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Houseworks and their action space as direct builders of their environment.

Ester Gisbert Alemany

Independent Researcher ester@arrsa.org

commonhworks.wordpres.com

Abstract: This research, developed for my degree Project in Architecture in the University of Alicante, intends to scrabble the impact of everyday actions in direct building our environment. How the contemporary individual can rebuild not only its identity but also the physical environment in which performs this actions in its daily live using new "distributed" technologies. In the technological context, "opened" by the Internet, hacktivism, and DIWO DIY, recycling social, crowdsourcing,.. appears the possibility of a society empowered with easy access tools. Here, artistic practice has an essential role of experimental avant-garde for proposing new everyday practicesʼ tools. Versus architecture and urbanism that, despite having been traditionally responsible for the definition of the environment, are now charged with the burden of the commoditization of the urban thing. With these objectives and context this research takes as its main strategy domestic work and its "space of action", thereby opening the black box of standard housing and closed pairs as public-private, male-female work-leisure, individual-collective, that were hid under the skirts of the housewife ideal. In the search for references and as a methodology, Iʼve done a tracking of materializing agents of the housewife stereotype, the main agent of domestic work, scrabbling papers about everyday objects design in history that focus on the formalization of the environment of middle-

class standard home, crossing several disciplines in the domestic act: history, economics, art, sociology and industry. This allows to have a conceptual framework of different paradigms of domestic work which came one after another in history, and an instrumental framework which let us see how objects and technology have changed the way we do domestic work and the roles of women and home. Also has uncovered some surprising institutions and materializing agents such as the kitchen-laboratory of Frederick, the "private club" of the nomadic girl, the ad of the 50ʼs, and the "patchwork" of Child among others. This is where prospective research begins: by applying methods and tools of various artistic experiences to the field of domestic work, and the outlining of possible environments without housing or housewife but individuals that perform themselves while they do care-work on his "body-home". Using interactive and de- or re-location tools, DIY-kits, creative recycling, social screening, small electronics,..; redefining concepts of hygiene, privacy, body, professionalism,..; and recovering forgotten agents or institutions; I propose a multidisciplinary methodology of projecting for the daily that opens the "field of action" of the individual in their daily actions. Keywords: Daily, Perform, Ability, Tool, Distributed, Empower, Realization

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Introduction

When I read, some years ago, Walter Benjamin's The author as producer written in 1934, I understood almost anything. But an image was left in my mind: the function of the writer is to get every reader to turn into a writer himself… For someone who is interested in the participation of the user in architecture, this title and this image are very suggestive and I believe they've been behind all my work as an architecture student. During the first years, this work had more to do with intangible strategies: relational, routine related and management ones, or “soft” material, light and ephemeral ones. Gradually, and mostly at urban proposals, this has been confronted to the reality around the architect's work: building cities and buildings. My work was devoted to the study of flexible typologies and the revaluation of unnoticed local elements. In those cases, it was somehow disturbing to have this reader-writer image on my mind, as long as it could only be satisfied with an imaginary that didn't draw much interest among the architects-evaluators.

When considering the subject of my Final Project (FP), I thought about the instrumentalization of that image. That is: thinking at how the user of architecture, as an expert about his own life, can turn himself into a re-builder of his environment. Reading again Benjamin's text, I assume that for this purpose we have to consider which place the author is occupying inside the whole production process, which technical innovations he's proposing for the transformation of this process, and how he makes them available to other producers. In our times, and specially in the technological context unveiled by Internet, there are many practices using innovative tools that modify the ways culture is produced, tools that are broadly distributed and redefine the position of the author. We're talking not only about technological tools, but about process related ones, too. There are experiences that, using those new technologies, question the city and the landscape. They usually don't take a place inside the city production process, but manage to get to the very end consequences of the use of these techniques, which they usually distribute, and to produce real objects. Other practices manage to involve the user in the evaluation or the construction of the city by using social networks or squatter ethics. They usually don't achieve enough institutional power and the citizen that is doing an extra work by participating can get disappointed, but they do have a huge media and exemplifying influence, in addition to creating and efficiently managing distributed and flexible organizations. Some of those experiences serve as an example for this work and are brought face to face with the conventional practices of environmental definition: architecture and urbanism, which take part of a marketed and user distant production process with their laws, projects and procedures.

