SHARED SPACES

by Enric Canet

The disappearance of private and public boundaries, leisure and work limits, and the line between intimacy and sociability, is enabling new structures within the house”.

Joel Booy, Truly Studio.

Words like co-living, coworking, all-in-one rooms, merging or homeoffice, and concepts such as flexible, hybrid, or multifunctional spaces, are now part of our vocabulary. The decor and design magazines have showed offices that looked like living rooms and pubs that are used as offices. We have also seen wonderful apartments with areas specially developed and adapted for work or the hybridization of spaces, both among themselves and with the exterior.

All these new structures, that were already in our imaginary, are now part of our everyday scenario.

With the lockdown, and almost as in a sociological experiment, all traditional uses and functions of our homes were dramatically changed, but with much less glamour that in the magazines.

And, as if it was Kafka’s methamorphosis, the kitchen became a bakery and the corridor a running track. The bedroom-bathroom binomial became a family friendly touristic resort and any corner in the house facing a worthy enough wall was our office.

Other spaces, such as the terrace, became our Central Park and the hall, formerly a useless space, evolved into a disinfection area.

In short, limits were modified and removed because new needs were created.

“All of us, I think, see our house as a frontier between private comfort and the first step of where we meet people”.

David Chipperfield, Architect.

 

However, limits define spaces. Without limits, there is space, but not spaces. Not a trivial issue, because they form and structure the place where we live, where we work and where we socialize. At the same time, spaces isolate and protect us, offering security.

Now we know that the definition of space exists as long as it is appreciated, in other words, function generates space and not the other way around.

In this way, a well illuminated corner can be modified to create an optimal working environment, while adapting a place to an activity and a timetable allow us to adjust it better to its function.

Today, as well, with a phone or a laptop in our hands, or a pair of virtual reality glasses on our eyes, we can be that space.

“The issue of change it is not having to adapt and modify the space with distinctive characteristics, the issue is that those characteristics exist beforehand”.

Herman Hertzberger, Arquitecto y ingeniero.

We have to rethink the limits. By changing old spaces, we create new relationships among them so they can adapt to us to become more functional.

We can create new structures that adapt to various activities, or we can adjust the activities to already existing structures. In any case, always aiming to continue their dialogue about what we are and what we do, so they can question us emotionally.