The room of an architect

THE ROOM OF AN ARCHITECT: Rethinking the reality of a young architect’s life-work situation

1

2

The Room of an Architect: Rethinking the reality of a young architect’s life-work situation

Arvand Pourabbasi Design Tutor Benjamin Foerster-Baldenius Thesis Tutor Anne Hoogewoning Louise Schouwenberg

Master Interior Architecture

2016-2017

3

Content Introduction 5 Chapter one: 21 Learning from circumstances -Conjunction 24 -Separation 28 -Precarity 30 -Spaces of precarity 32

Chapter two: 39 Learning from redrawing exercises and case studies

-Learning by re-drawing 42 -Learning from case studies 52 Conclusion 59 Bibliography 68

4

5

6

Introduction

7

Introduction

“The Room of the Architect” is a critical project for redefining the relationship between the living and working conditions of the precarious worker today. According to Oxford dictionary the definition of the word precarious is “Not securely held or in position; dangerously likely to fall or collapse. Dependent on chance; uncertain.”

In this project, I aim to investigate and design a space that is affordable, in which living and working merge in one unit, and to explore the potentials of such a unit. The condition of the precarious worker investigated here, includes myself as a young architect, who tries to find his position in the architecture world. For this reason, an overview of my personal experiences in the past few years would help bring up a series of important points to take into account when designing a unit for working and living.

8

Precarious : Not securely held or in position; dangerously likely to fall or collapse,dependent on chance; uncertain.

9

My journey as an architect started with studying my bachelor degree. In the last year, I was working as an architect for a well-known urban planning and architecture office in Tehran; traveling to the office everyday for a year with my own car. But working as a young architect in the office with low wages was not sustainable to even afford the expenses of my everyday car travel, let alone it bringing me to the level of financial independence.

Introduction

As a next step I decided to work independently. Being an individual freelance architect without a separate rented studio had various characteristics, some positive, and some negative. Firstly, I could stay in my (bed)room for the process of design and set up my workshop in site when I had to construct the project; so in this way it was affordable, advantageous and convenient. On the down side, not having an established platform or studio space for the client to meet, made getting new projects quite a challenge.

One of the ways that came up in order to stabilise make my work was initiating an online interdisciplinary platform for collaboration with other fellow young architects and artists. At the start while I was in Tehran my partner (and cofounder of this platform) was studying in The Netherlands.

10

11

Introduction

So although we were working a great deal on it, we did not have a typical office space. Our office was Skype, WhatsApp, Dropbox, Email and Tumblr as tools for exchanging and exposing our thoughts and projects. Also different from the normal office: ours was based on collaboration while sometimes being miles away from each. Our situation offers a striking example of a collaborative work in which not only my personal room served as a space for both living and working (even hosting my colleague’s stay); but was also an example of effective long-distance collaboration between two people, two countries, through using digital and internet tools and platforms.

Another project at this time was a collaboration with a group of young architects to renovate and decorate a boutique’s interior in Tehran, part of which was to design and make the window of the shop. The design was processed online and on paper, and to finalize it, making a series of sculptures (in different sizes) for the display, we needed free workshop space. I emptied my room for two months and it functioned first as an office space, and next as a crafting workshop, while it also remained my bedroom throughout the whole period.

12

13

Introduction

Lastly, we initiated a series of workshops 1 to expand our collaboration with students and younger architects in Tehran. For that we needed a separate space so we negotiated with the University of Tehran to host our project.

They gave us one room which we had to arrange to fit us and the participants. Later in the second phase of the project, we brought it to an international level and started to collaborate online with a couple of young architecture studios from Bogota (CAMPO), Kuala Lumpur (N/A) and Mumbai (ROOM), which meant we had more participants and thus needed more space.

In negotiation with an independent (underground) art platform in Tehran we got their flexible/open-plan space for three months, parallel to other projects going on in the same space. The result of our (partly online) collaborative project was later presented in biennales in various cities; Tehran, Venice, Bogota, and Kuala Lumpur, while for each exhibition only one studio/group could be present. This long-term project involved experiences of flexibility in our method of working to fit in the different available spaces that we could inhabit and appropriate: from no space at all, to my personal (bed)room, to a small room in a university/institution, and an old apartment appropriated to an open arrangement housing parallel projects by different people. Nevertheless, this was an extensive collaborative

1 Project Mosha initiated in 2014 in Tehran and later in its second phase developed into a collaborative projects with studios in other cities, and was framed under the name Framing the Common.

