Stairscraper

15.12.2010 - 22.01.2011

97 Kenmare Street, New York, NY 10012, USA, USA

The contemporary housing is spreading Into The more complex and (broad) concept of HABITAT. Housing project is impossible today without thinking of something much more complex than simply the solution to meet a social need and right.

The housing today, so also the motto "TOTAL HOUSING" of the call seems justified, it represents the idea of understanding a wider habitat, a system of complex social relationships with the environment in search of enjoyment of life, mixing different ambits, different uses.

An habitat sensible to the singularities , designed for cultural exchange, uses, programs and activities in relation with work, communication and leisure. These human attitudes could not be more separate.

The time of urban planning related to the division of time and space in 8h 8h 8h (hours for a tot m2 per person;time for work tot m2 per person, time for leisure tot m2 per person, time for the rest tot m2 per person) through which have been conceived modern cities with their standards, has given way during last 15 years, to the possibility of a match the activities between residential, recreational, educational, productive ,carried out in a 24-time continuum in which it is difficult to differentiate spaces for their activities.

It's easy to say that in relation to the contemporary change in the space-time conditions also change the structure of society and the peculiarity of mobility in an urban environment, a social space, more and more defined by cultural diversity, and multiplicity of attitudes and activities.

The work space becomes for example an open space to many other possibilities and activated in a productive and at the same time ludic time not necessarily restricted in a specific area (space-time) of the day.

So the investigation of a "TOTAL HOUSING" can not be reduced to the study of some typologies of different and flexible as it can be but rather should be extended to the environment of complicity with the urban complexity and complicity. Interior and exterior, intimate and social space, landscape and architecture, the habitat cellula and "his" sensitive relationship with the natural and urban environment at the same time.

Questioning the relationship between quality and quantity is the essence of this radical research. THE Stair-scraper is a real provocation on the possibility of extending the housing to a Total Habitat sensitive to individual needs in a collective whole. So the passage from the private cottages to social cottages, maintaining individual and intimate space is evident.