Ideas, strategies and projects that give rise to pilot projects. They tackle the challenges raised by the stakeholders involved and which are found in particular places in Barcelona or Medellín.
The idea behind Between the House and the Street is that of re-inhabiting—that is, intervening in the city and architecture by repairing the use rather than the object.
Between the House and the Street calls for a space between these two realities instead of a line that separates them. This space exists, but it has different forms and attributes. It allows us to imagine the domestic setting as more closely linked to public life, and the latter as a public extension of the domestic sphere.
Observation of various events in recent years produces a proliferation of cases in which the house adopts different roles to those traditionally assigned to it, and the street accommodates activities that are commonly reserved for domestic space.
This is not new in itself; in the past, relations between the house and the street have taken different forms and their mutual influence has varied over the years. A review of Witold Rybczynski’s Home: A Short History of an Idea helps to understand to what extent the house has been a veritable public space in Europe, in many senses and for many years.
These cases merely confirm the insistent pendulum action of history—in this case, the history of the house and the city. We are now hearing about plays, concerts and performances set in homes. Exhibitions by artists you have to take a lift and go up to someone’s home to see. Plays performed in a living room, or that share out their acts between the living rooms of various neighbouring homes.
The list grows if we look at the various initiatives that take music to private balconies at local festivals such as Balconitis, or choreographies through lit-up windows, such as Living-room Dancers. These examples and their proliferation prompt us, in the street, to see the house not as a façade—and, therefore, a boundary—but as an invitation to see inside. At the same time, we have become quite accustomed to eating in the street, decorating it like an extension of the house, as happens in some popular local celebrations, and having private telephone conversations.
Between the House and the Street sets out to explore this space and “provoke” it, to create a street and a house that are more complex and which, occasionally and temporarily, swap roles.