Housing is one of the biggest concerns of our society. Despite being a fundamental right, access to it is increasingly difficult in the context of rising prices and economic instability that requires new management formulas in its production and use. On the other hand, the classic solutions developed by Modernity have proven obsolete in an extremely complex and changing world, incapable of meeting the demands for flexibility of users with increasingly varied and fluid social relations, with new needs or in need of new answers to old problems and that, more and more, demand their participation in the process of designing spaces, private and community, in which a very important part of their lives will take place.
Added to this are environmental, economic, aesthetic concerns, etc., which make housing a fruitful field of experimentation for architecture. The COVID pandemic has confirmed this obsolescence and the urgency of facing all these problems from radically new perspectives.
Aware of all this, Carmen Espegel, Andrés Cánovas and José María de Lapuerta, within the Collective Housing Research Group (GIVCO) and with the collaboration of the General Directorate of Architecture, Housing and Land of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA), carried out a detailed investigation in which they catalogued some 2,500 collective housing buildings built in Europe, which they later synthesized into 54 cases in the book "Housetag: European Collective Housing 2000-2021". Now, together with the ICO Foundation and the General Directorate of Urban Agenda and Architecture of MITMA, they are making a new synthesis effort to present the Domestic Dawns exhibition at the ICO Museum. Collective housing issues in 21st century Europe.
Julia Tower. Pau Vidal, Sergi Pons, Ricard Galiana. Barcelona, Spain, 2009-2011. Photography by Adrià Goula.
Exhibition tour
The exhibition presents 28 paradigmatic examples of built housing organized around seven categories: Climate Awareness, Active Recharging, Domestic Care, New Management, Urban Contexts, Living and Sharing, and Iconic Identities, plus a COVID epilogue. The objective is to show the fundamental concepts of the new habitability that are being developed in collective housing in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century, thus fostering a debate that allows further progress in this direction. For this, the involvement of professionals and administrations is essential, but also of society in general, and hence the importance of this dissemination effort.
Domestic Dawns reproduces at the ICO Museum, on a 1/1 scale, some interiors of the buildings selected by the curators. In these furnished rooms, through plans, photographs, and videos made specifically for this exhibition – in which the users and architects of the buildings tell their experiences – and other materials, the seven themes mentioned above are developed.
Added to this are environmental, economic, aesthetic concerns, etc., which make housing a fruitful field of experimentation for architecture. The COVID pandemic has confirmed this obsolescence and the urgency of facing all these problems from radically new perspectives.
Aware of all this, Carmen Espegel, Andrés Cánovas and José María de Lapuerta, within the Collective Housing Research Group (GIVCO) and with the collaboration of the General Directorate of Architecture, Housing and Land of the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda (MITMA), carried out a detailed investigation in which they catalogued some 2,500 collective housing buildings built in Europe, which they later synthesized into 54 cases in the book "Housetag: European Collective Housing 2000-2021". Now, together with the ICO Foundation and the General Directorate of Urban Agenda and Architecture of MITMA, they are making a new synthesis effort to present the Domestic Dawns exhibition at the ICO Museum. Collective housing issues in 21st century Europe.
Julia Tower. Pau Vidal, Sergi Pons, Ricard Galiana. Barcelona, Spain, 2009-2011. Photography by Adrià Goula.
Exhibition tour
The exhibition presents 28 paradigmatic examples of built housing organized around seven categories: Climate Awareness, Active Recharging, Domestic Care, New Management, Urban Contexts, Living and Sharing, and Iconic Identities, plus a COVID epilogue. The objective is to show the fundamental concepts of the new habitability that are being developed in collective housing in Europe at the beginning of the 21st century, thus fostering a debate that allows further progress in this direction. For this, the involvement of professionals and administrations is essential, but also of society in general, and hence the importance of this dissemination effort.
Domestic Dawns reproduces at the ICO Museum, on a 1/1 scale, some interiors of the buildings selected by the curators. In these furnished rooms, through plans, photographs, and videos made specifically for this exhibition – in which the users and architects of the buildings tell their experiences – and other materials, the seven themes mentioned above are developed.
