TENTATIVE ABSTRACT

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.