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Kinship House Beyond Family / Ignatius G. Galan + OF Architects
Text description provided by the architect. Beyond-the-family Kin is an aging-enhancing platform. It operates within infrastructural networks, shaping a new social movement for aging in place. In response to the increasing isolation or institutionalization of older residents, the program provides multiple forms of care for generations beyond the nuclear family, both inside and outside the home, and provides technical and financial strategies to support residents’ lives.
Located at the end of a row of single-family houses on the outskirts of the city, the project combines diverse living arrangements on each of three floors with varying degrees of autonomy and interdependence between the levels. While neither of them satisfies well the needs of a hegemonic family, together they facilitate the emerging kinship: the first floor, accessed via a short ramp across the street, contains a series of spaces for an elderly pair with increasing mobility Used by couples. Difficulty; above it, a pair of rooms flanking the living space are planned to host the couple’s regular guests in their extended family; the lower level is a one-bedroom apartment that the couple can rent in pursuit of financial stability, Or greet a waiter when needed. The proximity of major urban college campuses may also lead to rehearsed models that connect students and seniors to provide affordable housing, shared resources, and mutual care. Ultimately, kinship beyond the home counters established notions of the family home as an autonomous and stable social unit, while acknowledging the dependency between residents and their social and physical surroundings.
The sequence of cascading terraces enhances the range of ecologies and activities within the project, creating opportunities for socialization between the home’s different occupants and placing the house within the different networks of the community. The project’s emphasis on front terraces creates a strong connection to the street and facilitates a loose community of neighbors—as opposed to the area’s current rowhouse design strategy that favors more secluded backyards. Several tumbled flower pots and a beehive on the roof terrace are part of the urban farm system prevalent in the community, although the area has recently undergone lot subdivision and densification, while other gardening opportunities are scattered throughout the project. A small swimming pool is available for residents and their friends to exercise. The house’s ridged silhouette echoes the suburban industrial setting and its stark tones, and despite its small scale, it strives to gain a certain centrality within the community – as a key node in its social life. The project is neither nostalgic for older social forms nor succumbs to the isolation of an aging contemporary population, but instead celebrates connections and connections that are open and malleable.
Finally, a number of interrelated formal and technical strategies contribute to the project’s energy efficiency and environmental qualities. The complex massing of the house allows most of the rooms to be open on multiple facades, promoting cross ventilation and natural cooling, which is enhanced by the stairs acting as air shafts. Operable windows in the sawtooth roof of the living room enhance light and ventilation in this key space. Automatic blinds on the windows control heat gain and lighting from different directions. The roof’s protruding structure optimizes the orientation of solar panels to power an extremely efficient heating and cooling radiant floor system. These systems, combined with a rear ventilated curtain wall tiled facade, rainproof ceramic cladding and corrugated steel panels, ensure that the project does not require air conditioning, even in Madrid’s extreme weather. These strategies are considered overlapping approaches to empowering older people in their lives, in addition to working to protect the rights of future generations.
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