WATER AND SOCIAL HOUSING ARCHITECTURE

Introduction
The question of residential provision for weaker bands of citizens has been lately included in the more urgent social issues to be solved at both political and technical levels, and this is because there are some “… reasons which constitute the actuality of each human being and of each true democracy: the need of defending the individuals’ rights, still safeguarding the community’s ones.” ¹ Building new Social housing settlements or recovering the existing stocks of public fabrics will contribute to ensure these rights, but if and only if the solutions will be sustainable, resources’ saving and highly healthy.
Since “… the essence of the space , today, is its multi-laterality, the multiplicity of the potential relationships which it includes …”², then the arrangement of social housing needs to take into account a wide number of factors and expertise, which cooperate for achieving the architecture value, the social issues and the respect for natural resources.
In particular one of the resources, that is fundamental but needs to be saved, not to be abused and mainly not to be polluted, is the water. The sustainable architecture can provide new ideas of space, according to this element, as we will see later in these notes.
The importance of the water as well as of the other common goods³ , let alone the following protection of the right to have access to this element, is one of the central issues of the social question, even though in the residential sector the element itself has often been neglected, where the great amount of hydric basins creates easy conditions for inhabiting and living, as in particular in Italy and in South Europe.
When born spontaneously, the human habitat is “moulded by a wonderful energy” ⁴; this is due to the collective will, to the spirit, then also the need of care for the resource water should be inspired to this spirit, in the space of the house. If the principle of equality and equity is respected, the water should be considered as that lymphatic system which satisfies and takes united the various requirements of the communities, were they rich or poor, and that then in the development of their houses, requires a spatial arrangement, mediated by an interaction between appliances, technologies, materials, volumes and empty zones, so prefiguring the use of the house as a right and a duty: a right to have access to the resource water and a right again to the satisfaction of all the other residential needs; and a duty to safeguard its pureness, to provide and save it for everybody. So also the riches should learn how to save and eventually to recycle it, as “common good”: the human’s need of getting a safe and healthy recovery is in fact fundamental for the creation of the house, but at the same time the water represents exactly the centre of the residential activities as well as “…. the word home … tells us that each individual’s personal centre has its core …”⁵ in the home itself as an ideal goal; “… the home actually leads to the interior and represents the need of settling.”⁶ […]