Becca Dugas

HOME FOR EVERY BODY

PROJECT BY BECCA DUGAS

finding opportunity in negative space.

The intent for this project is not a house designed around one specific client, but rather, a new housing model that can fit to and form around all persons. The project begins with an abstraction of the home into five components each encompassing an activity deemed essential to the existence of any human in any home. Individually designed, each component curates its own spaces, physical experiences, and functions through

proxemic spacing, formal movement, and physical movement. As the five designed components are arranged together, negative space is painted. In this negative space, the home is given the opportunity to form, to connect, and to evolve from a place for existence to a place of living.

THE FIVE ESSENTIAL COMPONENTS OF A HOME

THE FIVE COMPONENTS ARRANGED ON SITE

In the model above, the five components of the home have been placed upon a site in Over The Rhine. The components’ placement was designed according to their connections to one another and the architecture’s relationship with the site.

From this placement, the next step is to design a home or homes from the interstitial spaces, the negative spaces, that have been created. From this placement, four homes have been designed.

On the model to left, the first home is shown focusing on extension and connection between the components and the site.

A home designed in axon focusing on movement, activity, and intersections.

A home designed in elevation focusing on verticality and form.

A home designed through artistic methods focusing on the home’s relationship with its context, not on the physical site, but in society and the greater practice of architecture.

“Architectural Entity”. Oil and mixed media on canvas. 24 x 36”. 2023.

Elevations of three of the five essential components have been arranged on the canvas. In the negative space, the elevations connect, the home forms, and the surrounding world infects. The home exists in a world in tension. Colliding architecture is simultaneously constructed and destroyed as the home is forced to cut through it’s environment to maintain it’s place.