Furnishing Public Housing

In Britain they speak of social housing, in the U.S., housing projects, when referring to subsidized public housing for people who cannot afford to buy or rent a home privately. The terminology denotes a particular ideological framework determining not only the architecture, but also the furnishings of the housing. Because of the small size of the units, the low construction cost and the need to be flexible and potentially suited for multiple functions, furnishing them has presented a constant challenge to the designers and manutacturers involved. Just because of the vast range of needs and expectations they can be called upon to satisty, the products used to furnish public housing have always displayed a complexity that can be summarized in the systemic dimension of the product. A prime example of this new systemic approach to production, linked to the social dimension that the project studying public housing acquired, can be identified in the German experience of the early Twenties, for which the term Existenzminimum was coined. Existenzminimum w a s not merely a n attempt to reduce the quantity of living space compatible with human habitation but, on a more complex level, the development of a new litestyle model, in which modular furnishing and the assimilation of needs into standardized categories that could be mass produced became a tool tor the rationalization of living a n d for the transter to a n operational plane o f e f t e c t i v e s o c i a l p o l i c i e s . I h r o u a h e x p e r i e n c e s l i k e t h e G e r m a n s D e u t s c h e W e r k s t a t t e n . t h e groundwork had already been laid for the first time in turope in the early 20th century for an orientation of production compatible with the political orientation toward the realization of an economical type of furnishing, in mass p r o d u c e d modular units that could b e assembled in different w a y s for different uses. At that time, the production of furniture b e g a n to move gradually a w a y from a n artisanal dimension to a more industrial mass producti