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In the first decades of the twentieth century saw an intense debate on this question: what would be the minimum necessary space for the family room. The so-called minimum existenz was an inspiring occasion of International Congresses of Modern Architecture, which took place in Frankfurt in 1929 sponsored by Ernst May.
The Marxist-inspired social discourse about the needs of the working classes had something to see this interest of the architects on the determination of minimum housing suitable for the development of family life. An interesting feature of these approaches derives was thinking about the city and mass residential architecture that gave rise to certain heroic episodes in the history of the discipline in countries like Holland and Germany.
As a result of those discussions emerged the concept of minimal house that inspired the work of analysis on housing typological series Alexander Klein, published in 1930 as praktische Beiträge zur Wissenschaft als Wohnungsfrage (on housing issues practical science) and subsequently collected in his essay Minimum Housing 1906-1957 (published in Spain by Gustavo Pili in 1980). There was evaluated in depth the problem of existential surfaces necessary for the working family residence and that effort has led to a very specific case mix of social housing. In our country had a political impact, and even legislation, from the mid-60's with the establishment of surface interval called social housing and, beyond, the administrative requirements for the public production of housing.
A legal framework has resulted in a coercive environment that does not adapt adequately to changes experienced by new forms of family life. Space requirements call social housing standards has continued maintaining surface and minimal spaces serving ideal for a family composed of father, mother and several children, which could be the usual model in 1950 but now does not respond at all to a sociological reality altogether.
A-House. Bahman Reiner and François d'Allegret. 1965
The evolution of the concept of minimum floor space has had several temporary breaks throughout the twentieth century to achieve an extreme formulation in the 60 and 70. A example of these concerns reflect what the British critic Reiner Banham when presenting the concept of environmental bubble as a viable alternative to minimum housing requirements. Its sectional image of the A-House presented him naked with his friend François D'Allegret in air-conditioned environment formed by a transparent membrane and inflatable, with a few core elements of communication. Banham environmental bubble is ideally situated at any place represented by a rock undetermined.
This was a concept supported by a technology called ultra intended to open a field of debate that went beyond the question technique to spur an aesthetic transformation of inhabited environment. The strategy of those British architects of the 60's, as the Archigram group would aim to act in these cases, as true provocateurs in order to produce a renewal at all aesthetics of architecture. An effort to bear fruit years later in his countrymen's work as Norman Foster and Richard Rogers. The Pompidou Center in Paris would give certificate of naturalization to this view of the latest technological cutting edge architecture.
floor of the Tower Unit Nagakin. Kisho Kurokawa. Tokyo, 1972
emerged in the 50's also an interesting panel discussion on what should be the strategies to accommodate the population in densely populated areas. The movement called itself Metabolism and developed mainly in Japan. His approach was based on the imitation of natural forms in his accommodation to the boundary environmental conditions and application of advanced technologies to ensure the best response built and fit into the service network. Inspiration in the structures and organic forms led them to put a special emphasis on the provision of technical infrastructure as a factor inevitably pattern composition de la arquitectura.
Uno de los ejemplos más significativos del movimiento de Arquitectura Metabolista es la Torre Nagakin, terminada en 1972 por Kisho Kurokawa en el barrio de Ginza en Tokio. Desgraciadamente, parece que está a punto de desaparecer como consecuencia de la falta de mantenimiento técnico y constructivo y su sustitución por otro edificio que intensifique el denso proceso especulativo de esta parte de la ciudad japonesa.
El complejo Nagakin consiste en la agrupación flexible de un conjunto de capsulas habitables unipersonales que permitían el acomodo vital en unas condiciones espaciales y de servicios mínimas. Sería the final expression of those ideas and technology related to minimun existenz the much-discussed in the international world of architecture from a century ago.
plant distribution of a Capsule Hotel in Tokyo.
drift is interesting and curious of this search is the minimum space posed by Japanese capsule hotels ". A supervening social necessity, which in turn led to the choice to return home late for the office of the central districts of Japan's capital, gave rise to a niche business that constituted a form of spatial organization is now also another tourist attraction.
