Designing in Layers: Living as a Service vs Living as a Good

The way we think about the future always begins with the past. The obsolete heritage that currently characterizes our cities makes transformations difficult and costly. The principles of circular economy have already been activated in various fields of knowledge today. The aim of this research is to propose possible solutions capable of being applied to the architectural design process. Designing in layers has to be implemented in the most vulnerable areas, where buildings primarily require functional and technological upgrading. It can transform architecture from an immutable and linear system into a simple, adaptable, and circular system, designed like nature. The first step is to conceive living as a service: rethinking, regenerating, and reusing buildings and spaces to create new places suitable for ensuring an adequate quality of life for the majority of people. The user doesn’t acquire a good but a service, and the responsibility remains with the entrepreneur who provides the requested service. In this way, it is in the interest of the entrepreneur that the built space lasts as long as possible, that it is designed to be updated, capable of meeting possible future needs, composed of reusable elements to increase residual value at the time of disassembly, and capable of changing according to user needs. “Domani” was designed in order to follow these premises. This project, winner of the “Ecoluoghi 2018” competition, is a flexible, modular, and adaptable prototype, a possible solution for the house of the future. The title of the project is emblematic; the word “Domani” in Italian means “Tomorrow.” “Domani” is an experimental housing prototype of 45-square-meter dimensions, designed to be added to the roofs of existing buildings, modular and extendable, built off-site in a factory and then transported and assembled on-site, with the aim of densifying cities with volumetric additions, and can also be used in emergencies.