Some thoughts about life
Lately I am questioning myself about what's my aim in life. It's not just a matter of carrier perspective but widely about life assessments.
I am almost entering
into my 30s and this makes me a bit anxious mostly because I am
single.
I had 3 long
relationships since I was 17, one after the other one so I was
expecting to settle down as soon as I was able to, but now there's
not any more this aim. It might happen one day, but it's not
necessary. I am not going to get crazy if it doesn't happen, I am
already kind of crazy because I chose the architecture career.
But let's think
about relationship in architectural therms.
The different status
of private life can be translated into a dwelling typology.
If you are married,
you should live into a single family house or a flat. A dwelling
which has at least two bedrooms and one of them is a master bedroom.
If you are single
you would like to live in a studio: open space or one bedroom
apartment.
This last category
can afford a single flat only if their salary is high enough. Due to
nowadays crisis status, it's quite hard to be able to afford a single
dwelling on your own, especially if you are living in a big city.
Actually the matter
is slightly different from what we could expect. Indeed it is not the
size of the city to determine the price of the dwelling but the
demand of people looking for a single life space. This is much more
common into dense populated environments and international ones,
where up to me the individual needs appear to be much stronger than
the collective ones.
The single living
unit is the dream of every young single human being, but
unfortunately is not affordable for all of them.
Sharing a flat is
the obvious counterpart of this story. But let's think now at the
typology of houses these unlucky youngsters are dealing with.
There is not much to
think about: many young people together can rent a flat or a house,
yes but one which is meant to be inhabited by a family.
So what are the
consequences of this? The luckiest one or the one, who decides to
rise his own rate on the rent, gets the master bedroom, the others
the children rooms.
More and more young
professionals are delaying the age of marriage or maybe they will
never marry at all, thinking that the friends-life is the assessment
of an eternal youth.
Is it time then to
arrange something for those friends living together under the same
roof from the architect point of view!
That was just the
theme of the latest competition we attended at A&G!
We have been
selected to design a 75 meters tall tower in the north of Amsterdam,
just behind the Shell tower. They asked us to design 70 sq m flats
with 2 master bedroom (>14 sq m) and a living room.
The main issue was
to provide an image of how the tower will look like. So I was
involved basically in the 3d modeling of the different options. I
produced something like 50 different tipology, whit crazy balconies
in the A&G style. It was a nice experience but unfortunately they
didn't choose our proposal, despite they like our presentation.
We did a research
about the needs of young people, interviewing the young employees in
our building and many of them provided interesting ideas and
solutions about the arranging of the interior in order to be able to
have a good balance between common and individual spaces.
The public areas of
the tower should be like playground for grown-ups. People has to
enjoy those spaces and use them in a recreational way: basket courts,
ping pong tables, skate podiums, rooms for performances or rehearsals
.
The balcony should
be generous and allow even the growth of vegetables, thus a wind
shield is necessary. We design the shielding system into the façade
profiles and the balconies are sticking out in opposite corners in
every floor.
The main façade is
dynamic as the geometrical tension between the new Eye museum and the
Shell tower. I was also imagining to apply random spots of bright
colours into the loggia sides in order to perceive the possibility to
customize the architecture with your own colour or pattern, but maybe
I was going too far :P
How not to mention
the amazing view on the city you can get from your living room, the
warmth colour of the city lights, the reflection of the water from
the several canals into the city and most of it the breathtaking
constantly-in- movement Dutch sky as background.