CALL FOR PAPERS; Nº 32 - JOURNAL "PROYECTO, PROGRESO, ARQUITECTURA"
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CALL FOR PAPERS PpA ISSUE 32: FLEXIBLE ARCHITECTURE
Publication "Call for papers issued on": MAY 31st, 2024
Dead Line: SEPTEMBER 16th, 2024
Publication nº 32 PpA: MAY, 2025
To speak of flexible architectural space is to refer to the capacity to change the way in which we can use it without needing to make significant modifications to its structural or constructive system. This is a quality that some architectures have, either as a consequence of the result of a design process incorporating the variable of change from the outset, or because they have spatial characteristics that allow them to be used in different ways to those initially conceived.
This concept has returned to the debate on domestic space as an alternative to the difficulties of access to decent housing for a large part of the population, even in countries with more stable economies, but also as a consequence of changes in the society in which we live. These changes include the need to modify the spaces to incorporate work activity while balancing work and family life, a particularly relevant situation after the health crisis resulting from COVID 19, or due to the plurality of the idea of “family”, a consequence of what Bauman has called “liquid society”. The residential building 110 Habitaciones (MAIO architects, Barcelona in 2016), heir to the Walden 7 residential building (‘Taller de Arquitectura’ [Architecture Workshop] led by Ricardo Bofill, Barcelona 1970), are examples of this. However, this concept is not only current in the design of housing, but also in facilities, new cultural spaces or even infrastructures, a consequence of thinking of public space and urban space as a place that is also programmed for change. The Matadero in Madrid as a centre of contemporary creation, the recent refurbishment of the Artillery Factory in Seville, or the interventions that are being carried out in the public spaces of our cities to respond to a more sustainable sense of mobility, are examples of these transformations.
However, in reality, this idea is not new. In fact, it dates back to the beginning of the new contemporary architecture that emerged after the first industrial revolution. Pioneering examples are some well-known proposals by the leading architects of the 20th century: in the domestic sphere, the Dom-Ino houses or the house for his mother built on the edge of Lake Geneva, designs by Le Corbusier, set the path to spatial flexibility by liberating the façade as a structural system; the solutions by Mies based on the concept of the free floor plan, not only in the domestic space such as the Farnsworth House, but also in the cultural or educational sphere, as in the case of the Barcelona Pavilion, the museum of the New National Gallery in Berlin and the projects for the ITT campus in Chicago. The architectures that emerged in the 1960s after the Second World War constituted another significant paradigm shift based on experimentation with new materials derived from the arms industry, also with well-known representative architectures. From the proposals of Stirling or the Smithsons would derive those of Banham, Price or the Archigrams, which would later give way to the architects of the so-called High Tech current, seeking an architecture whose result had more to do with the method used for its construction than with the use for which it was intended.
This concept of Flexible Architecture is the subject of the 32nd issue of PpA for which research is sought to address this issue. Whether as a consequence of the incorporation of the social aspect into architecture, as a result of the user’s participation in the tasks of designing or building their own living space, or as a consequence of design processes that aim for greater success by being able to adapt to new flexible models of management of public spaces, to different models of teaching, or to different scenarios of changing production due to new technologies. The study and critical analysis of these architectures, the appropriate and rigorous relationships and comparisons established, the technical or constructive principles that make them possible, and the objectives behind these proposals should form part of the articles presented for this issue of PpA.
Author of the call for papers:Germán López Mena, dr. en Arquitectura, profesor de la ETS de Arquitectura, Universidad de Alcalá de Henares.
Email de consulta sobre la convocatoria: germanlm@us.es
