Abitare temporaneo:luoghi e transizione del bisogno sociale

Beside to the sprawl, another urban phenomenon has become more and more evident in the last few years: the cities shrinkage. The reorganization of the urban space produces dismissed areas and buildings, waiting lands (Kees Christiaanse, 2005). These can be the driving force for fundamental transformations and for the birth of new guiding principles, models of action and practices. Nowadays, considering the property market crisis partly due to the 2008 economic crisis, waiting for more profitable times within a classic economic system is not sustainable anymore. Implementing a structural politic, that allows a productive and useful “waiting period” before the renovation, becomes instead more realistic. There is an increasing demand for affordable properties: the crisis in the construction industry created an oversupply of properties – about half a million of houses built and unsold in Italy (Il Sole 24 Ore, 2014) – currently left to decay. At the same time the economic crisis has produced new poverty ranges, with a consequent increase of the social demand and of the access request to social care services. A progressive aging of the Italian population has to be added to this equation, causing an increase in the request for complex healthcare services. In a context of decreasing financial resources available to the responsible institutions, the social and economic costs are crucial. It becomes necessary to leave the “old” systems and to identify new development models, with a consequent discovering of new actors and new tools, thinking back to the Welfare system and to the capacity of the local authorities to implement new types of projects. In this context, the reclaiming of unused spaces united with the choice of a temporary architecture become the possible strategies to find new answers to the human needs and to the new social needs. The reuse is implemented through parasitic interventions: lightweight installations for temporary infiltrations, makeup operations and selective subtraction of elements, with the logic of the minimal intervention to maximise the space functionality. The temporary reuse introduces a new meaningful usage concept of nursing homes: new places of living, where old people and new social characters take care of each other in a physical space of transition. The result is a regenerative potential not only of the unused private and public assets, but also an interesting social mix, able to intercept the collective need, the planning character of services and the answer of the community. The transience allows to approach heterogeneous social groups, that, exactly because of their condition, can communicate and create an informal support network, contributing to resolve at the same time the problem of living and the services one.