In collaboration with:
Chair of Architecture and Design, Prof. Jan De Vylder
Chair of History and Theory of Architecture, Prof. Dr. Maarten Delbeke, Linda Stagni

The lens of the multiple as a method to observe space drew my attention to a moment that reoccurs in everybody’s day to day: the act of coming home. Speaking of it, we usually refer to the moment of transition between the public and the private sphere. This transition is connected to rituals and prepares for the state of having arrived home. It takes place in a threshold space that belongs neither clearly to the public nor the private sphere. Such an interim state is not only present on the physical level of the space in-between but also on a psychological level regarding the transformation from the public self into the private self, leading to increased awareness and desire for social interaction. It is the ambiguity of separation and connection, of creating distance and allowing proximity, which gives the threshold space its meaning as a spatial mediator. Remaining open to personal interpretation, it offers space for casual contacts in a neighborhood, which would not come about in the anonymity of the public or the intimacy of the private.

My attention is focused on this transitional moment in everyday life. The purposeful look at the act of coming home should tempt to dissolve the self-evidence of the set of rituals and its blind reproduction from one building to another. This approach often leads to purely functional access spaces, which want to be overcome as quickly as possible. The reduction of threshold spaces has thus lost its potential to mediate between the public and the private in an interesting way and to stimulate direct and indirect social interactions. Spatially curating the decrease in anonymity respectively the increase in intimacy, intersecting moments allow for a personal reading of the space. They suggest possibilities for interpretation and for appropriating areas not clearly defined as part of the own private unit. After all, it is these intersecting moments that offer room for informally getting to know a place, its surrounding, and the people inhabiting it, ultimately leading to a feeling of home before even having arrived in the own apartment.

The denser places become, the more important is the threshold space of the act of coming home as a communicator between the public and the private. The increased social density makes public spaces appear more public, and the relatively few entrances to large-scale buildings are shared with many more people, especially in cases where the plinth is used for commerce and offices. When threshold spaces are diminished for efficient floor plans in such a context, the increased anonymity of a place cannot sufficiently be mediated and leads to the desire to isolate into the private realm. The abrupt transitions prevent the living environment from being considered part of one’s living. Thus, densified homes without adequately designed threshold spaces produce a more anonymous form of living, often reflected in lifeless urban spaces and building accesses. The apartment itself turns into the center of the living activity, going hand in hand with the wish for generous living units, even though densification is needed as there are no alternative spaces to live in.

My project aims to rethink densification by starting the design intervention focusing on the threshold space of coming home, suggesting that this unlocks the possibility of reducing private units without a qualitative loss of living. Adapting the Örlikerhus, one of the last reminiscents of the industrial and commercial times of Leutschenbach, to its vastly transformed surrounding, I propose to complement the as of today still well-functioning building with housing on the top. Whilst the design intervention preserves the identity-forming character of the Örlikerhus and enhances it by better integrating it into the altered boundary conditions, it mainly aims to create a gradual transition from the public space into the building, through the plinth towards the residential part of the building, conceptually thought of as a second ground floor. This approach aims to create an understanding of the living environment rather than only the living unit as a realm to live in.