Inhabited intervals between the city and the house. From transition spaces to relationship places

Transiting through architecture is a fundamental action to read, understand and interact with the architectural elements. A good part of the authenticity and power of an architectural experience is based on the possibility of understanding a building as sensorial. In this sense, collective public housing can alter, articulate and influence the human experience. These spaces, "other" than strictly defined as domestic and private, become a branch, a collective and democratic filament, where feeling at home is possible anyway. Thus, the transition space becomes a filter, an imprecise and porous limit, a place to stop in the shade of a tree or to explore an architectural threshold. Next door, the staircase in front, or the other side of a patio, a terrain, the water fountains, the green outdoor space or the top of a terrace, would be the base for generating a new architectonic scenario for the collective coexistence. This is not just a "way back home", but a contest of new places and pathways shared with the citizen's community. This will generate a new experience of differentially living the "transition", leading to an emphatically rethinking about belonging to a place. The paper aims to suggest possible future strategies for collective public housing through modern post-war examples in Rome and Madrid in which, beyond the formal characteristics of the buildings, it is possible to find a human and collective dimension of living. Today, as syncopated episodes, the examples represent an exception in the urban context of the city that has grown up around them and preserve the intangible value of the places unaltered.