The POP-UP House by TallerDE2 Architects

Description of project by TallerDE2 Arquitectos

Residence for a Metropolitan Single

‘POP-UP House’ is a full refurbished flat for a recently emancipated thirty something person, located in a mid-20th century residential building in Madrid.

‘POP-UP House’ is an experiment which deals with two crossed interests: on one hand, it explores the sociological reality linked to the increased number of one-person homes in metropolis -known as “single phenomenon” (1); on the other hand, it tests the infiltration of a thin and gathering domestic infrastructure (2).

1. Single Phenomenon
Higher development of countries is related to the global phenomenon of the increase in one-person housing for single residents. Apart from the extended phenomenon of sharing flats, internet and social networks encourage a recent domestic option which probes that “living alone doesn’t mean being alone”; living alone is a new model fed by the increased people life expectancy, the stronger women emancipation and the higher number of independent people who don’t want to share.

In countries such as Germany, France, UK and Japan, around 40% of current homes are occupied by single people. USA has 30 millions of “singles”. Surprisingly, instead of the current economic crisis, the number of this kind of homes is growing in Spain.

‘POP-UP House’ doesn’t try to design an optimum unique protocol of domesticity, however, it tries to test a proposal that explores the potentials of this reality.

2. Building a Thin Domestic Infrastructure
First of all, by erasing the dispensable partitions related to an obsolete domesticity, we get rid of those traces foreign to the new inhabitant. Only structure, supply connections and client’s obsessions remain.

Infrastructural units that form a one-person dwelling are defined in the way of Toland Grinell’s matching traveling trunks, specialized elements with a unique function that occupy their surrounding space when they are opened. Here, traditional components that form a room become independent and dispersed, providing new domestic opportunities. We do not take a bathroom as a whole, but as an addition of a shower, a washbasin, a toilet, a mirror, a bathroom cabinet, etc. These individual components build up a catalogue as a communication tool, with which the client interacts by choosing, discarding and redefining. Fifty-four of these units are assembled into a gathering element, infrastructural more than aesthetical, dense and operative. This interactive entity is infiltrated into the dwelling and folds it up small in the way of a labyrinth, disorienting to whom gets into it, sometimes it encloses you, others It throws you out.

This gathering element does not move, however it is unfolded. It is affixed to the supply connections and arranges a generic space around it –a laboratory for experiences, relationships, tolerances, overlaps and multiplicities. This space is activated when the dweller turns the infrastructural devices on. By opening and closing, extending and contracting, sliding and folding it up, the home is restructured, expanded, fragmented, connected or isolated. Here, the room does not contain a wardrobe, but the wardrobe contains a room.

This domestic infrastructure is thin. Slimming strategy is focused on usable elements (such as interior partitions, supply pipes and ducts, shafts, etc.) and it pursues the optimization of acoustic, insulating, organizational and connective features of the architectural elements. Few more than a 50% of usable area in the previous traditional dwelling was available space -enclosed into tight rooms; now, 77% of usable area is open and available for a free appropriation in the new configuration.

This infrastructure of daily life is built up with a unique material -economical and versatile-, oriented strand boards. While exterior image is uniform, only specialized handles reveal the opening system of every device, interiors are distinguished. Tiles and wallpaper provide this inner space with colour and design typical of the elegant linings of classic suitcases.