Dogma

Live Forever/The Return of the Factory

This project for a Unitè d’habitation was developed as a response to an invitation by the Tallin Biennale to rethink the main Station in Tallin which is one of the most prominent public buildings built during the socialist rule of Estonia. Rather than playing with the station itself, we focused on the large area along the tracks near the station on the edge of the Telliskivy Creative Campus. Currently this is a prime location for real estate development. Countering this situation we proposed an alternative scenario in which the current owner – the national railway company – rather than selling this land to private developers, would lease it to the city in order to build social housing. Many European cities have a lot of land along railway tracks that are still in the hands of public authorities, we considered this scenario and the consequent architectural proposal applicable to other similar situations. 

We propose a building for 16.000 inhabitants that contains both living and working spaces. The building is explicitly designed as Unitè D’habitation’. Unlike its illustrious predecessor, it is not made of apartments and collective spaces. But rather an open and adjustable system of cores and partitions in which living and working, the collective and individual inhabitation, can be constantly negotiated and adapted to unforeseen conditions of use. The basic unit whose dimension 6x6x6 m is also the bay of the concrete load bearing structure. The room can function as a cell for one or two persons and can be used as both living and working space. The generous height of the room allows its vertical subdivision into two floors. The bay structure allows for easy aggregation of rooms into larger units. This means that rooms can be combined vertically and horizontally into larger houses. Each room can be equipped with a core that contains basic utilities: a bathroom, a storage, a kitchenette. The core acts as a room ‘totem’ that can support a large bed accessible by a small staircase. Every fifth core contains the vertical circulation. The circulation core defines the collective space that serves as a living room shared by a maximum of five rooms. The uniformity of spaces and the flexibility of the structure aim to make residential and working spaces interchangeable. Reducing domestic space to one room for one or two persons facilitates easier access to shared spaces and offers inhabitants the possibility of privacy and seclusion. Moreover, the simplicity of the floorplan recuperates the factory ‘typical plan’ in which the structure is minimized in order to allow maximum flexibility. The visibility of the structure and its relentless modularity is meant to establish a common rhythm within the multitude of different spaces. Such structure aims to become visible notation, a legible score orchestrating a multitude of uses without imposing a too rigid and predefined structure. The project goal is to recognize not only the ephemeral boundaries between living and working, but also – and especially – the productive character of housing itself. It is for this reason that this project postulates the return of the factory as both practical and symbolic space in which the social and productive dimension of life becomes spatially and physically tangible.