Flexibility and cooperation: the characteristics of low cost home

The transformations of this first decade of the new millennium, connected to social change, global markets and environmental issue to stimulate reflection on the housing project on its social and economic role. Our city and its inhabitants are changing, more transient residents, and abrupt encounters of cultures. If the rationalist manuales contained the stylized dark outlines of a “standard humanity” consisten with the resources of the new clean and sunlit accomodation, designs for a contemporary dwelling ought perhaps to contain the icons of the diverse population, a list of needs that must satisfy now has to be updated in the light of the new desires and lifestyles of variegated population of the “city users”. Simultaneously, the economic and energy crisis, the current period of uncertainty and looming environmental issue, requiring the search for economically acceptable solutions, in a logic low cost and reconsideration of the budget of the different phases of construction. To satisfy customers desires with a maintained efficiency of the production process is a challenge for many house construction companies. In this paper we identify two possible topics, bound to eatch, the research: activation of processes of customization housing and flexible design of the spaces, and the willingness of all stakeholders to activate virtuous cooperation in the organization of local supply chain. In other words, a culture of design and construction is growing up around a strong point, recently described in sociological and anthropological research as “collective intelligence”.