The trans-scalar dimension of human habitat.

Considerations on the pandemic home and city.

Abstract

The home and the city are two different scalar dimensions of human habitat that are strongly interconnected. Pandemic lockdown has not only made this clear, but in many cases has pushed spatial situations to the limit, uncovering the dynamics of the home and its ecological complexity. The contemporary dwelling is, by its very nature, "tentacular": it is neither self-explanatory nor self-exhausted, but extends tentacularly towards the city and its surroundings, establishing with them a series of osmotic links that allow it to survive. This essay aims to demonstrate that the environments in which we live are always negotiated spaces between humans and non-humans, regardless of the instances of imposition of certain ways of doing architecture: in fact, although design intentions tend to be prescriptive and normative, the construction of places always takes place thanks to a process of negotiation between various actors.