Symbiotic Parasites
Reclaiming urban space
A project by Erik Siemund and Giuseppe Defilippis
Imagining the city of today
Symbiotic parasites is a speculative experiment that investigates the future of urban space. The project takes note of the shortcomings many cities have developed through structuring themselves around private transportation and private living. Its primary function, which is to enable and foster meeting and social relations between its inhabitants, has been neglected.
Symbiotic parasites envisions bottom-up self-construction of collective spaces to empower communities to create new alternative paths to come together. The project enables both domestic and public areas to be transformed into co-living spaces. The add-ons work as a standalone,
but can scale, extend and modify to adjust to their surroundings.
They can attach to architecture, hover over parking spaces or span between buildings.
By entering a symbiotic relationship with the urban space, the parasites
create new paths for communities to come together
Symbiotic Parasites is the manifestation of a new way to think about how we use the space that is available to us. The goal is to initiate a debate about the ways in which we inhabit our homes, build communities and live in the city. Are current trends of the housing market leading into isolation, or is there a way to empower people to live together? Is there fertile ground for the formation and strengthening of communities? Are the futures we imagine and plan really reconcilable with the existing?
Reclaiming urban space
Urban landscapes in our current day and age are built around private transportation and private living. Cities are built for cars — people come second. The result are whole residential areas which don’t allow for life between the buildings. These non-places prevent connecting with others. Their function is not to keep people, but rather keep them away.
Projects devoted to reclaiming areas, like additional lanes, parking spots for other means of transportation like bikes or for establishing mixed use areas are a trend in the right direction. Both for the quality of living and the environment. But what about areas where there are no more lanes to be taken, where the parking spots for residents are actually necessary?
Or what if the municipality or governments doesn’t show interest in progressing in this direction?
Urban landscapes need to shift from transient spaces
to anthropological ones
Collective landscapes: the value of co-living
A profound change that has been perceivable for a while and has been accelerating in the recent past, is the increased demand for studio apartments, meant for one person. Another is the increased mobility of young people, especially students who often times go far away from their home. Elderly people face ever more loneliness since they are either living isolated in small apartments or retirement homes, separated from the rest of society. These examples only give an idea about the trend we are developing into. Moving and migrating itself is inherently human. What isn’t is the isolation that comes with it in the way we practice it nowadays. There have already been projects decades ago, which tried and still try to adjust the current development in a more favourable direction, which want to connect people, while still allowing them to have the security and comfort of private living.
Symbiotic Parasites main objective is
to investigate the space between buildings
Those projects are great in a way to question how we want to design spaces that are about to be built from the ground up. But what about the already existing buildings? Expensive and exclusive shared living concepts on the outskirts of big cities can’t be applied to buildings in the city, especially if you don’t want to invest in major reconstruction. Or can they? Since we can’t reconstruct the buildings, what if we can augment their physical functionality and attach modules to them? What if shared living isn’t bound to one building? What if ideas from these concept cities, like communal gardens and spaces, can be brought into the city without the need of additional land?
The fifth wall
The construction of co-living spaces by corporations brings with it the risk of creating happy but exclusive islands. New buildings made ad-hoc for digital nomads employed by global corporations lose the value of age and class heterogeneity. Therefore we must think about co-living in the context of existing buildings. We have to think about an environmentally and socio-economically sustainable way of living. Implementing the dynamics of co-living in existing buildings allows the experience of living together to be experienced even by those who are culturally distant from the world of co-sharing or economically unable to engage in this way of living. The project involves the self-construction of parasitic plug-ins to city buildings. The spaces that characterize co-living (common kitchen, dining room, play area) are attached to the buildings, which subsequently turn into experimental spaces for socialization.
New buildings made ad-hoc for digital nomads employed by global corporations loose the value of age and class heterogeneity
Handmade urbanism: by communities for communities
Symbiotic Parasites envisions a future starting tomorrow, which is actively designed by residents and communities themselves. Handmade urbanism goes against the traditional top-down planning that can often result in standardized, monotonous urban environments that do not reflect the unique needs and desires of local communities. Getting everyone on board is difficult, which is why this project wants to outline a few basic concepts, tools and blueprints, which can be seen as a starting point for further, more individualized implementation by local communities.
