Inhabitation in the common realm: three proposals by Abalosllopis Architects

Abstract

“Tree is leaf and leaf is tree

House is city and city is house

A tree is a tree but it is also a huge leaf

A leaf is a leaf but it is also a tiny tree

A city is not a city unless it is also a huge house

A house is a house only if it also a tiny city”

Aldo van Eyck’s “Tree – Leaf” diagrams presented at the Team 10 meeting at Royaumont in 1962 trying to demonstrate the inseparable reciprocity between the house and the city is the starting point in this paper. But it reveals that it is even possible to go beyond on this parallelism: the tree is the result of its many leaves -as the city form is based on each architectural intervention-, and the leave is an answer to the structure of the tree -as the house to its socio-cultural realm.

The aim of this paper is to present a reflection about inhabitation and its mechanisms not so much as architectural objects but as generators of a shared social and cultural space. Hence, the presence of life in architecture gains momentum on non-defined spaces that spontaneously become in-between realms that connect a building with its surroundings through the expansion of the relationships between the interior and the exterior, between the built and the unbuilt, or between the public and the private.

Lastly, these linking ideas between the house and the city will be analyzed in specific cases of study. Particularly, the paper examines three projects of abalosllopis architects that deal with the meaning of habitation not focusing so much on their materiality but on the perspective of this non-material condition of architecture: a nursery school, a nursing home and a public space.