VIRTUAL: Livable Cities – New York

Abstract

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Before the COVID-19 health crisis, work and crafts performed by hand were already undergoing major growth. This had begun to occur not only among working-class people but also in the middle classes. Sociologists link this boom in DIY with the growth of a collective awareness about the reuse and recycling of objects found in our households. The abuse of planned obsolescence in everyday items seems to have led to a certain attitude in different countries all over the World, fighting against consumerism and, as a result, a boost in creativity. The paper aims to explore how Interior Architecture can trigger new ways of living related to the accelerated obsolescence of our everyday life objects into our domestic space. It will present the framework and the result of a third year interior architecture studio taught in the Fall 2022 at the G.D.Hines College of Architecture and Design, University of Houston. One of the premises of the studio class is based on considering that the use of individual cars will become obsolete in the near future. This phenomenon related to a new approach of transportation, communication and energy, described by the economist Jeremy Rifkin as the Third Revolution, might impulse a new model of economy and so a new social organization. Electric cars will be shared by many individual and will be not anymore a personal belonging. By consequence, the garage space, within the family house, will offer an opportunity to be redefined in terms of program as it will offer the possibility for a spatial re-assemblage . In other words, the garage might be the new-old or the old-new space capable to link the domestic with the urban fabric, the individual with the collective, the inside with the outside .