The present 4th industrial revolution, in which everything is interoperable and systems are being decentralized, is triggering new employment patterns. According to EFIP, ¼ of EU workers are freelancers, and is the fastest growing segment of EU labour market. In the USA by 2020 it is estimated to be 50%.
Independent workers, working anytime-anywhere, move through space in a different way from the traditional home-work-home daily routine. This is re-designing the housing-services dichotomy. “Working at home” and “working aboard temporarily” are common habits of today that are polarizing the permanence of citizens at home.
Sharing economy appears as a way to strengthen independence from vertical systems, being housing a key product. But soon house profit became business system in which “home” came out of the equation.
It’s an ideological approach but also, and mainly, its interpretation synthesized into form, relying on form as transformer of ideologies into daily life changes.
Aripnd is a housing typology that aims to power the sharing economy in a way that profit stays with who directly shares. Houses for share but its permanent dweller is the one in the charge. Each house has a permanent dweller that decides to share or not and the quality of sharing. Share with tourists, with a worker temporarily abroad, with its own punctual clients. All in all, all are clients, different kinds, different relations, that require different possibilities to share the domestic realm.
The Five Points of Airpnd Typology is an organizational matrix to design an airpnp housing building. AIR, PROFIT, AUTONOMY, PRIVACY and ZONING are the fundamental principles to design a house where is possible to preserve the domestic nature and guarantee the necessary conditions to take profit from home in the 4.0 Industry era. The points cover different levels, from the individual basic needs to the communal rules.
The biggest challenge is always to translate, as literal as possible, the requirements and ideologies into form.
This modular building is our final synthesis of airpnd. The core module formalizes all five points, and the additional private modules represent a belief that the future of urban centres will not (or could not) only be hotels and “T0’s”.
All in all, airpnd is a mixed-use building that goes beyond the uses’ division by floor and mixes both inside each house. History, as always, tells us that this isn’t new. Housing with servant’s rooms has a similar typology but based in different routines, though still a close premise: have services inside the house. On the ground floor was placed a communal space with infrastructures for ordinary life. Communal is more than sharing, and so, this space is exclusive for the permanent dwellers.
Airpnd rises in context with Portuguese historical cities’ rehabilitation. Short-term lodging and the entrepreneurship spirit are redesigning Lisboa and Porto. The original concept “mixed with locals” has been lost; cities are coming back to the zoning system: the tourist zone. Investors are using Airbnb to convert the historical real estate into short-duration rental market. Laws are changing across Europe to protect property supply and rent rates, however architecture often is yet a hostage.
