Pis Zero
Research and rehabilitation project about temporary housing for the homeless. It has been designed to bring together the essential components of a home without losing the charateristic versatility of a provisional or portable dwelling. Minimal and basic, it it a small space in the city, away from the street. It embodies the idea of a home and hopes people will want to stay there again.
The project is located at Raval's neighbourhood. Near, it has Arrels FundaciĆ³ central office, some social diners and social services.
For the understanding of this project, we must understand very well the user to whom it is addressed. In collaboration with Arrels FundaciĆ³, they explained to us that there are many people living in the street who refuse to accept the help that Arrels offer, mostly out of fear, because they are people who have already tried to regain the reins of their lives, without success. So, we face the challenge of building an interior space for people who prefer to stay abroad.
The idea is that they go to this place by āinvitationā of the volunteers of Arrels who are going to keep these people company, giving them the option of spending the night in this space where there are no rules, more than the respect between them and with the volunteers. For example, you can smoke, because the space is prepared for it and for much more. They are provided with a set of elements, specially made for this project, with which they are intended to make their corner inside the space.
It is only sought that these people realize that a small improvement such as sleeping under a roof, can be the first step to return to reintegrate into society and have a second chance.
āPis Zeroā has been named for the concept of being the first step on the part of homeless people to climb steps of his life and recover little by little. In todayās society, where everyone looks to the side when passing in front of someone without a home, we have had to look at this problem head on and give a solution for the moment in the city of Barcelona, āābut that can be the beginning of entrepreneurship in other cities, the beginning of not ignoring reality, but confronting it. Once we finished the first stage of research, we restructured a new space that unified the entire plant through a unique structure, and so it was proposed that the flat also had a daily life, as a space for dissemination and information for the Foundation Arrels.
The new design of the house is based on a single open floor in which the different spaces are created from a common element: a module made to simulate tiers that can be stacked between them. Thanks to that, it allows creating different situations, both day and night, in which multiple activities are carried out by the users. The floor maintains an extension of the street, keeps the idea of āāthe corner, shares space, freedom ...Ā
All this thought so that they feel comfortable. The welcome became the key point for the project, resulting in the reception of the central point in space, since the moment of receiving and dismissing, we believe that it is the most notable differentiation between their life on the street and this small space collected, by which little by little the desire to stop living in the street could develop.
