Over the last hundred years architecture has shifted towards Sterile, monotonous, bland structures. Following radical ideas from the modernist era and based on factors such as globalization and global economy, this phenomenon spread widely around the world.
These rigid designs often prioritize efficiency and uniformity over the needs of individuals and communities. failing to accommodate the complexity and fluidity of human life. People thrive in environments that promote the dynamicity of their lives, which reflects in their identities and cultures, social interactions, changing needs, emotions and experiences.
Among crises like population growth and destructive wars, the emphasis on faster, larger, and more cost-efficient solutions has overshadowed the human element in planning the built spaces. The human dimension has been overlooked and neglected, shifting the aim from creating architecture for people to merely erecting structures and seeking temporary solutions.
From its early decades, building in Israel was shaped by the urgent need for housing due to continuous waves of immigration, focusing on rapid housing production, economic and security stability. Years later, despite the shift from government-led public housing to private sector development, the focus on cost-effective and rapid housing production remains true in the current approach, driven by market-oriented economy and the on-going shortage of housing. Over the past two decades, generic residential tower developments have become the dominant housing typology.
As the housing system is increasingly oriented towards economic considerations, functional efficiency, regulatory frameworks, and market-driven standards, its ability to meet the human needs for an inhabitable space becomes strained. Therefore, the project “1.7 meters” seeks to explore a new approach, which revolves around the human’s 1.7-meter viewpoint.
The approach follows a different set of dominating values that aim to provide a dwelling space to humans first and foremost, resulting in alternatives to the current generic housing. The project seeks to develop new tools and schemes, for the purpose of offering alternatives to the generic housing of today, through exploring three chosen values:
“How can prioritizing living values create an alternative to generic housing?"
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