A new social way of living in building design

Abstract

Often, the current housing stock does not address problems of social isolation at this moment in time. For example, dwellings are designed as interior spaces and the route towards the home is often an unpleasant and boring one. It is important for architects and designers to have positive impulses and guidelines to address these problems. To find these kind of guidelines, I started my graduation at the Explore Lab studio at the TU Delft with a research. Parallel to a literary study, I researched people, their social relations, space, objects and architecture through observational studies relating to social sciences (short-term ethnography, qualitative fieldwork inquiry, praxeology). I found patterns in elements relating to social relations which enabled the drafting of design principles. Through the design of a programmatic hybrid city building in Rotterdam, challenges of social isolation were explored and addressed across scales. Not only the space in and around the home, also the workspace in or outside the home is important to consider within this problematic. In the design proposal, social relations are considered in for example the route through the building, sightlines between spaces within the building, in the program, and in the didactics and details of the facade.