Communis: a hybrid of self-build housing and flexible workspaces for young professionals and entrepreneurs

In a contemporary society, where new living and working habits emerge, this project will attempt to find ways to serve these new living conditions in a way that will also have a positive societal impact as well as high levels of human satisfaction. A shift towards the formation of co-working, co-living environment is proposed as the answer to the above problems with ultimate goal the formation of a shared public environment where social presence and social interaction are essential resulting the establishment of a sense of community within Marineterrein. This community, which by definition is a group of people that are living in the same place or sharing the same interests, will only take place if people will actually inhabit the site. This project will provide a set of live/work spaces for the constantly increasing number of young populations in Amsterdam. It could be described as a poly-functional spatial experiment for young professionals and students that will set the foundation towards a new, shared, collective way of living. Simultaneously, this project investigates an alternative framework on the production of space. Within this framework architecture is no more concerned with the building as a final product but with the social and collective processes that the production of space is based upon. Following the principles of participatory architecture, the project proposes an alternative model of architecture in which levels of participation vary; a model which is referred as ‘compromised participation’. In this model, an ordering structure will be provided by the architect while the infill will be individualised designed and self-built by the people themselves. The users will be able to decide upon the production of space; a process which becomes a shared enterprise that involves ‘dialogue and always seeks the other’. Within this process people would be able to shape the environments they want to live in resulting the possibility for an architectural creation with the capacity to regenerate social relationships within a contemporary urban environment. Participatory architecture introduces the possibilities of new ways of working and behaving within the built environment and enables us to move away from the limits of the term architecture, ‘with its implications that is the sole domain of the architect, and to move to the wider possibilities of space.Architecture, Urbanism and Building Science