Endless Building

STEEL WEB

Modular flexibility across time and space.

One of the biggest problems of housing for the elderly and the disabled is the disconnection from people from other age groups and occupations, resulting in a permanent state of loneliness. The same happens to youngsters, who increasingly opt for studio-like individual houses, bound to change once they advance in their family lives.

This proposal for a building encompasses a system in which the public space fuses with the private space, the common areas are an unavoidable part of the inhabitant’s daily lives and the apartments are built so that they can be joined when there’s a need for more space. Apart from that, the building itself is expandable, with a clear steel pillar and beam grid exposed so more modules can be added both on the sides and on top. Provided the space, this building can grow in any direction, and its shape altered according to yet unknown conditions and decisions.

Steel pillars are disposed on a grid 5x5 meters

The slabs are built suspended on this main structure, aided by steel beams interlinking the pillars where required. The perimeter of the rooms is then filled from beam to beam. Red clay bricks were the chosen material, as a reference to their typical use in Helsinki, where the example illustrated in these panels is located.

Publicity of exterior spaces

There are several layers of privacy, being the empty space the equivalent to a public square, followed by the adjacent area more enclosed by the grid of steel pillars and some brick walls, to use as a market place or other temporary uses. The small central garden is even more private, but still accessible from the public way. Beyond that, all the exterior spaces are available only for whom crosses the door into the building.

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