ELASTIC LIVING - MILLENNIAL HOUSING

.collaborative.shared.architecture

“‘Elastic Living, Millennial Housing’, is dealing with the growing demand for affordable and inclusive housing concepts in cities. The fuzzy boundaries of working- and living, as well as peer to peer and part to whole relationships in a collaborative architecture are addressed. ‘Elastic Living’ is proposing an agenda for future architectural housing. An architecture that reacts to the accelerated life in a post-capitalist sharing economy. Collaborative Objects that can expand and contract, adapting to current needs.
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‘Elastic Living, Millennial Housing’ is aiming for an open
architectural design strategy, as well as conceptual framework, which is regarding the accelerated process of digitalisation and automation, not seen as a challenge, but as a creative potential to develop new sustainable urban housing.
Why sharing as an attractive housing concept?
The sharing of experiences, opinions, and private feelings on social media platforms, the sharing of smart ‘objects’ like bikes, cars, tools and children’s toys have become daily habits of a collaborative sharing generation. This evolving social paradigm is fundamentally challenging ownership,
Objects are used collaboratively. Working and Living becomes a shared lifestyle in Co-Working and Co-Living Concepts, questioning how much space we need, in which community we want to life and what is to be shared.
Since the uprising of sharing platforms and social media, the relationship of the private as well as of the ownership of things has evolved. Object’s capacities were better utilized, as they can be shared in peer to peer networks, using Apps or online platforms. Sensors with Internet of Things technology, allows for a further optimization of the capacities and provide a sustainable concept. How can Architecture offer spaces that can be adopted, shared, and are welcoming collaborative housing?
The paradigm of a collaborative sharing generation ‘Access over Ownership’ is resulting in an architectural concept in which the private living space (collaborative Object) is reduced to a minimum, but is at the same time always embedded in a sharing landscape. The elastic living experience allows multiple inhabitants to get access to an affordable generous livingspace in a social community. The future of housing is distributed through living units, that can be rented on multiple floors, in multiple buildings, neighbourhoods or cities.
The standard living unit (the common object) is offering a small bathroom, as well as an elastic livingroom volume. It is expandable in function as well as in volume. The unit can be used individually, furthermore parts can be shared with the community. The sharing landscape, has the elastic potential to be adopted, shared, occupied and designed by the inhabitants.
The building is based on elastic living units embedded in the sharing landscape construction, which are able to expand horizontally and vertically, as well as to react to local site conditions. A resilient and redundant concept with the potential to generate a ‘collaborative impact’. 

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ALEXANDER GRASSER