FOCUS ON HYBRID SPACES
Photo: Rubén Linares
THERE IS A SERIOUS SHORTAGE OF SPACE, ESPECIALLY IN CITIES. THAT IS WHY IT MAKES SENSE TO STRIVE FOR A MORE INTENSIVE USE OF THE AVAILABLE SPACES. BESIDES URBAN PLANNING AND ECONOMICS, MUCH IS TO BE GAINED FROM ECOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS: IF YOU COMBINE FUNCTIONS, OR IF YOU UTILIZE THE AVAILABLE SPACE FOR MOST OF THE DAY, THERE WILL BE LESS NEED FOR ADDITIONAL BUILDING.
Hybrid spaces of the this kind are not committed to a strict layout or a rigid segregation of functions. Functions that you would not normally expect to be ranged side-by-side are allowed to share a single space. That is of course nothing new. If you work for a cool startup, you could intersperse programming and video conferences with an occasional bout of table-tennis; at home, you might consider installing a kitchen island in the living room; and no one would raise an eyebrow if, while waiting for a train or a plane, you engaged in a shopping spree. More generally, the internet has lead to a far-reaching hybridization of functions in our day-to-day life. We engage in personal conversations on the street or in a shop, we check our email in a café, and we work or shop at home with a laptop on the settee or in bed. Private merges into public, public into private, the businesslike into intimacy and the intimate into business. We have long forgotten where one thing begins and another ends.
It goes without saying that mixed activities of this kind are not without problems. At the same time, we may find them exciting, particularly in the city. The mingling of functions is after all practically a hallmark of urbanity. Functional mixing can lead to unexpected encounters, surprising moments and novel experiences. That there are people around you who are busy with entirely different activities gives you a new angle on your own preoccupations. One function reflects against another, and the obviousness of what you do, its routine character, is contradicted by what others are doing in the same space. As long as you are willing to maintain an open attitude, functional mixing can reward you with a new outlook on who you are and what occupies you mentally – a welcome source of inspiration.
The projects by Calibro Zero and by ORU-Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana, further described below, convey exactly that urban optimism. They are original hybrid spaces with exceptional qualities. That even ordinary living rooms can be considered hybrids is illustrated by the apartment space of Pachon-Peredes. The residents may themselves decide to a considerable extent how the spaces will be utilized. Hybrid, in this context, indicates that the apartment makes possible countless combinations of different functions.
JARDÍN DE SOMBRAS, LOS CABOS Baja California Sur, Mexico
Public space can be considered as hybrid by definition. Even more than buildings, such space is meant to be used for a simultaneous variety of functions, and there are few limits to the activities that can take place there. The Jardín de Sombras ("Shade Garden") in Los Cabos, Baja California Sur, Mexico, was designed by ORU-Oficina de Resiliencia Urbana (Elena Tudela, Victor M. Rico and Adriana Chávez), Julián Arroyo, Gabriel Azurara Pellicer and Virens, in collaboration with the Faculty of Architecture of Mexico’s National Autonomous University. It adds a further function to the existing hybrid objectives: protection against natural disasters.
The Shade Garden lies in a bone-dry, underdeveloped city area that is regularly afflicted by hurricanes – not exactly an ideal place to live in. It consists of a roofed structure as well as open space. The roofed building is equipped with toilets and a low-cost, low-maintenance kitchenette. The outdoor complex includes a football pitch, an athletics facility, a children's playground and, in the shade of the building, a skateboard rink. In the event of a natural disaster, there is a space available for crisis organization, communications, general storage, medical refrigeration and a cistern for drinking water and hygiene.
For this project, which has been developed under Mexico’s Urban Improvement Program, the architects had three objectives in mind. Firstly, they wished to create a liveable climate with adequate shade and natural ventilation, amid the merciless desert surroundings of the Shade Garden. The other aims were to promote social integration and, as stated, to offer protection against natural disasters such as hurricanes. That is why the architects designated the project as an "infrastructure in the desert". While sports halls tend to be equipped hastily with field beds and board partitions for overnight accommodation, the Shade Garden caters for people who need shelter for longer periods. That is by no means a luxury: the residents of the nearby surroundings have no alternative. Their own, often flimsy, dwellings can not be trusted to protect them in a severe storm.
