AWKWARDsystems. A Prototype for Sharing
This is a young nation that enjoys both the particularities and the peculiarities of a rich cultural and linguistic mix from more than 200 countries of origin. It is in the confrontation and clashing of cultural elements that new things will begin. The unfamiliar and uncomfortable moments --what we call “awkward”-- are often hastily avoided despite their potential to represent a new type of possibility, a different type of growth. What better place to aggressively interfere with the conventional choreography of sharing space between family, friend and stranger than in the house, the home, the family.
Dwelling units have been more commonly understood as housing provided for 1, 2, 4, or 100 people: the studio apartment for the bachelor, a semi-detached home, a single family suburban home or an apartment block. These are simply different renditions of the standard rectangular box with a pitched roof, a chimney, windows and a front door; homes where we sleep in bedrooms and meet in the den. However, the conventions of the single-family house demands serious attention in a society whose structures of thought, social interaction and communication have nothing to do with classical certainties. We live in a world that copes. Seniors move into annexes of their children’s homes, two young families share responsibilities, and middle-aged couples wish they could sell their properties to move into a joint home with friends. In the light of the emerging demographic of culturally diverse “chosen” families, there appears to be room for a prototype for 7-12 people that provides the infrastructure to both accommodate and emphasize the shift. Architecture is given the opportunity to refigure the singularity of the house as frame and vehicle, by transforming the figure and the plan into a third form--one that is neither known, nor can be achieved, but only dreamt of.
Tracing the new dialect of “yours and mine” in Canada’s multicultural society, this is a series of drawings, fragmentary notes and long quotations from works on criticism and philosophy that challenge the function and acceptable socio-economic structure of a single-family house.
Part exploration, part construction, part fiction.
31.1.10
29.1.10
VILLA PRIMA FACIE. 1978
LARS LERUP
A house of walls, Lerup writes in this publication, is "informed not by the primitive hut ( Laugier), not by the machine ( Le Corbusier), not by the city (Rossi) but by the single family house, the house that during the twentieth century has been the most prominent aspiration of my class". Lerups house typology is not one of tradition classified by location, or by class, or income group. Rather, Lerup's typologies are research into other ways of thinking about house.
The conventional square plan is erased and replaced by a tabula-rasa of sorts, where a series of walls is placed in enfilade. Each wall is an independent entity rather than a part of a room. These soft, dry, hot, hard and wet walls are highly descriptive of its condition, and each attempts to slow down the everyday narrative. Such a slowing down would only come with collusion, with a desire on the part of the dweller to let himself be absorbed into the architecture. The seperate walls are allocated different activities which are associated with their very existence, such as, the regular clipping of the topiary soft wall, or the reading by the dry wall, or the daily shower under the wet wall. Each layer of wall intends to slow down and attenuate everyday life, much as a description would in a literary narrative.
The security of using a conventional form -- rectangular box with pitched roof-- provides the platform to investigate how architecture can be the formal expression of epistemological questions.
A house of walls, Lerup writes in this publication, is "informed not by the primitive hut ( Laugier), not by the machine ( Le Corbusier), not by the city (Rossi) but by the single family house, the house that during the twentieth century has been the most prominent aspiration of my class". Lerups house typology is not one of tradition classified by location, or by class, or income group. Rather, Lerup's typologies are research into other ways of thinking about house.
The conventional square plan is erased and replaced by a tabula-rasa of sorts, where a series of walls is placed in enfilade. Each wall is an independent entity rather than a part of a room. These soft, dry, hot, hard and wet walls are highly descriptive of its condition, and each attempts to slow down the everyday narrative. Such a slowing down would only come with collusion, with a desire on the part of the dweller to let himself be absorbed into the architecture. The seperate walls are allocated different activities which are associated with their very existence, such as, the regular clipping of the topiary soft wall, or the reading by the dry wall, or the daily shower under the wet wall. Each layer of wall intends to slow down and attenuate everyday life, much as a description would in a literary narrative.
The security of using a conventional form -- rectangular box with pitched roof-- provides the platform to investigate how architecture can be the formal expression of epistemological questions.
THE SIX WALLS
ANDREA PALLADIO (1508 - 1580)
"You have to see these buildings with your own eyes..." GOETHE (1789)
 |
TREE SOFT
SAND DRY
BRIMSTONE HOT
DIAMOND HARD
WATER WET
TREE SOFT
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18.1.10
PEEKING THROUGH THE KEYHOLE
Makeshift FAMILIES
single divorced widowed single parent couple married children teenagers university-students seniors
parents live at home/ growing up/ not growing away
Defining HOUSEHOLDS
Over 110 million households in USA + Canada ( growing at 1 million per year)
1/5 of all 23 year olds live at home
1/2 families are categorized as " non-families"
1/4 households are made up of married couples with children ( half of 1960 statistics)
1/10 households have more than 5 people living together
2 kids per average
1/4 homes belong to a single occupant ( tripled from 1940s statistics)
1/3 women remain unwed by her thirties (1/10 in the 1960s)
1/4 of all children under 18 live with one parent ( double the 1970s rate)
4/10 do not live with their biological fathers
3/10 children live with a divorced parent/ or never got married (1/10 is the 1960s statistic)
1/3 babies born to unwed couples ( 1/20 is the 1960s statistics)
7/10 mothers work for pay
1/4 of preschool children are in day care
4-5 hours a day is spent interacting in a house
Domestic arrangements become challenging and complex.
Yet we haven't changed the structure of our living environments.
A house still looks like a house.
sources:
www. cmhc-schl.gc.ca
www.nahb.com
www.prb.org
www.statcan.ca
single divorced widowed single parent couple married children teenagers university-students seniors
parents live at home/ growing up/ not growing away
Defining HOUSEHOLDS
Over 110 million households in USA + Canada ( growing at 1 million per year)
1/5 of all 23 year olds live at home
1/2 families are categorized as " non-families"
1/4 households are made up of married couples with children ( half of 1960 statistics)
1/10 households have more than 5 people living together
2 kids per average
1/4 homes belong to a single occupant ( tripled from 1940s statistics)
1/3 women remain unwed by her thirties (1/10 in the 1960s)
1/4 of all children under 18 live with one parent ( double the 1970s rate)
4/10 do not live with their biological fathers
3/10 children live with a divorced parent/ or never got married (1/10 is the 1960s statistic)
1/3 babies born to unwed couples ( 1/20 is the 1960s statistics)
7/10 mothers work for pay
1/4 of preschool children are in day care
4-5 hours a day is spent interacting in a house
Domestic arrangements become challenging and complex.
Yet we haven't changed the structure of our living environments.
A house still looks like a house.
sources:
www. cmhc-schl.gc.ca
www.nahb.com
www.prb.org
www.statcan.ca
10.1.10
Proximity
Hak Nam. Kowloon Walled City. City of Darkness.
Demolished in 1933.
35,000 people living in 200m x 100m of solid building
making my house
central : the temple
the idea of " self construction" :
illegal growth/autonomous district,
establishing territories
question of control
forgetting "capsular" civilization: the pack animal
rules of the game
ownership/governance of space
what does it mean to have to share?
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