In a time of uncertain future, homes are in the constant process of rethinking. The project A House at 7/A Vasil Glavinov St. in Skopje is developed as a home to eight households with different social and cultural background, exploring the field of space-sharing as an analytical and generative tool for future habitat models.
The house is located in a block undergoing constant transformations, evident from the uneven existing heights and its undefined identity, which sets the scene for the composition of a new building.
The building is an integral part of the block, but at the same time its emblematic character turns it into a landmark, reviving the existing area of the block. The design brief requested a landmark building, aimed not only for urban formal accentuation, but also for the search of an idea for a prototype of a new way of housing.
The vertical extension of the house is coupled with a floor plan organization which reflects the proposed social mix. The height of the building allows the inclusion of unused rooftops of the surrounding buildings into an integral whole, accessible through the house. Space-sharing is the main concept expressed through cohousing and realized as living together in a personal way by sharing a piece of space comprehensively. Instead of a single shared space for all residents, the project incorporates the idea of multiple shared spaces for different families. All the rooms in the house are classified into two main groups, followed by two sub-groups: an autonomous space (autonomous private room and autonomous public room) and a shared space (shared private room and shared public room) The spatial concept treats both autonomous and shared spaces as equally crucial in the house. The way the building works in everyday life has been elaborated through eight families/households representing real people or movie characters: Three students (Biljana, Goran, Marija - my colleagues and I); A five-member household: mother, father and three daughters (Sapalovski family - my friends’ family); A retired professor who lives alone and his granddaughter who visits him occasionally (Georgi Konstantinovski - a wellknown architect); A single mother with a daughter (Villane and Anuk - characters from the movie Chocolate, 2000); An artist staying and working in her studio (Marina Abramović); widow who rents rooms (Martha Hudson - character from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective stories, 1880 -1914); Two Friends (Sherlock Holmes and John Watson - characters from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes detective stories, 1880 - 1914); A blind resident with a caretaker who stays there occasionally (Frank and Charlie –characters from the movie A Scent of a Woman, 1992).