The aim is to propose a methodological environment for architect-inhabitants (recovering that writer-reader concept) that allows them to interact with traditional city producers. I've taken as design subject the Housework (HW) and its spaces for many reasons: people are experts of their own housework, whether doing it by themselves or not, and they do it necessarily in a quotidian way so it doesn't mean an extra work; each person has a recognized right to have a place to do that work (reflected in the right to having a shelter), but it goes beyond as it channels the right to every supply needed to do that work, and materializes the right to individual privacy that some works need. The modern architecture and urbanism took as a minimum unit of design the house. They envisioned a user type, middle-class family, and created a product that met it. I think in today's society makes sense to think the city with the tools to do the HW, whether technological or social, rather than with the standard housing. Thus we have differentiated and activated users that, through the conduct of their daily actions, and as the tools they use enable them, build their environment.

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What Housework?

To begin, I should clarify what HW Iʼm talking about because it is a vague and unknown area, despite itʼs ordinary. The literature of the subject, from housewives manuals to womenʼs economic studies, usually does a somersault: from the female body to the political and economic system. Because it is understood that the housewife manages a family unit within a dwelling and so she contributes to the reproduction of society. This means that, from the definition of Lydia Child patchwork1, some tasks overlap with other spatially and temporally: baking in the kitchen, while cleaning the bathroom and taking care of children and preparing them for the society. It is a heterogeneous and subjective collection of tasks, which have in common their realization within the home by the housewife. This makes it difficult to define and organize domestic work. Manuals, from Catherine Beecher, have preferred spatial organization, dividing the tasks through the rooms and emphasizing the good organization of the house. Feminist studies prefer temporary organization because are dealing with social and economic undervaluation of the work or the precarious situation of domestic workers, focusing on the measurement of time and cost of labor. This leads to paradoxical situations as the "3rd person criteria": "activity that can be done by a person other than the one who benefits of its service" that makes jobs such as body hygiene remain invisibles, while these works were made in public institutions in other historical moments.2 Some planners are rethinking urban planning and city from the safety or conciliation of domestic work criteria, but keeping as a minimum unit of design the family house.

In this research, I preferred to think HW from the tools and spaces that allow making it, in order to compare ways of making it and see how they build different settings. I understand the HW as the set of works that each person does on her own body. I called it "ownbodywork", but it remains a collection of tasks difficult to organize. To this purpose it has been interesting the book Hágalo usted mismo3 that in developing a syllabus for the HW learning in school, made an experimental tracking into homes and suggested a division according to the spatial and temporal scale of tasks differentiating, for example, daily personal grooming from annual cleanup. Unlike other studies, it includes intangible works such as dietary control or use of leisure, without the moral evaluation of the housewives manuals. I took this list as a base adding some other works.

1. McHugh, Kathleen Anne. American Domesticity. From How to Manual to Hollywood Melodrama. New York, Oxford University Press, 1999, 30. 2. Carrasco, Cristina. “El olvido histórico del trabajo de las mujeres”, Feminismos, http://www.nodo50.org/feminismos/spip.php?article157 3. Fernández Enguita, Mariano. Hágalo usted mismo : la cualificación del trabajo doméstico, la crisis de su aprendizaje y la responsabilidad de la escuela. Madrid : Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia, Centro de Publicaciones, 1991.

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On this list and, based on the previous book, I tested a method of classification by the end object of the work, the operations performed and the type of work. This work might be valued according to the complexity, the priority, the social value attributed and standardization. The technification of the work is classified by the degree of technical substitution and supplies needed, which give an idea of the spatial and temporal scale consequences of the work. Crossing all these data we could get lists of jobs classified by materials, time, priorities, etc.. This will get an interesting overview of HW and could objectively compare the different ways to perform a specific job and check the real technification and its urban and social implications. We could also intuit ways of optimizing the works.

Since the firsts feminists included in their agenda the HW and the middle class invented

"the servant problem"4 there have been many attempts to optimize it. In the years of massive industrialization it was created the myth of the replacement of the housewife work by "appliances" and the American dream of single-family home fully equipped and dedicated to consumption. This imagery of liberation through the technology was so well publicized by advertising that silenced the debate on centralization of HW with public services, which intended to follow the path of industrialization of other forms of household production such as agriculture or textiles. However, some researchers “claim that the rise of domestic technologies was accompanied by higher standards of cleanliness and care of children”. For example, “while washing machines washing reduced hardness of the task, it increased its frequency.” In other studies it is verified that the hours spent at HW by housewives even increased from the 20 to 605.