The typological arrangement of capsule hotels, inspired by the precedent of Nagakin Torre, is usually organized by bedroom units arranged in overlapping stalls along narrow corridors with common areas cleaning and storage . Another feature of these buildings is the provision of a highly sophisticated living environment which provides access to digital telecommunications and sophisticated visual entertainment.
The Japanese capsule hotel is adapted to an environment of extraordinary density and soaring real estate costs. In the extreme competition for space seems to be back to the formation of a matrix very similar environment to the uterus and offers intellectual nourishment.
Interior floor unit of the capsule hotel. Photo: Tyas, Flickr
A final proposal, perhaps more futurist and therefore can be an exciting advance, is what has been called the terminal architecture. It is an idea that the British journalist Martin Pawley suggested in 1998, his last and posthumous book of the same title, Terminal Architecture. They described a future of environmental machines allowed reconfiguration of the environment at the user's personal. The provision of an area protected by a foil-a way of Banham A-House-offer its residents a recreation of any visual space, landscape or architecture using holographic projectors. The terminal and imagined architectural imagination to each user connect to the world in an intangible.
Pawley argued that any new architecture suffers from a major conceptual error. Design efforts are directed overwhelmingly to the formal definition, would objetual of buildings, just at a time that strategy has exhausted sense and is not in the interests of both social and economy. Meanwhile, the architects are working on providing incoherently architecture with an identifiable image, which is leading to a cacophonous urban environments filled with buildings that express disparate styles and confusing.
However, the appearance of buildings is a matter that is ceasing to be relevant in an age of mass distribution of digital information. The monumental design of the architecture only makes sense at this time, in brand brings big business or included in the tourism industry of the competing cities. The great mass of architecture contemporánea no va a poseer una significación cultural, en cuanto su papel fundamental va a ser funcional ante todo, por su condición de espacio final de enlace con las redes eléctricas y de telecomunicaciones.
De hecho el anonimato y el camuflaje se han convertido ya en las tácticas esenciales para el desarrollo de la arquitectura ligada a las empresas transnacionales. Hoy en día, la amenaza del terrorismo ha espoleado la búsqueda de la seguridad a través de la localización de las infraestructuras básicas en espacios anodinos y no identificables. Los centros de datos de los que he hablado en otra ocasión, son piezas esenciales del sistema de distribución en red de la información y this architecture does not have a brilliant narrative correlation: large ships almost hidden structures, business parks located insubstantial, close to major road networks and telematic communication.
data center the company Google at Groningen University in the Netherlands. Photo: Erwin Boogert, Flickr
There significant examples in this respect as some already pointed Pawley in his book: The building for the headquarters of Exxon Company in Dallas, a team work Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, 1996 is completely unknown project because the company demanded total anonymity. En ese caso se impidió radicalmente la publicación de sus características espaciales en la prensa especializada, o simplemente la difusión de imágenes sobre su aspecto exterior. O el caso de la empresa Lufthansa que cuenta con oficinas públicas en todas las principales ciudades alemanas y algunas otras en el resto del mundo pero que, sin embargo, el centro donde se produce la actividad económica principal, es decir su central de reservas, se realiza en un edificio desconocido en un polígono industrial impersonal en la región irlandesa de Galway.
Debido a este fenómeno también, la arquitectura popular de nuestro tiempo, aquella relacionada con la producción de vivienda contemporánea, recurre a la estrategia de la representación de pasados históricos soñados e idealizados. Lo importante no es ya el continente sino la calidad de su conexión con las redes de servicios y, principalmente, con el acceso a las telecomunicaciones.
Deberíamos de dejar de pensar en la arquitectura como un reclamo publicitario y pasar a interesarnos más en cuales son sus funcionalidades esenciales y, por ello, en la importancia de la disposición de las redes de infraestructuras que lo conectan con el territorio circundante y con el mundo en general. Se debe incidir no solo en la forma en que llegan y salen el agua y los productos físicos que consumimos, sino también en toda intangible commodity that depends on power and quality information.
Nagakin Torre in the Ginza district in Tokyo. Kisho Kurokawa, 1972>
