We all want towns and cities that offer pleasant and varied lifestyles. The way there is via a host of small decisions and building projects. Densification alone is too short-sighted. In future it will only be possible if we also give the people living there new options: communal areas, neighbourhood gardens or shared spaces (both literally and figuratively).
After all, a house is not just a roof over one’s head, a bubble, but rather a cell with contacts to its neighbours. In this sense, we ask what the house does for its environs, the district, the town.
We see houses as spaces of opportunity, as a breeding ground for new connections and interconnections. They are multifunctional and versatile, and can change just like the towns. We now have the chance at last to eliminate the traces of the functional separation of the modern era: to link mobility and functions of the town better, to adapt building legislation and its rules, and above all to do away with traditional area categories in order to promote hybrid structures and buildings.
This reconstruction also includes the concept of the 15-minute town, in which every citizen can reach the important infrastructure without problems: doctors and authorities, culture and sports facilities, shopping facilities and the workplace (if this happens to be away from home). The compact city or city of short distances offers better connections (even without a car), more intensity and interaction. And that’s what we stand for: exciting open spaces and neighbourhoods, and new mobility.
z+ for neighbourhoods and open spaces