so i'm going to usemy executive authority to thank them atthis point, and let you know that three of them--that is, irenee, niklas, and hilde-- will actually beback at 10 am in the library, for those of you who areinterested to continue this discussion.

as you could also see,niklas has plenty of slides, a lot of other things that hewould like to share with you. so come back thenand let us continue the discussion in the morning. that will go onfrom 10 hopefully until 11, 11:30 in the morning. if you can. i do want to thank allof you for being here. i really could sense someenthusiasm and energy

in the room, and i thinkwe're very lucky to have had these presentations. and of course, manythanks to also all of you who helped with theexhibition, and the curators. i do like what hildetried to make sure that we don't forget--which was really at the heart of this particularproject and exhibition. which is for the school--especially at the beginning of the academic year-- to placereally significant resources

and focus on thetopic of housing. and this whole phenomenon ofreclaiming housing, in a way, is a key part of the project ofthe school because it is true that-- for such a long time--the topic has been recognized as being very iconic,very symbolic, and something that werecognize as a significant part of the history of modernism. but i think it'salso the time that we as a community, in away, embrace and reclaim

this particular topic. and i think the quality ofthe exhibition and the quality of the conversation,in some way, tonight, is a very goodbeginning for us to, in a sense, embracethat particular project. so once again,thank you very much. i hope you enjoy the receptionand engage our panelists in further discussion. and come back tomorrow morning,to the library, at 10 o'clock

for more images fromniklas and more discussion.

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