In my informal list of 24 works, only 5 have been technically replaced and only for other six there are technical tools that made work easier. It is also significant for me that general cleanup work (not objects) have been very little mechanized when there exist cleaning apparatus for large areas. Maybe this is because itʼs the less valued work, or because they have not been able to industrialize it as well as others. It is not accidental that the more mechanized works are those who consume electricity6, as the companies manufacturing electrical appliances were the same that sold energy.

I think that with the above data, these examples and our daily lives experience, the myth of liberating technology is taken apart, and I can justify that the purpose of my Final Project is not the total technical substitution (robots and home automation as some friends to me suggested when I told them I was rethinking the house from the HW); but trying to implement in the field of HW new distributed tools and techniques, that in other fields have contributed to the empowerment of the individual. 4. McHugh, Kathleen Anne. Op. cit., 71. 5. Lupton, Ellen y Miller, J. Abbot. El cuarto de baño, la cocina y la estética de los desperdicios. Madrid, Celeste Ediciones, 1995, 15. 6. Lupton, Ellen y Miller, J. Abbot. Op. cit., 23.

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Houskeeping and its action space

We can understand this technology paradox with the concept of "action space" in which a practice is performed. Taking the definition of Otto Von Busch in his thesis7, the space of action is the “the very hands-on opportunities offered to us by the combination of skills, tools and materials. ... a zone of distributed potentiality related to our abilities to interact with the world... an area in which we move and make decisions about our lives, our everyday environment, things we think, act and do. It is a domain, geographical as well as practical and conceptual where we feel comfortable to make decisions and take action... in which we feel comfortable to make these decisions and act”. To my proposal is very important the possibility of making decisions and we must differentiate it form the spatial consequences that the works have. For example, when the supermarket and the refrigerator replaced the work of cultivating and preservation for solving the problem of abundance of products in one season and scarcity in another, they extended the spatial consequences of our work. The food companies grow on a much larger scale than our garden and the fridge needs energy produced in large power plants and distributed by major infrastructures. This does not mean that the action space of this work has increased, on the contrary it has shrunk, these tools make us passive consumers who can only choose one product or another or one light fare or other, but it doesnʼt allow us to decide on fertilizers and water, nor on the possible installation of nuclear energy.

Von Busch talks about the tools as weapons in the forefront of the struggle to expand our action space and uses the term "hybrid" of Bruno Latour to refer to the associations we make with them. Each new tool provides a new distribution of power in the network of entities that must act together to perform a job8.

In an attempt to define the distribution of skills in the HW I have done a scan through some academic works on the design of everyday objects in history, dealing with the formalization of the standard home environment of middle-class from various disciplines. Redistribution is generally a "emancipatory" one, with it “we give up our field of activity to a pre-packaged one” and to “executable” technical tools. This means that for the use of the tools we need to change our routines of action and adapt our standards to those proposed by the tool in exchange for more time for other things. A great example of this are the food processors that indicate the steps to follow in his own recipes in a "test of discipline and skill,"9 it will be difficult to appropriate the technology of that robot to change these processes. All the tools assume, in fact, training, but those operating as "instructables" are more adaptive and expand the space of action by appropriation and allowing us to “be proud of our work”.

7. Von Busch, Otto. FASHION-able: Hacktivism and Engaged Fashion Design. Gothenburg, Intellecta Docusys, 2008, 41. 8. Von Busch, Otto. Op. cit., 43. 9. Von Busch, Otto. Op. cit., 44.

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Housework Institutions

Until now, the institution of the house with its technical furniture and appliances has defined the field of action of the HW. Here I raise the possibility of crossing the border through tools that, although distributed, are organized in other institutions, and the possibility of shaping the city through these institutions. The ways to expand the space of action do not necessarily have to be products or techniques, Internet-based contemporary experiences, the DIY and design history teaches us that HW can be extended by means of manuals, management plans, shared tools, ... However, without being manufactured products to whose technology we have no access, may also act shrinking our space of action and this may be a decision that we take for expanding another space. Everyone should be able to make their daily work in a field of action determined by themselves. This person would participate in some institutions and not in others and the sum of spaces of action that the tools of these institutions would offer her, constitute her field of action.

