A new hierarchy between public, semi-public and private spaces.
On January 1969 The Beatles performed their last concert on the rooftop of their label and recording studio Apple Building. The streets around the building became the tribune of the improvised concert of the most popular band in the country. The performance created a lot of chaos in the district of West London, where both business people and some passers-by witnessed the concert.
This kind of performance soon became a trend among many other bands which performed improvised concerts in the city and it is the first seed of what would later become described as ‘flashmob’. During the lock-down this image has become very actual again, and the semi-public spaces that people use to gather, make us think of the Apple Building rooftop.
As architects, we are interested in rethinking the hierarchies between the public, the semi-public and the private spaces of the city as they can deeply affect the experience of inhabitants within houses. During the lockdown a new relationship between those spaces has been experienced by the population, since a window, a balcony, an entrance-hall, a rooftop were the only possible spaces in which public interactions could occur. We hope that this new gathered consciousness can trigger new ways of thinking this hierarchy in the house of the future.
On January 1969 The Beatles performed their last concert on the rooftop of their label and recording studio Apple Building. The streets around the building became the tribune of the improvised concert of the most popular band in the country. The performance created a lot of chaos in the district of West London, where both business people and some passers-by witnessed the concert.
This kind of performance soon became a trend among many other bands which performed improvised concerts in the city and it is the first seed of what would later become described as ‘flashmob’. During the lock-down this image has become very actual again, and the semi-public spaces that people use to gather, make us think of the Apple Building rooftop.
As architects, we are interested in rethinking the hierarchies between the public, the semi-public and the private spaces of the city as they can deeply affect the experience of inhabitants within houses. During the lockdown a new relationship between those spaces has been experienced by the population, since a window, a balcony, an entrance-hall, a rooftop were the only possible spaces in which public interactions could occur. We hope that this new gathered consciousness can trigger new ways of thinking this hierarchy in the house of the future.
