WithDrawing Room

All Images © Diller+Scofidio

The property line: Codes of Privacy and Publicness, the skin

Shaping Etiquette: Social Order, dining room

Crafting Intimacy: Private Order, body in bed

The WithDrawing Room is a means to "address the issue of domesticity and the complicity of architecture in sustaining its conventions". The installation, put up within an existing house emphasizes --

"how building design serves to construct our social and personal experiences. Moving through " the WithDrawing Room", the audience experienced an eerie sensation of disequilibrium, which heightened appreciation for the power of architecture, and the particular kind of order it imposes on our lives. By cutting a two-inch slit in the floor and exposing the homes' archaeological and legal histories, Diller + Scofidio forced the viewer to contemplate the meanings of "private property" and the home's relationship to the larger world. Moving next to the social circle of the dining table, the artists upset the notion of etiquette by suspending furniture fro the ceiling...once the viewer left...he or she was likely to think twice about how and perhaps why, architecture maintains a not-so- neutral relationship to conformity"

(

Intimate creativity: partners in love and art

By Suzanne Sarnoff, pg 244)