Kathleen McHugh says that her book American Domesticity10 is no exception to the recurrent tendency in domestic discourses produced by women to use the HW as a strategy. Every time someone has thought about the paradigm of the housewife or challenged it, all the institutions that contain it have been mobilized trying to answer Benjamin's question: “For whom do you write?” Or better, “For whom is this technique useful?” 11 This study is neither an exception, and to display these strategies I have made this diagram that represents different "ideal" of housewifes. Each has shaped the domestic resident paradigm (female) in a historical moment but, when the paradigm changed, the values that character has played are not lost but added and mixed to form the amalgam of meanings the housewife has today. 10. McHugh, Kathleen Anne. Op. cit., 11. 11. Benjamín, Walter. El autor como productor. México, Itaca, 2004.

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Among those meanings (coincidentally) domestic work itself disappears. So the research has been tracking it to find what worker is proposed, in which space is working and what politics, social and economic identity is proposed. Throughout texts, films or investigations in which are the characters appear, Iʼve drawn a "map" of identities, roles, and institutions which serves to find some definitions, institutions and tools, essential to the expansion of fields of action, that were hidden under standard housing: as the "patchwork" of Child, the "Club" of the nomad girl Toyo Ito in Tokyo12, the "kitchen laboratory" of Frederick or "community facilities' of Peirce13. It also helps to have a historical space to place my new workers and to visualize changes in the role of women and home. The “nomad girl” and his club could not exist without the city of Tokyo, nor “the material feminist” and her public equipments without the American suffrage movement, even they had influence outside these contexts. Instead, the central amalgam consumer-appliance-market-private-family-nation has spread throughout the world within the liberal market global.

12. Ábalos, Iñaki. La buena vida: visita guiada a las casas de la modernidad. Barcelona, Gustavo Gili, 2000. 13. Hayden, Dolores. The grand domestic revolution. Cambridge, The MIT Press, 1981, 183.

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Childʼs “Frugal Housewife” Beecherʼs “Domestic Economist”

Frederickʼs “Domestic Engineer” Friedanʼs “Mechanical Bride”

Itoʼs “Nomadic Girl” Peirceʼs “Material Feminist”

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Relocation of domestic work

In the abstract global context it seems we could expect little impact of the completion of HW. Here I recover the concept of literary theory signify'in14, which gives a key to the minorities in their search for their own language and, by extension, their identity. The consciousness of their own language, the dialect, matters but remaining in it without insisting on the difference. Signify'in is daring with the language of another, the dominant, but not submitting to it, as so far has made the HW in standard housing, but doing it ownselfʼs. As in the fables for children in which the smallest is the smartest and the strongest is tricked with its own weapons, this is about signifyʼin the tools of the tradition of architecture (urban, white, male and expert), which has a greater field of action, with the lighter tools of the tradition of HW and distributed technologies.

In seeking the proper tools to extend our field of action all identities influence. It is not the same to perform leisure work in a rural setting that in an urban one or cooking works in an upland area than in an orchard, or to take a Turkish bath than to go to a gym. The context in which we will work will make some tools be more effective than others, we must find what are the tools used for the construction of a concret environment and signifyʼin them to get a real empowerment of our daily action.

In the same way that "the speaker does not draw the words from the dictionary, they exist in otherʼs mouth, in his context and serving his intentions"15, I've located the Final Project work in three current and specific urban situations: the Baixa de Lisboa, abandoned historic center of a European capital, the Huerta de Alicante in Mutxamel, being colonized by the expansion of a metropolitan area; and the Mediterranean forest of La Torre de les Maçanes, in degradation and danger because of its abandonment or urbanization. Each one has a different urban and domestic situation, and also different social actors. These places are parliament-scenarios in which these actors project their desires and use the unequal powers they have on them. The domestic works try to support themselves in the more patrimonial elements, that are, therefore, more obliged to negotiation and representation of all actors. In each of these places the valuation of the elements and the negotiating spaces are different. My theory is that, through a new instrumentation and relocation of HW in these “common” spaces, users who perform them can expand their field of action and gain more representation and power in the construction of these environments than they had performing them in the private house16.

14. Fry, Paul. 15. Íbidem. 16. Jaque, Andrés y Hurlé Pablo. “Arquitectura Parlamento”, Archfarm, 13, 2009.

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Tools of the new Domestic Work

The diagram below is a summary of tools, designs and institutions I mobilized in the proposals for the FP, with references to the "artistic" or new technologies projects underlying the proposals. These are examples of how you might get some of the goals set so far: innovation in performing of the HW, the instrumentalization to increase the field of action and get more power in city public trading. I like to refer to these experiences because, unlike the conventional architecture, manage these objectives without necessarily passing a previous project that needs to be validated by other experts, not the users themselves, to be done.