In aesthetic as well as functional respects, the sawtooth roof is a clever solution. It is oriented so as to admit sufficient illumination but also to block the fiercely direct sunlight. Preparations were made for future installation of solar panels. The roofs are furthermore aligned to capture the cool north wind and thereby provide generous natural ventilation for the building, whereas the south winds, often of hurricane strength, are diverted as far as possible over the rooftops.
ARCHITECT: ORU-OFICINA DE RESILIENCIA URBANA Photos: SEDATU Secretariat of Agrarian, Land and Urban Development (Mexico)
RESEARCH CENTRE AND OFFICES, CIM4.0 Turin, Italy
The manufacturing world is in the middle of a rapid transformation. Planetary urgencies, new production needs and constantly changing standards are just a few of the factors that are driving industry into a new, augmented dimension. It is the starting point of an ambitious project, carried out by the architectural and digital design studio Calibro Zero (Francesco Carota, Margherita Iperique, Giorgio Salza) in partnership with the architect Federico Gatto and the engineer Marina Carbone. This Italian centre for Competence Industry Manufacturing (CIM4.0) realizes and promotes educational and open innovation programmes, in order to help Italian enterprises in their transition towards Industry 4.0.
The design relates to the reuse of a former educational space in the city of Turin for the realization of a pilot line, dedicated to digital manufacturing: a highly innovative space in which small and medium enterprises can test their products and processes before going to the market. To achieve this goal, Calibro Zero has questioned obsolete spatial divisions based on typological functions and categorizations. Instead it hosts the hybridization of different functions in a single space, ranging from an exhibition hall to small industrial production, and from office work and experimental laboratories to training and educational activities.
The design revolves around concepts such as reconfigurability, flexibility, and humanization of the production space, combining typically industrial spatial and material strategies with inspirations derived from the domestic and theatrical world. The demolition of internal walls gives shape to an open space in which social activities and practices can converge, intersect and reconfigure themselves according to contingent needs. The spatial organization thus allows the overlapping of different flows of people and uses of space where the operational areas alternate with rest areas. Here, CIM4.0 experts can show visitors the spaces in action even when at full working capacity.
The perimeter wall is conceived as a support infrastructure for the changing arrangement of furnishing elements. Made with a continuous counter-wall in blue grating panels, the cladding system allows hiding of the external electrical system with a continuous surface on which to place various furnishing components. These components, equipped with a common hooking system, can be easily removed and repositioned. The internal partitions consist of a curtain system, making it possible to divide the space into distinct areas according to different needs.
ARCHITECT: CALIBRO ZERO Photos: Fabio Oggero
NON-BINARY SPACE APARTMENT Madrid, Spain
What we do when we live somewhere has become more and more diffuse as years go by. Home is no longer a private castle where you can withdraw from the outside world. The walls have lost their relevance, firstly thanks to telephone and television and subsequently due to the internet; the barrier between inside and outside has become porous. In the home, too, a rigid allocation of functions to the rooms is no longer consistent with the open, continually changing way people live. Now and then we experience a need to throw everything out, at least as long as the house presents a possibility to share or use the rooms in a new way. Even more flexibility is wanted on account of the diverse social constellations in which we currently live together, whether as a couple, a one-parent family, a conventional family or a co-housing group.
Meeting the growing need for flexibility is a pressing but difficult architectural task. If you are an architect you should be capable of designing an interior that change effortlessly along with the varying uses or users, without repeatedly needing expensive renovations and paying the associated ecological costs. But, when designing, where must you turn while so many options lie open? What functionality should you accord to a room if you can't predict what will take place there? What atmosphere should you pursue, what character and what spatiality?
With the Non-Binary Space Apartment in Madrid, the Spanish architecture firm Pachón-Paredes demonstrates that the design of a flexible, hybrid living space is not beyond reach. On the contrary, while an apartment in a fifteen-storey residential tower crowded no less than nine rooms into a modest floor area of 100 m2, the architects envisaged a spatial layout that could be deployed in innumerable ways. No function can claim a right to a particular space, so the way it is organized is left to the user.
The apartment, as a prototype of hybrid living space, presents an example that can be taken to greater lengths. Its simplicity alone ensures a concept that is wholly convincing. In an open space in the shape of a Latin cross, each function can be allocated to a particular area according to preference: a kitchen, dining room, bathroom, living room, bedroom, a room for yoga, ballet or music, a study area etc. Anything that requires a permanent place can be situated in the rectangular rooms encompassed by the cruciform walls – in the leftover spaces as it were.
ARCHITECT: PACHÓN-PAREDES Photos: Luis Asin