Housing sociale in Toscana: confronto tra innovazione e Società

The paper focuses on the existent dichotomy between the actual law system that regulates the social housing sector and the drive for innovation that originates from the requirements of a liquid Society, characterized by new housing needs and social paradigms. The boundary of the analysis is the Tuscan region and the first steps the public administration is doing forwards a regulation in public housing more concerned with social and environmental sustainability. To show a practical response to this requirements, the paper analyses a case study built in 2013 by the public housing managing authority of Florence, a temporary timber frame building made by prefabricated modules. This aspect of temporariness introduces the architectural theme of impermanence, that could be read not only as a quick answer to a specific housing emergency, but especially as an alternative way of designing the social housing itself, not considered as something definitive and immutable, but endowed with the possibility to change easily according to a unstable family structure. That leads directly to the concept of adaptability, that means the house could be modified to accommodate a big range of inhabitants and the way to obtain that goal is projecting by modules and optimizing the space. To reach that purpose the project should minimize private spaces and introduce shared facilities. As a sum of this considerations, three key words of innovation take shape: impermanence, adaptability and sharing.