For example, diagnosis maps of the project 22@ at Poble Nou of the Group rotorr_17, made between 2001 and 2004 are also adventure maps, action maps. On the routes (with fence breaks, access to restricted areas away from the monitoring points, climbing, ...) we discovered how different builders and investors were colonizing the area and replacing its previous inhabitants. Today there is already a tradition of civic mapping conflicts with wiki-software that allows collective editing of maps. The case of Poble Now! is special because in addition to visualize the situation, it is able to develop specific set of tools for urban adventure in areas under construction. With their workshops to learn climbing sculptures and terraces, and building materials needed for this, they increase citizenʼs space of action, that is enabled to move around the city through places that would not reached without them. With their signal system, the choice of controversial sites and loaded with irony, they take the urban commodification, hardly accessible, to an area where they can interact with it. This is what I've tried to do while mapping the locations of the Final Project.

17. http://rotorrr.org/

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Rotorr Colective Images from their project Poble Now

Their tools for adventure have to do with constructive techniques of social recycling, DIY

and squatter ethics, from which also exists now a great tradition. In the case of Santiago Cirugeda, he manages to trick planning authorities and build into their regulations for much lower prices directly with operative projects. In his recently introduced video ¿Cuánto quieres?

18, he shows how the current crisis in the construction industry has led his Recetas Urbanas19 to be a real alternative to conventional construction. In the video a real estate businessman asks the artist to “output” the materials he has in stock with the art grants he gets for his work being experimental.

In the maps of the FP we can see that the reconstruction of the Baixa Pombalina will be held by a Sociedade de Rehabilitaçâo Urbana that values the buildings from the rehabilitation and sale price and allows other agencies to express about the city's image heritage, that is highly valued although very poorly preserved. All this is quite far from the everyday life of Lisbon citizens. However, in Lisbon there is a Programa Local de Habitaçâo (PLH) that is more participatory and public. By mapping the PLH strategies there appear equipamientos de proximidade, casas vazias municipales, and hotéis sociais for people in transition because of resettlement and rehabilitation processes. Places to, for example, host HW recovering the old idea of public thermal baths or thermal institution and investigate new typologies between the collective and private. On the map I identified heritage buildings that are abandoned and in very poor condition, which are municipal property. 18. http://colectivosenlared.org/blogs/2010/04/19/¿cuanto-quieres/ 19. http://www.recetasurbanas.net/

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The proposal considers rehabilitating the buildings that are more damaged, with scaffolding and other equipment for strengthening of structures, to become super tech equipments that can accommodate all the bathroom needs of the neighborhood. This would allow the other buildings that are not in such bad shape to be inhabited without expensive works that destroy patrimonial values in order to install the equipment of a standard housing and that depend on megaempreitadas of large real estate and building companies.

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In the case of the huerta in Mutxamel there is a patrimonial recognition for its history of common management of water through the network of canals still in use20. In the map of actors we see that the network belongs to the Comunidad de Regantes with decreasing number of members and headed now by a large agribusiness company. By law, it controls the sale of the depurated water for agriculture, but the recent actions proposed would convert the network to the irrigation of bungalowsʼ gardens that urbanize the huerta.

In mapping this developing process I have located the places where the huerta meets

with the dense urban grid, where many potential guests for kitchens run by housewives live. These kitchens are built with recycled containers and equipment and are located next to a low cost wastewater recycling infrastructure. As there is no recovery plan for the huerta, the goal is to colonize the network through the sale of this recycled water to farmers and the demand for local products, to reactivate that space and gain power in decision making processes.

20. Ostrom, Elinor. Governing the commons: the evolution of institutions for collective action. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991, 78.

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In the case of forest in La Torre, exists a Plan Forestal Autonómico governing land use and protection of unique species, as well as valuing public leisure space. HW is in a digital hybrid space added in to play games, social relations, walks and shelter, through the management of a digital social network. As the patrimonial value is very diffuse the goal is to create a map and collective catalog that defines what is valuable to citizens while they perform such works.

The Conselleria de Medio Ambiente, the City Council and Land Stewardship Foundations

establish fairly flexible rules on unprotected and abandoned forest areas. This is understood as an opportunity for the reconstruction of landscape with the rules the social network creates.