14

15

Introduction

architectural work that involved several young precarious architects and studios from various places in the world, that managed to reach good levels of professional work and knowledge production using a limited set of tools and spaces, and precarious finances.

To wrap up, this project finished last year when I was studying for my master’s degree in The Hague. Today, I have moved to Rotterdam, my studies are still in The Hague; I travel between the two cities, but online collaboration is still going on with my graduation mentor who lives in Berlin.

So all these experiences bring me to the point of focusing on the condition of young architect and architecture student, who can not afford office space but with using, appropriating, and strategising the current minimised tools of architectural production and online ways of collaborating, try to stabilise their work. This instability, however, is provoked by finding jobs, co-workers, dwelling space, political voice, economic stability, trying to own an office and to gain privacy, to expand their networks, and to improve their forms of life.

These personal experiences brought me to the point of focusing on the condition of the young architect and archi-

16

tecture student. He or she can not afford office space but with using, appropriating, and by employing strategically the current minimised tools of architectural production (both in design and building) and online ways of collaborating, is able to accomplish the work. The inherent instability, however, is characterized by having to search for jobs, co-workers, dwelling space, acquire a political voice, economic stability, efforts to own an office and to gain privacy, to expand the network, and the endless efforts to improve the way of living and working.

This remains a constant struggle. This constant condition of precarity and instability, forces this group to change place and work all the time, looking for more suitable conditions all the time. As said above, the young architects’ practices are not limited to fixed spaces, but are instead based on constantly appropriating the existing spaces, traveling within and between cities and countries. In this way, these young architects are obliged to practice a (professional) nomadic form of life.

My reflections on the themes of the intertwinement of the living and working space are based on questioning the precarious life conditions these groups, knowing that these conditions are also characteristic nowadays for

17

Introduction

other groups (such as students, young freelance workers and artists) all of whom I identify as precarious workers.

Yet, I chose the conditions of the specific group of architecture students and young professionals; as I can thus treat my own situation as a test case to inform the project and create a more thorough and detailed study of the issue. As a young architect without financial and professional certainties yet, I have to adapt my working circumstances to my living circumstances constantly, and vice versa.

In the following chapters I will address these issues.

What is the character of their (mine) current life condition?

What form of unit can embrace and respond to work conditions caused by today’s minimised tools of architectural production? Through which strategies can existing buildings be transformed to fit this kind of living and working in the same place? In sum: which clever architectural solutions can offer an answer to the problem of this young architecture student and practitioner?

To get a better grip on my aims I will study some historical examples to see how the conditions of work and life have changed through time. I will later analyse contemporary examples, for instance my own experiences of living and working as an architecture student and young professional in two specific spaces in the past few years. By drawing those

18

spaces (my rooms in Tehran and in Rotterdam) I hope to understand and reflect on them in better details as instances of such conditions which larger groups of people experience as well. Furthermore, I elaborate on a series of case studies which examine various viewpoints and design responds to this form of life, hoping to open up a discussion on how the issue could be addressed from the vantage points of architecture and design.

I tackle the issue to eventually design a one-to-one scale model of living and working for this group of people, young architects and students, me being the first user of the model. This will be done through a learning-by-doing method: by designing and making a series of sketch models by way of experimentation, and thus, gradually move forward to finally create a living and professional working space for both needs. A project that aims to go beyond the already existing options as my unit will not solely be a generic functional solution, or an architectural plan on paper, or an imaginative artistic project; but will be at the same time a real living-working unit (for me), and an ongoing professional laboratory of making and experimenting with the materials and conditions at hand. This means the results cannot be predicted or presumed beforehand, but will evolve in the course of this project.

19

20

Chapter One Learning from Circumstances

21

Definition This chapter will be a report of my research of the historical developments and evolution of forms of living and working through several examples, starting from Ancient Greek courtyard housing to the current condition of the young architect and architecture student.

I will explore this situation by setting myself as a case study and a scale to this survey/study.

Learning From Circumstances

This chapter consists of three sub-chapters, each examining one of the main conditions of living and working. These three sections sum up the most important aspects of this condition. First is conjunction of living and working space as two entities existing alongside one another; second is separation of these two spaces through a deliberate dividing act, and the third is precarity of life which conforms to the current situation and illustrates a more blurred border between the two.

