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Abstract
The Great Recession 2008-12 and the subsequent collapse of the US hous-ing market followed by many European markets have definitely challenged a system based on extensive development and low-density cities that have meant so far unbearable costs in terms of infrastructures, time of travel, traf-fic jam, pollution and land exploitation. The Great Recession has implied a structural change of society (new migratory flows, transformation of the relationships between generations, family composition, time and workplace) which has been registered by the tool of housing. An issue that we thought was prerogative of the heroical season of the First Modern Age is now back: resi-dence as a primary form of socializing that takes the value of Monument in terms of scale and theoretical, linguistic and technological experimentation. Facing the crisis of contemporary housing, this research aims to elaborate a prototype of a new collective dwelling, a sort of Unité d’habitation 2.0, that moves from a critical analysis of projects such as Ginzburg’s Narkom-fin and Le Corbusier’s Unité, to achieve a model able to solve the current needs of society.
A contemporary project of collective housing should mean:
• a high-density project instead of low-density land occupation;
• an appropriate scale of the project (a compliant size), until it takes a critical mass to ensure its sustainability;
• a social and functional mixité, a positive ghetto, able to fight the disintegration of contemporary society;
• to match with the ground connection of the building and its relation with the contest;
• to respond to the criteria of energy and environmental sustainability with a Zero-energy building (NZEB);
• a new flexibility and neutrality, while ensuring the possibility for individuals express themselves through their customization; • accessibility of housing, lowering down costs;
• facilities as part of the building also to the neighborhood in which it occurs.
The goal is to achieve a new type of low-cost, accessible and high-efficient collective housing, which includes non-residential facilities and takes the role of reference point for the neighbourhood.
In the end, when the architecture of the residence exceeds a certain crit-ical mass it becomes prototype and assumes a monumental scale that becomes indifferent to the context.
