Au Milieu [Becoming/In Between] Spaces: Repurposing Protocol for Advocating Rights to the City

Abstract

The study aims to identify and establish ways in which abandoned structures and buildings can be repurposed to generate the spatial places and infrastructures to meet existing and anticipated threats to free democratic life, such as terrorism, pandemics, and climate change. In terms of studying the specific typologies of repurposing projects, the abandonments once had their incentives for their existence, and justifications for their escape from eventual demise. Two ways of improving the old structure in response to new threats include preemptively generating as many plans as possible before the threats become real, and the second is to get a more adaptable spatial structure. The parking garage was propagated around the world in response to industrial and technological revolutions, but is going to be abandoned due to severe environmental problems such as the climate crisis. The repurposing of this typology ensures the environmental, cultural, and economic benefits of the country, such as reduction of energy consumption and carbon emission. After a series of assumptions about non-linear temporality, the consequence is the extrapolation of a space-the type that is event-oriented, risk-resistant, and resilient. Although the design process was based on the study of current housing typologies, in order to distinguish the newly introduced resilient space from existing architectural typologies such as social housing or affordable housing, I tentatively name this space “Au Milieu”, a french word describing the bothe of the situations: “in between” and “becoming”, which is a good illustration of the characteristic that resilient space should obtain. As an experimental field, I propose Tokyo, a critical city with a complicated and risky environment to launch the “Au Milieu”, thus becoming the pioneer of advocating the inhabitants’ right to the city.