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Regarding maps of action, is very interesting the work on power networks visualization of

Bureau d'études21. I am particularly interested in a 2008 work called Self-economy, it is about how global industries use the individual who performs his daily and intimate activities. "I move, I refuse to use my legs, I travel by car, I use oil, I finance and provoke oil wars, so the oil industry uses my car ". The focus on the individual doesnʼt put off the globalized world as a network of power, which I do not participate, but as an extension of my person (self) which is used by the industry, depending on the elections I make. This is not in itself an extension of action space, but the visualizing of opportunities to make decisions about consumption. Iʼve remade this map adding ICT works that we do in our leisure time, depending on how the tools are designed and whether the tools are ours or not, weʼre working for free for industry and adding value to its digital places.

21. http://bureaudetudes.org/

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This broadened view of the self becomes an extension of the ecosystem of the body in the installation DrinkPee of Britta Riley and Rebecca Bray22. Visitors are invited to sit on a toilet in front of a fountain as if to drinking their own urine treated with homemade purification system that takes advantage of nutrients extracted from the urine to fertilize a plant. This is not only a reflection, personal kits for the recycling of urine at home are distributed and explain the influence of the products we eat (food and medicines) when they return through our urine to nature. It also explains how the centralized infrastructure-intensive processes need to remove these substances. With that tool the space of action is augmented and the tool is comparable with the expensive conventional system.

Britta & Becca Images from their project drinkpeedrinkpee

Technical knowledge is democratized in utilization of these kits daily and makes users become experts in their own urine and the technology used. Now there are many experiences that develop the concept of "citizen science" and create scientific databases on urban wildlife among other things, enrolling citizens in their conduct following the pioneering example of Wikipedia. I want to comment on the project by Natalie Jeremijenko OOZ23, which I think is a step forward in this field. It's a zoo without cages in which humans are given a set of actions that cause reactions in animals that are stored in a file and interpreted collectively. For the interaction with the geese a robot-goose was manufactured, the visitors manage it thanks to a chair interface and the robot can follow other ducks and even “talk” to them. The robot records the interactions and the visitors add it to the database with its interpretation. The result is the collective creation of a new language goose-human, not directed by scientific experts. This makes the authority over what the ducks mean is distributed.

22. http://brittaandrebecca.org/ 23. http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/ooz/

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Following this example, proposals in my FP have included monitoring devices and collective databases that are created when performing the HW. The action space of domestic workers is expanded greatly within their own community because they donʼt have to translate their needs or their knowledge of the actual work to other disciplines that they donʼt control. This is true in the case of La Torre, where the project enrolls physical and digital visitors thanks to itʼs playful approach. The assessment made by them of natural spaces and species builds a collective database, which has a collector function and training one, getting an increasing number of expert visitors. From the catalog, bureaucracies would be made providing access to funding that often depends only on the social assessment and the acceptance of the owners. There have been some experiences of this with monumental trees as the Catálogo de árboles Monumentales24.

Finally, the subject of collectivization of work appears. Be within a user community supposes sharing knowledge and technology but also tools. Sharing space and equipment has been one of the major topics of the design for domestic work in history. The nineteenth century utopian communities took it to its logical conclusion, kitchen-less houses linked to central kitchens in apartments or garden cities attempted to maintain privacy of the bedroom25. In these cases they faced the problem of uniformity and the difficult management of common equipment.

In my proposal I try to centralize the election of choices of HW, so each person increases her action space through choice and through knowledge, and through the field of action that acquires the community of users because of its greater scale. But at the same time, I propose systems and tools that the individual user controls directly expanding its action space.

24. http://somdepoble.com/wiki/index.php?title=Catàleg_d'Arbres_Monumentals 25. Hayden, Dolores. Op. cit.

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Centralized kitchens in Mutxamel makes the water and waste recycling have more impact and permits it to colonize the irrigation network in competition with other inputs of water. The subscription system allows customization of the diet within the culinary offer and deciding if we want organic products, local or both. But the system of deferred cooking, satellite kitchens and vending machines allow each person to cook and increases your chances with the knowledge of others organized in a digital cookbook.

In Baixa the module system and the redundant staircase create custom paths for regeneration of the body. Blocking flights allows using individual modules and creating zones of privacy. Sharing the modules creates more bathing possibilities for all but the privatization of some sections of the staircase extends other that become more public. So the staicase is a clear object of negotiation between the inhabitants and users of equipment. However, the dependence on the industry for the manufacture of modules and mechanization bathroom cleaning, shrinks the field of action. This collective equipment is proposed to function as a Living Lab26, where users and producers innovate together. Through the monitoring system of expenditures, temperature and humidity it creates a community of expert users that collaborate in the industry's innovations and can conduct them.

26. http://www.openlivinglabs.eu/aboutus

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