DIVERcity - Marco Tanzilli - Italy

People have always been deeply related to their homes, perceived as a human spatial extension, that may not only welcome them but strongly affirm who they are. Mass housing production has always been addressed to the “typical family,” generating progressive homologation; it needs to give way to a tailored design process, that starts from the choices of the one in the process of involvement empowering a bottom-up action.

But how is it possible to do that, especially nowadays? The real innovation is to bring people at the center of the building process, not just as the final users, but as the aiming element. The involvement of different actors, from the architects to developers, gives the chance to rethink the residential designing as a collaborative experience, enhancing the belonging to the proper house, restoring the confidence, and affecting the process of selling. Buying before the construction means to cut down bank loans, and purchase at a lower cost, avoiding unsold expenses and constructions; furthermore, a feedback phase after the moving-in moment, let people suggest improvements to their living conditions and that of the future generations.

Starting from this idea, DiverCITY proposes an urban modular scheme, where diversification becomes the goal of a settlement representing the variety of contemporary society. The idea is to offer a toolkit of urban tiles that, by combining, gives life to an adaptive urban fabric, where individual differences are prized. Residential buildings moved from the traditional modularity, becoming flexible organization able to provide different spatial configurations. They will be the result of different choices of shape, typology, material, dimension, and colour, with declinations able to satisfy every need.

Identification and diversification become the key points of the idea that it is not only the project of a building. It is more like rethinking the way of doing things. This shows how architecture can affect places and people.