by Andrea Contursi
The compression of domestic space in a small living units provided with all necessary features for living, has been a long- term dream of the Modernist design culture. This process of “minimalisation”, which has already been proposed with only partial success as housing solution for the big workers families in the twenties years of 20th century or with the prefabricated mass housing of Socialist Eastern Europe, looks much more suited to the actual needs one century later, as households tend to become increasingly smalls or even single-based and average costs for real estate are booming both because of the enhanced technical requirements and for the increased scarcity of buildable land. As opposite to the concentration of people in big housing blocks, this project is dealing with housing projects based on the idea of “decentralisation” ans small housing units: from Kropotkin’s theories about autarch food supply through small gardens, passing by the “Kleingärtensiedlungen” of inter-war Germany to finish with the currently growing interest of the public towards “Tiny-houses” and other forms of alternative independent housing.
ABC_coop 