TEAM:

Roberto Ferlito  creative director

Alessandra Faticanti coordinator

Sebastiano Palumbo, architect

Agita Putnina, architect

Teo Valli, architect

Furio Sordini, architect

Sandra Stefanovic, junior architect

Isidora Stecky, junior architect

Assigned Typology:       Mixed use Building- International competition, New York

Client:                              Store Front for art and architecture - Private investors

Area:                                97.327 m3

Project phase:                 ON HOLD - winner Total Housing Competition, New York

Date:                                2011

The Stairscraper international Competition and private proposal - Mixed-use building

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.

The housing today, 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 to rest and sleep tot m2 per person) through which modern cities have been conceived, has given way during last 15 years,  to the possibility of matching residential, recreational, educational and productive activities 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, these 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 activities.

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

So the investigation of an "HOUSING" Concept today can not be reduced to the study of some flexible typologies but rather should be extended to the environment of complicity with the urban complexity. The relation between interior and exterior, intimate and social space, landscape and architecture, the habitat cell and "his” sensitive interaction with the natural and urban environment at the same time are essential to the contemporary housing.

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 (no spaces social bookmarking) to social cottages, maintaining individual and intimate space is evident.

The vertical building is a superposition of individual singular garden houses with the same characteristic of the horizontal sprawl but liberating the land and concentrating the uses and the energy. It is a collective of individualities. The stair scraper is a complex 360 degree incorporate all kind of common facilities and public spaces at different levels maintaining the intimacy of the individual space with the same quality. 

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