This project reconsiders the Cerdà block with a new generic building type based on a housing system whose dwelling units each contain a generous private outdoor entrance porch always situated on the sunny side of a perimeter block building, whether it faces out toward the street or inward to the courtyard of the block. This entrance porch is an outdoor space large enough to accommodate outdoor seating, clothes drying racks, bicycles, and is situated between a communal outdoor walkway providing access to a small number of dwellings on every floor, and to the central kitchen/dining room of every dwelling. It is at once both an intermediary social filter between the communal and the private realm, as well as an intermediary climatic realm: the private porch can be closed in winter by means of a polycarbonate sliding partition that captures passive solar energy, or it can simply be left open in summer. On the outside, a parallel sliding shutter with horizontal louvres provides security and visual privacy while permitting natural ventilation. The choice of which sliding partition to enclose the porch with rests entirely with occupants of the dwelling.
Each of these entrance porches has glass sliding or folding doors into a kitchen and dining room within the unit — a central space from which all other rooms are accessed. These rooms, some of which face onto the south-orientated porch while others face north, are roughly equal in size and do not have programmatic uses assigned to them. Residents use them as they see fit, whether as a double or single bedroom, a living room, a home office, a room in a shared flat, or for whatever is needed. In a shared flat all generic rooms can be used as bedrooms, with the kitchen/ dining area and connected porch being the main social spaces.
The concept of generic rooms has been previously explored by architects such as Peris+Toral, HArquitectes and MAIO (among others), while the idea of the porch as a filter between a communal access walkway and a private dwelling has been previously explored by architects such as Data AE and Narch. The innovative precedents realised by these architects for social housing promoters such as IMPSOL in the Barcelona metropolitan area have opened exciting new ground for the architectural exploration of new, more flexible and climatically responsive kinds of dwelling units for housing.
all images and drawings: Rafael Gomez-Moriana
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