Unit 27 | Barberio Colella ARC

In next 100 years cities will be more and more overcrowded and this will determine two issues: flats will be increasingly smaller and cities will be saturated, with less private and public outer space. "Unit 27" is born to try to give a possible answer to these two important problems of the cities of the future.

Unit 27 is a luxury-inspired condos formed by small prefab units, designed to free more outdoor space and re-establish a real and direct contact with the urban or natural landscape. For this reason the unit is thought to be freely aggregate in height inside a steel frame structure with large balconies and terraces. The outdoor space (private and common) would be freely organized by inhabitants with vegetation and furniture, in order to facilitate social interactions between people and the (almost) lost relationship with nature and urban landscape within the temperate climatic area.

The open plan permits to sight freely every point of the home without net and static separations. The ideal users of the home would be young couples or singles that cannot usually afford a bigger and more expensive home and do not need a lot of space but rather a cozy home in order to live in urban areas without renouncing to high quality spaces.

The single unit house, in just 27 square meters, comprises: a complete kitchen and dining for six people; a multifunctional sofa-bed for chilling, reading, watching TV and accommodate one person for the night; an open bedroom realized with an innovative all-in-one furniture with four big under-bed drawers and a fitted wardrobe that pulls out sideways and it is hidden in the thickness of the headboard; a complete bathroom with a separated toilette and a double shower cabin. The division between day and night parts of the home has been realized with a screen wall which incorporates a futuristic holographic 2-sided TV. This solution would allow to watch TV from the two parts of the house.

Unit 27, thanks to its small footprint, would allow the installation of these units inside small residual spaces of urban areas. Bigger aggregations would allow the construction of built ecosystems with a perfect equilibrium between small and organized homes, pleasant outdoor spaces and different kind of vegetation.