Going from a two-bedroom apartment to a three-bedroom apartment (first) and then another upgrade with a four-bedroom apartment. All without moving. Better, basically stay in the same apartment. An apartment that changes shape and size depending on the needs of a family and adapting to their needs. This is “Sharing home”, the first adapted housing project presented in Milan on the morning of Wednesday, March 6. The project will be carried out through the rehabilitation of a building in via Soffredini, in the eastern part of the city. A building will be built with common areas, study rooms but above all apartments capable of changing shape, simply by moving a wall.
In addition to the traditional homes, “the construction of up to five adaptive apartments is planned – explained Joseph Di Pasquale, architect who followed the project -. The adaptive housing principle according to which these apartments were designed aims to evolve the real estate market from an environment that we can define as horizontal, where different housing “products” correspond to different categories of users, to a vertical environment according to which a student, a young man, a couple, a family, an elderly person are nothing more than the same person who continues in his life and in his relationships. This consideration completely changes the concept of an apartment, which becomes an expandable domestic perimeter, capable of adapting and changing over time. The basic idea of adaptive housing is, therefore, that it is no longer people who have to adapt to homes by moving from one house to another as their needs change, but rather it is the house that changes by adapting to the people who live there. they live in it. and the evolution of their lives.”
In short, the change in the size of the houses occurs by occupying or releasing parts of the apartment (equipped rooms called Pods – acronym for home station) that can be incorporated for family use or, if left free, can be shared with individuals. as temporary users but always as a room in the same apartment. The invention that allows this is made up of a particular technological solution patented together with the Polytechnic of Milan that allows a variable disconnection, that is, the expansion or reduction of the different portions of use within the apartment to adapt its internal distribution. as people’s needs evolve without the need for invasive works.
Work has already begun and the first homes will be delivered in the coming months. “As for costs, we have tried to select the products and in everything essential we have not spared any expenses – explained the lawyer Paolo Poddi, general director of ‘Condividere Casa’ -. The market price will be between 4,600 and 4,800 euros per commercial square meter.”
Regarding the costs of reconfiguring the rooms: “These walls have been patented and designed to allow them to be moved simply by the inhabitant of the property and the building and the reconfiguration of the rooms has no cost. Obviously it is not an operation that is done every day, but once done it is quite simple and intuitive,” concludes Poddi.