Housing Project: A manifesto for the Productive City

MARIA KINASH

The users of the Post Pandemic City have challenged designers to reconstruct domestic dwellings to suit contemporary living and labour. Users have questioned the social ability of interactive spaces within the home and now require physical connections to people and nature for healthy living. As working users adapt to the digital age, we require a new type of livework facility that support our mental wellbeing. As labour evolves through time, our buildings require flexibility to ensure reuse is available in the long term. The newly established domestic space is also an opportunity to bring the ambitions of the city into the home. These aspirations of a functioning city in which resources are delegated between districts sustain the networks of diverse communities within the street neighbourhoods it embraces. Jane Jacobs has presented in her work the requirement of these street neighbourhoods to be enriched spaces with mixed programmes and typologies to encourage a multiplicity of users and strengthen their connection with the city. An enriched district with a focus on production rather than consumption presented within the city can become a model for a sustainable working district. The district should be a thriving, colourful, diverse space that promotes productive programmes which will connect it with the city. The successes of a productive district will ensure it sustains its longevity.

Within the proposed scheme, a thriving district with mixed typologies and programmes with an approach to living within high-quality domestic spaces can ensure a thriving district within its labour programmes. This thesis presents the typology of housing within the labour for exchange and labour without exchange typologies.