The Interior of the Metropolis
Beatriz Ramo
The housing crisis today is not only quantitative but also qualitative. While households have become increasingly diverse and dynamic—single-parent families, blended families, boomerang children, home-workers, non-family cohabitations, among others—housing production remains largely standardised and rigid. Housing is increasingly treated as a market product focused on numbers, forgetting that housing does not host numbers, but people. Contemporary society, with all its contradictions and diversity, cannot be captured in the uniformity of a standardised plan.
To address this paradox, we developed The Interior of the Metropolis, a research project and design framework investigating household diversity, spatial needs, and their evolution over time:
1-Research into household diversity and evolving spatial needs;
2-Translation of these needs into concrete spatial solutions;
3-Distillation into an applicable set of 10 Adaptability and 8 Quality Principles;
4-Development of new housing typologies and floor plans;
5-Built case-study: START-Ivry.
The Principles transform social complexity into spatial intelligence. They operates as a clear, replicable methodology and practical guide for municipalities, housing corporations, developers, architects and universities, enabling adaptability and resilience to be embedded into housing policies, competition briefs and design processes.
START-Ivry is the built case-study of this framework. Here, housing adapts to people, not the reverse. Super-adaptable and divisible dwellings, equipped alcoves, movable kitchens, carefully designed layouts… allow homes to meet present needs and evolve as lives change.
Adaptability becomes a form of circularity at the scale of the dwelling: the most sustainable square metre is the one that does not need to be rebuilt.
The Interior of the Metropolis demonstrates that socially adaptable housing is no longer a distant ideal, but a practical and scalable form of social infrastructure.
Client: Self-initiated
Categories: Housing, New Construction, Urban Development
Project Gallery
Zoom on the ‘Generative’ Section: the Design Principles converge into new housing typologies organised within an ‘ideal’ section. Inspired by Bertall’s 1845 lithography 'Five Floors of the Parisian World', each unit represents a real-life situation.
To address this growing mismatch between housing and households we developed a five-step process which translates the needs and realities of contemporary households into architectural solutions.
We started with meticulous research into contemporary household diversity, their needs, and the temporality of them, through extensive interviews, discussions and statistical/empirical analysis.
The 10 Adaptability Principles by STAR.
The 8 Quality Principles by STAR.
Analysis of apartment plans integrating the Adaptability and Quality principles from the built case-study: START-Ivry.
Beatriz Ramo NL
https://st-ar.nl/
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