Mix More Uses

Is Mixed Use now the norm?  Where is it going?  
Some idle speculation on the future...

To quote Ian Jukes, “[t]oday’s educators are faced with the challenge of preparing students for jobs that don’t currently exist, jobs that require the use of technology that hasn’t yet been invented, jobs that require them to solve problems that we haven’t even begun to consider...” (Scholastic Administrator, 2002).

We are already seeing convergence of traditionally separate “uses” as a result of internet ubiquity and automation.  So how do we design for the future?  Expanding on a 2008 dissertation, here are some mixed uses we may come to explore:

1. The Club.  The growth of service industries and the rise of building management systems provides a fertile ground for colocating the traditional functions of sleeping, eating, socialising and recreation.  Like the 19th century ‘travellers club’, mixed use apartment buildings play host to a growing number of personal services and gathering spaces traditionally spread over the city, including restaurants and bars, shops, gyms, common rooms and open space.  They currently suffer from proprietary control - either substandard services due to economies of scale, or else the dull homogenisation inevitable in closed communities.  Expect to see commercialisation of these services, to allow them to compete on the level of street or block, and expect to see specialisation of each “club” into its own unique offering.  Concierge services, communal lounges, media hubs, home-office suites, health clubs and spas, sports associations, sports fields and local grocers (farming productive roof gardens) are all possible in an apartment near you.
2.  The Creche.  More and more businesses are offering their employees childcare services in their tenancy, but demand is not uniform and costs are high.  Stay-at-home parents are bonding over communal gathering spaces where their children can play together under many watchful eyes.  Young parents are agitating for childcare choice - not just the cheapest provider but the best.  Mixed use office and residential buildings and precincts are already a reality.  Take this one step further - the mixed use office/residential/creche.  Childcare, pediatrics, toy stores, more?
3. The Chambers.  Low cost housing is a regular demand on the state, but land acquisition and developer incentives are both expensive.  Many disadvantaged occupants need access to services, particularly government, to sustain them in other essential aspects of life.  Quality transport and gathering spaces well used by a broad cross section of citizens are all important to avoid isolation and insularity.  Across town, the government services in monolithic administration buildings and council chambers are remote from their clients, and create street-level chasms as their service counters provide little life and energy to the surrounds.  Could we see the bureaucrat rub shoulders with the disadvantaged?  Will they share lunch on the same park bench?  Could the community come in to the city centre to fill its administrative core with life at night and on weekends, and provide demand for less prosaic retail alongside those service counters?

 

The Club, SF, USA

The Club, Melbourne, AUS

The Creche, Havana, Cuba

None of these new typologies may yet come into being.  They may not even be successful.  Mixing uses may be more than predicting the exact configuration of the future - so much commercial or residential or hotel - so much as allowing new use combinations to present themselves, and evaluating those uses on their merits, rather than any prescribed form.