– Phd Thesis – C. Legrand
Over the past decade, the question of the «productive city» has become a growing political concern for European and Swiss cities. For example, the new municipal master plan of Geneva has made the productive city one of its key themes. However, the maintenance of manufacturing and artisanal activities in urban contexts still faces many financial, legal, and typological obstacles.
The objective of this thesis is to explore the typological challenges of cohabiting living and working spaces, and more specifically to study the spatial conditions of productive housing related to the “neighbourhood economy” (manufacture, repair, pooling, care).
The interest in coupling housing and workspace is to contribute to the renewal of Swiss Wohnkultur while addressing the challenges of socio-ecological transition. Indeed, this programmatic association offers new avenues for thinking about the densification of the city on itself. By taking advantage of underused spaces (workspaces are unoccupied at night, while homes are unoccupied during the day), we could significantly densify the existing urban fabric without developing new plots. For example, a workspace is only used 2.5 full months per year in Switzerland. Coupled with workspace, housing could also radically transform urban mobility (reduce commuting flows) and relieve the peri-urban areas of part of the productive burden they currently bear. Finally, breaking down traditional oppositions between productive (work) and reproductive (domestic) work would redefine the very notion of work to envision new temporalities, spatialities, and uses.
The expected outcomes of this thesis are numerous, as housing constitutes the bulk of the city’s fabric. Thus, transforming housing means changing the city itself. However, the spatial challenges to be resolved are significant: air or soil pollution, noise nuisances, logistical needs, waste production are common nuisances from artisanal activities, which are therefore seemingly incompatible with housing. A typological research thus makes sense to question this reality, but above all to demonstrate the spatial and usage potentials of programmatic mixing. We could live more densely and ecologically, but above all live better, with more space at a lower cost.
Preamble / 3 typological contradictions
The research is based on three typological contradictions that suggest that housing and workshops are incompatible programs. The thesis aims to lift this programmatic incompatibility.
1. Equipment / Assignment & Deassignment
On one side, productive spaces have specific equipment (soundproofing, mechanical ventilation, assembly lines…). These technical equipment assign the manufacturing rooms a specific role and program.
On the other, we notice the multiplication of collective housing projects presenting deassigned room plans. Examples include the work of MAIO, Sophie Delhay, and Peris+Toral, themselves drawing on older references like the Viennese Gemeindebauten. This typological resurgence is not by chance: these plans have great qualities in a neoliberal housing production context, mostly aimed at tenants. Tenants, unable to modify their homes, find these plans offer great usage flexibility and can adapt to evolving lifestyles (blended families, co- living, aging population).
A live-work space aspires to coexist assigned rooms (necessary for technical reasons) and deassigned rooms (necessary for flexibility and thus longevity of the type over time). This contradiction offers economic potential by considering the sharing of certain equipment.
2. Dimensions / Small & Large Rooms
On one side, productive spaces dedicated to craftsmanship form a collection of vast rooms within the city (like the Noerd factory in Zurich, for example).
On the other, collective housing consists of an assembly of small rooms.
A live-work space aspires to coexist small and large rooms. This unique dimensional assembly would allow investment in unusual building depths. In the environmental crisis era, where we aim to densify the city on itself and where many industrial sites seek to be reinvested (e.g., PAV in Geneva, Sébeillon Halls in Lausanne), live-work types could take place in these thick buildings to exploit previously unused land reserves while maintaining the city’s productive vocation.
3. Climates / Economy & Comfort
On one side, productive spaces deploy a varied climatic spectrum: some spaces are heated, others are not, some produce a high «sound climate,» others do not need natural light.
On the other, housing maintains a more homogeneous and temperate relationship to comfort, heating, and light.
This contradiction offers potential for energy mutualization: climatic synergies between housing and workshops could result in significant energy savings.
Method / Historical Analysis, Redrawing
The thesis aims to study the European live-work space type in all its diversity (from the Middle Ages to the industrial revolutions) and the typological evolutions – of housing on one hand, and craftsmanship on the other – that have led to these contemporary contradictions. The goal is not to return to earlier forms of live-work spaces but to capitalize on modernity’s gains to propose new forms of productive housing adapted to today’s challenges (sustainability, flexibility, sharing). The method will therefore be based on the analysis and redrawing of pre-industrial case studies combining housing and work, and on the analysis of major contemporary evolutions that have ultimately made each of these two programs specific and separate. These evolutions will challenge the old live-work space models to envision contemporary potentials and solutions.
Heichrich Degello