The structure
Above
Structures can be built above anything that occupies public land, making it usable again to the community. The space currently used for parking becomes public space for interaction. Similarly, the roofs of houses, regardless of their shape and slopes can be transformed into habitable areas, following the model of venetian ‘Altane’.
If it’s not possible to move cars underground, why
don’t build on top of them?
Between
Buildings are increasingly growing in height and becoming self-contained units. The residential dimension becomes more personal, and opportunities for encounters and exchanges with neighbours decrease.
With the same intention as Passage Couvertes, which are accessible passageways to everyone, parasites nestle between two or more buildings through habitable bridges, connecting different living units across multiple levels.
Connected
Publicly accessible areas to all residents aren’t constructed with a communal use in mind. New co-housing projects redefine shared spaces like dining halls and kitchens, as well as envision ways to give more meaning to previously overlooked areas.
In the 1960s, the homes of immigrant workers in Milan, the ‘Ringhiera’ houses, were designed to share the perimetral balcony, while providing access to individual dwellings. These types of houses bear witness to a time when sociability and sharing were at the center of design intentions, even for the less affluent classes. Parasites exploit the same concept as ‘Ringhiera’ houses but connect to the facades of existing buildings, enhancing their functionality and creating new spaces for social experimentation.
Co-living as a political performance
Architectural parasites offer a way of expanding the possibilities of the built environment without necessarily relying on new construction. By attaching structures to existing buildings, these parasites challenge
traditional notions of property and ownership, and offer opportunities for re-envisioning and experimentation. By redefining the way we use and occupy urban space, parasites encourage us to explore new possibilities for the city. Parasites also serve as a form of performance, reclaiming space and drawing attention to the possibilities of the urban environment. They challenge the idea that the built environment is static and unchanging, and offer a way of engaging with the city as a dynamic, ever-evolving identity.
By redefining the way we occupy and use urban space, parasites encourage us to explore new possibilities for the city
Vienna as a case study: a new perspective on social houses
The project uses the city of Vienna as a base for exploration. Vienna has long been a role-model for social housing, with a history of providing affordable, high-quality homes for its residents dating back to the 1960s. Currently, about two-thirds of Vienna’s housing is public. The heritage and philosophy of affordable housing makes the city an interesting case study for new collective living practices.
Vienna is known for its quality in living and is actively working on keeping it that way. But even a city like Vienna faces challenges and obstacles. Since the city has a lot to offer, it attracts increasingly more people from outside. What is in fact a good and enriching process raises the question of accommodation and integration. In addition, more and more people are
searching for single apartments in the city centre. Expanding the city is a natural reaction to these trends and has been done in fascinating scale in form of the satellite-city Alt-Erlaa. Symbiotic Parasites searches for potential inside the given, rather static and dense city layout. In further experimentation, the used principles could be copied and adjusted to local needs in other city contexts across the world. Since we don’t see ourselves in the position and informed enough, we envision local communities to add their inherent knowledge of surroundings, materials and social needs to the presented ideas.
Symbiotic Parasites searches for potential inside the given, rather static and dense city layout
Manifesto
01. We envision the city as dynamic, ever-evolving entity.
02. believe in the handmade city: by communities for communities.
03. We encourage designed clutter instead of a rigid and static city layout.
04. We implement the dynamics of co-living into existing buildings.
05. We augment instead of building new: Parasites are Above, Between and Connected.
06. We question housing in Vienna on new living scenarios that the city will face in the coming years.
07. We design hackable blueprints for individualized implementation by local communities.
All the images have been generated with AI.
Symbiotic Parasites has been part of the the exhibition “This Changes Everything” at the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, June 2023.
We are open for commissions and collaborations.
Erik Siemund | eriksiemund.com
Giuseppe Defilippis | giuseppedefilippis.xyz