Designing a new housing model for the masses is the most urgent task facing architects today says Jack Self, who has co-curated an exhibition looking at the data behind today's average home.
Mean Home, on show recently in the British School at Rome, presented visions for homes in the UK and Italy, based on statistical averages "in spatial, financial, social, cultural and material terms".
The message behind the project is that architects need to focus more attention on designing housing models that can be scaled up and copied, rather than one-off homes for the wealthy.
"Most human societies are unlikely to survive this century unless they radically rethink how and where they live," said architect and theorist Self.
Jack Self is director of the REAL Foundation, a London-based architecture think tank "Housing is an urgent task. It holds all the keys to ecological sustainability, redressing economic inequality, and creating inclusive, democratic societies," he continued. "It is within the house that ownership, environment, and technology converge. Equally, education, autonomy and wealth all begin at home."
"For this reason, we must find new ways to tackle the commonplace domestic, design a new ordinary, and thus reconfigure everyday life."
Cultural exchange essential to progress
The exhibition took the form of an exchange.
The REAL Foundation ? the London-based architecture think tank led by Self ? developed the vision for an av...