Conference Abstract | Marco Peverini & Federica Rotondo

Yes, You Can! Standards, Practices and Projects of Contemporary Living

Standards and regulation have played a fundamental role in the production and transformation of housing and living spaces since the 70s. They represent a civil and cultural achievement, but some regulations are today holding back the experimentation of housing solutions able to better adhere to emerging housing profiles. Looking at current trends, it is possible to recognize a clear demand for innovation in housing provision, but the design of responses in the form of policies and projects clashes with the inertia to change and evolve of the system of existing standards and norms.

The thesis of this paper is that some of the regulatory constraints that have guided the characteristics of housing supply so far should be reconsidered as the housing demand and needs change. This could be possible by adopting a multidisciplinary approach that considers the architectural, urban and socio-political dimensions. This is not banal: the constraints related to laws, decrees, regulations, regulations are often assumed as inescapable a priori. The paper explores the possibility of moving within the (more or less) tight margins of discretion in interpreting actual norms as opportunities for experimentation by relevant actors in the process, e.g.: planners, architects, civil servants, inhabitants and so on.

The main aim of this contribution is to discuss the spatial configurations and socio-political implications of projects and policies that put under discussion actual regulation in the light of contemporary housing needs. Starting from a set of Italian and European cases, in the framework of a research program funded by Polytechnic of Milan, the paper focuses on the practices of design, adaptation and use of new and existing housing stock that have been able to highlight tensions and critical junctions with respect to current regulations.

Marco Peverini. Master’s degree in Architecture and Building Engineering at the University of Perugia with a thesis on urban policy analysis. PhD candidate in Urban Planning, Design and Policy at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of the Politecnico di Milano. Deals with housing and urban policies, with reference to the theme of housing affordability. He is coordinator of the Working Group “Social housing:  Institutions, Organisations and Governance” of the European Network of Housing Research (ENHR).

Federica Rotondo. Ph.D. student in the interuniversity’s programme of Urban and Regional Development at Politecnico di Torino and Università degli Studi di Torino. Double master’s degree in Urban Planning and Policy Design at Politecnico di Milano and in Sciences and Techniques of Urban Environment at École Centrale de Nantes and École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture de Nantes. Research interests stand at the intersection between urban transformations, urban governance and transition studies in low-carbon society.