New approaches to housing complexity: designing dwellings in the age of cognitive economy

Space is produced by a society in accordance with its habits, and habits, mostly in the Western society, have been heavily influenced by forms of production. Indeed, it is widely acknowledged that the Industrial Revolution definitely changed the space of modern landscapes, cities and dwellings life at all scales, and the way in which we perceive them. Cognitive capitalism is no exception. Since it fully established itself as one of the prevailing economic forces in the 21st century and in the Western world, it produced deep changes in the way in which people work, connect, and live. Starting from the assumption that changes in means of production generate new social relationships, this paper investigates how these changes might result in new ways of building architectural space. Without indulging in a deterministic attitude, it focuses on housing as one of the fundamental artefacts where a society expresses its approach to space. The house is a basic element of complex urban systems and is, therefore, the one calling for a more radical conceptual rethinking, marking an effective distance with the forms inherited from the previous centuries. Finally, the paper aims at understanding the repercussions of the digital paradigm on the space of dwelling, reasoning on some crucial questions to understand how housing might evolve, unfolding through its spatial configuration the new ways of life of the digital society.