Ambiguous Spaces

Versatile, flexible, undefined spaces: towards a sustainable and resilient domestic architecture

[Originally published in Marta Poch, ed.: Housing in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona 2015-2024. Barcelona: IMPSOL-AMB, 2024. Translated from the Spanish by Elaine Fradley.]

[Versión en castellano disponible aquí]

Over the last decade, a significant shift has taken place in the architecture of IMPSOL social housing, a wave of innovation that has not occurred in half a century. These latest projects break radically with models that were unquestioned for decades, especially when it comes to the design of dwelling unit types, the most private realm.

In the eighties and nineties, Barcelona excelled in the design of its public spaces: new democratic institutions, infrastructures, public squares and parks. This public architecture captured the world’s attention, and so in the first decade of the 2000s, the time of the 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures, the city’s “Olympic model” became transformed toward spectacle and tourism. The early 2010s, however, saw a deepening economic crisis that led to an unprecedented interest in social housing, a field that had hitherto occupied the background. It was then that a new generation of architects emerged with an interest in affordable housing offering greater flexibility and energy efficiency, and less gender discrimination; homes in tune with the times. Many of these innovative projects have now been completed and are inhabited, making it possible to appreciate, analyse and evaluate work that will probably mark a before and after in the development of social housing in Barcelona.

This growing architectural interest in social housing comes at a time of important cultural, social, economic and political changes that have great effects on this discipline. Issues such as access to housing or the well-being of our planet are being addressed like never before. Faced with an increase in inequality and political polarization that coincides with a climate emergency, architects are questioning our extractive economic model and the excessive use we make of natural resources, both in the construction and during the lifetime of buildings. Primordial questions are resurfacing, and the home— the shelter—is the most primordial architecture of all.

Housing is a subject of great architectural and planning complexity, even more so when it comes to social housing. Most of the built floor area of our cities is residential, and the home is also where we spend most of our time (even when there is no pandemic). Housing is, by its very ubiquity, the architecture that most defines us as a society. The new housing is above all characterized by residential unit types that radically reconfigure domestic space. Housing is being rethought accordingly, starting with the most private and primordial space, that of the home. The dwelling unit is the basic module of any collective housing project, and its transformation can affect the configuration of our cities. In the past, social housing innovation in Barcelona was mainly focused on urban massing and the architecture of communal spaces, which is consistent with an interest in public space. The architecture of residential units was mostly taken for granted and left unquestioned. The projects included in this publication, however, break with custom in order to respond to more diverse ways of living.

Although no clear unifying trend can be identified in the varied projects that follow, all share a concern with creating domestic spaces that are more generic and adaptable to different styles and ways of life. Compared to the social housing of former decades (as can be seen in previous IMPSOL publications, for example), more experimentation with dwelling unit types can be perceived. If there is a guiding thread among the many innovative projects presented in this book, it is perhaps the introduction of more ambiguous space into the dwelling unit. Domestic space is now less defined with respect to use or to limits; it can be interior, exterior or both; public, communal or private… Indeterminacy is precisely what enables greater versatility and freedom. Ambiguous spaces are more versatile since they do not have to conform to exact—and therefore limiting—designations.

Ambiguity is a characteristic of our uncertain and unstable times. The Anthropocene, our present geological era, is conditioned more by human activity than by natural phenomena, specifically by carbon dioxide emissions due to our intensive use of fossil fuels. Architecture must respond in two different ways with respect to climate change: on the one hand, buildings must consume less energy in their construction and during their use to minimize contributing to climate change, and on the other hand they must also be designed to be more resistant to the new climatic conditions. In these less predictable times, we need an architecture that is more resilient and more adaptable to change.

Architectural ambiguity—spaces that are less strictly defined and more versatile—is one way to achieve buildings that are more adaptable in the long term and therefore more durable, sustainable and resilient. In the case of social housing, which is highly regulated and must be compact and efficient, architectural ambiguity also entails designing spaces that are perceptively larger in addition to being more versatile. Architecture has to be flexible and adaptable to all sorts of possible scenarios when the eventual inhabitants and their needs are unknown, as is the case with social housing. A space intended strictly for a specific purpose is no longer useful when that purpose becomes obsolete, which is why many functionalist-era buildings are no longer very functional today. “Form follows function” is unsustainable by definition, as sustainable architecture is, above all, one that is useful over a long duration; one that does not need to be demolished and replaced every time a technological or cultural change occurs in society.

Architecture’s new interest in residential unit types is a characteristic of the present moment. In the five decades prior to 2010, the dwellings of affordable housing projects varied relatively little. This can be seen by the way the rooms of a typical late-twentieth century Spanish flat are clearly separated from each other, connected only by means of a long, often narrow corridor. Each function has its specific space, and each space its function. This produced the flat that we all know, which is accessed from a stairwell via an entry vestibule that quickly becomes a long corridor from which rooms are accessed. The first door usually leads to the living-dining room, the largest space in the home and the one that is most representative and public. The next door typically leads into a narrow, enclosed kitchen that is so cramped that only one person can work there at a time. Then come the doors to the bathrooms and bedrooms that vary in size according to traditional family hierarchies. On the exterior façade of the flat, in front of the living room, there is often a balcony barely a metre wide—a bit of outdoor space for plants, storage, or the air-conditioning unit. Almost all post-war Spanish flats follow this basic layout, the only difference being geometry and the exact number of bedrooms and bathrooms. The enclosed kitchen, narrow balcony and long corridor separating hierarchically organized bedrooms formed part of an unquestioned architecture for over half a century.

This standard model of the past no longer serves most of today’s population. The first thing we see in almost all the projects published here is the new placement of the kitchen, now more typically an integral part of a dining room located in or near the centre of the home. Now, rooms open directly onto this central kitchen-dining room via large double or sliding doors that allow spaces to be joined and avoid the need for a corridor. The living room, meanwhile, is now only an optional use of one of the generic rooms, which are now larger thanks to the elimination of the corridor. The balcony has in some cases become an intermediate social space between an external communal walkway and the front door, a place where residents can also greet their neighbours while enjoying some fresh air. Rather than exclusive uses, these spaces can fulfil multiple functions, an ambiguity that allows inhabitants to adapt apartments to their needs rather than the other way around.

Today’s society is more diverse than ever, and architects who design social housing never know in advance who will occupy their building once complete. Years ago, social housing was designed for the most typical occupant, and the rest had to adapt; today, it is designed for most occupants through built-in flexibility. It is true that in the past there was much more social uniformity, the typical occupant being the traditional family. Now that this kind of family is increasingly a minority, there is no typical occupant of a home today. […]

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