In her speech entitled “Housing the Unpredictable : Architecture of anticipation”, in the context of this year’s event ESO “EMBRACING CHAOS IN A SMART WORLD”, Beatriz Ramo, architect, urban planner, researcher and founder of STAR strategies + architecture, took the audience on a journey from the heart of Rotterdam and project Cabanon, to Paris and the social housing project, START-Ivry. Unfolding the office’s model, inclusive, research and design methodology, Ramo explained, with examples, how important and necessary it is to “design for all” human types of residents and for all contemporary forms of domesticity.
Read more about ESO 2025, “Embracing Chaos in a smart world” εδώ!
How can we give architecture the capacity to adapt to an unpredictable future?
Beatriz Ramo began her speech with that question as her main thread of narrative and presented two residential projects: Cabanon, a work where they activated the potential that someone else had planned for the space and in contrast to that START-Ivry, a project where they created the circumstances of a potential that someone else would hopefully activate later.
The Cabanon
A reconvention of an attic storage space of 6,89 square meters in the top of a ’50’s building in Rotterdam to serve as a guest house and a spa, for Beatriz’s and Bernd’s own house on the second floor. Beatriz walked us through their design methodology towards an optimisation of the given space that can be understood as a maximisation of the possibilities and not as a reduction. They subdivided the areas according to their height and needs, and managed to create a fully ergonomic and functional living space. They took advantage of the ‘anticipatory’ measures that the previous owner had already placed there (electricity, heating connection, .etc) and captured that as a potential for future uses of the given space.
Read more about the Cabanon project here!
START-Ivry
On START-Ivry, a big scale social housing project of 300 apartments in Greater Paris, exploring the idea of designing for all contemporary forms of domesticity, they wondered about the capacity of an adaptation to the needs and lifestyle of the people that would actually live there.
What is the point of an apartment adapting to the climate if it does not adapt to its inhabitants?
Opposing to a “standardised” floor plan that’s being used for the majority of housing apartments in Paris, they decided to take the real households and their diversification as a starting point for their design, in order to create apartments that would be able to adapt to all kinds of evolution or changes of their inhabitants situation.
With this design approach in mind, they represented through sketched sections the struggle, conflicts and paradoxes that people have to face by living in “standardised” apartments. They analysed all different apartment households and tried to answer to each need that came up, by giving special solutions and summarising on 10 adaptability principals that could help and regulate the overwhelming complexity.
They came up with totally sustainable solutions not only environmentally but also socially and economically, with apartment floor plans that can be resilient and adapt to all different possible configurations of co-living. The exterior of the buildings reflect all the diversity and richness and create the identity and image of it.
In terms of quality also, Beatriz Ramo explained ways of ensuring that the apartments would follow some basic principles of quality that they had gracefully established, such as double-triple orientation, natural light in the kitchen and maximisation of storage.
Compact in surface but rich in adaptability.
Finishing, Beatriz Ramo concluded how modern, intelligent world requires a redefinition of pre-existing architectural typologies, confronting the standardisation by being more critical and also proclaiming the floor plan as the architect’s primary tool to make room for the unpredictability of life’s changing nature.
Read more about ESO 2025, “Embracing Chaos in a smart world” εδώ!
Credits of organization
Event title ΕΣΩ 2025: “EMBRACING CHAOS IN A SMART WORLD”
Typology Conference, Conference on Architecture & Design
Location Alexandra Trianti Hall, Athens Concert Hall
Date Wednesday 7 May 2025
Sponsors
PLATINUM SPSONSOR ALUMIL
GOLD SPONSOR ORAMA MINIMAL FRAMES
SIVLER SPONSOR EUROPA
BRONZE SPONSOR INTERBETON
ΕΜERALD SPONSOR ELVIAL
SAPPHIRE SPONSOR VIMAR
DISTINCTIVE SPONSOR HERACLES
GRAND SPONSORS ISOMAT, NEOKEM, ΜΑRΜOURIS, SATO, GRUPPO CUCINE, SIFAKIS, ΚΥΠΡΙΩΤΗΣ, ΚΕΒΕ, RADOS, SOLOMON, AVE, CRYSTAL CONSTRUCTION, AHI CARRIER, VERTICAL, ARCHITEXTURE, NAFPLIOTIS, ETHIMO, URBI ET ORBI, MOLESKINE, STORMY SA
CREATIVE PARTNERS THE DESIGN AMBASSADOR, STAGE DESIGN OFFICE, EVIN, SCENTLINQ PRO
COMMUNICATION SPONSORS & COMMUNITY PARTNERS ARCHISEARCH, ARCHSTUDIES, ANDRO, FORTUNE GREECE, LIFO, OPEN HOUSE ATHENS, OZON MAGAZINE, THE GREEK FOUNDATION
HOSPITALITY SUPPORTER THE MODERNIST
COFFEE BREAK SPONSOR TAF
Content Creation & Communication Sponsor Archisearch.gr
Production Management & Artistic Direction Design Ambassador
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