22

23

Conjunction The workshop

Learning From Circumstances

In Ancient times the archetype of housing was that of the courtyard housing, whose ownership was shared between the multiple resident families. Courtyard housing was a form of living together and sharing spaces for an extended family.2 In this form of housing, dwelling spaces and work spaces were the main types of spaces in the house. While the whole space of the house and its courtyard was serving as workspace in a flexible manner the particular space of ‘workshop’ was located on a room on one side of the house. The production of goods was part of daily life, while trading the product would take place in the public space of the city, the Agora. In the process of development of the ancient Polis in the Middle Ages, creating public spaces was a step that brought ‘streets’ next to the private houses and shaped neighborhoods. This was a strategy to push the workspaces from inside the houses to open up to the public space and give them a fixed position; so they open their door to the streets, and it became a space for producing and trade for the family and the neighbors. The result of this, thus, was a multifunctional housing system in the form of the courtyard house: dwelling on one side, and working on the other side of this archetype.3 Later on in the 16th century, Sebastian Serlio, in his famous book On Housing for All Kinds of People(1537), investigated and catalogued the private typology of the house in the European cities.4 These notions in the city had reached a certain level of complexity at this time. He even further marked the differences in these houses in relation to the class, economic level, guild, and forms of labour

2 Aureli, Pier Vittorio and Giudici, Maria S “ Grand Domestic Revolution Revisiting the Architecture of Housing”. Diploma Unit 14(Academic year 2013-2014)

3 Ibid,P.4 4 Ibid,P.5 5 Ibid,P.5

24

of their owners. “This grammar overcomes the idiosyncrasies of the medieval ‘organic’ city hinting at a form of order or organization that will become a prerequisite for the gradual emergence of the industrial city. The theme of control becomes then fundamental in the project of housing from two points of view: on the one hand, the control and the negotiation of the boundary between private property and state-controlled infrastructure, and on the other the organization of life processes taking place beyond the façade.” 5

According to the passage above, in the courtyard housing working was part of everyday domestic processes, while it was deliberately separated by being given a specific room, the workshop. This continuation of domestic life through the workspace, the economic source of family, on the one hand shows the importance of work next to dwelling as seen in the spatial arrangements, and on the other hand, the multi-functionality of this private territory in which the workshop opens to the public level.

25

Learning From Circumstances

The monastery The second case, monastery, for training monks or nuns to spread Christianity, became one of the best examples of communal models of living and working together with wider expansion of Christianity around the world. A monastery is a complex of dwelling and workspaces for monks, as a compound supporting individual and communal form of living and working, together in the same complex.6 The living quarter of monastery is dividing by the hierarchy of different levels of junior and senior monastics, while all performing work activities and praying in the common chapel, temple and church on the side of the monastery. “The balance between individual and collective life is the fundamental issue within monastic life, as became clear with the rise of the cenobitic monastery, when communal life became the dominant way of living.” 7 This form of living and working together, at the same time, puts monks in an isolating form of hermits.

A monastery is a form of practicing to share and use a space without owning it, as a perspective that brings us an example of combining living, (voluntary) works, and common activities of worship altogether. “The idea of a structure where individual and collective life are juxtaposed without being merged is also evident in Carthusian monasticism, which attempted to combine eremitic and cenobitic life in the same place.” 8 This model, both in its living/working rituals and its architecture, has been influential in the work of modern architects tackling issues of individual and collective living in recent times.9 And as such, it can serve as an essential model for responding to issues of current forms of labor and living and their spaces, today.

9 For instance the Monastery of Galluzzo was an inspiration for the works of Le Corbusier on collective housing.

6 Academic, accessed April 14, 2017, http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/29377 7 Aureli, Pier Vittorio. “Less is Enough.” On Archi tecture and Asceticism (2014). P.11 8 Ibid, P.10 26

27

Separation The factory With Industrial Revolution (1840s) and industrialisation of work, new modes of labor in factories and mines emerged that changed the everyday rituals of a large percentage of societies. Working became limited and defined to specific fixed times of the day, with contracts stating a fixed salary, and limited to the fixed space of the factory or the mine.

Learning From Circumstances

In the beginning of this age, factory workers would commute from the closest town, as it was not yet feasible to commute from further distances. But later on in the 19th century, the phenomenon of company town appeared; a town built explicitly to be inhabited by the workers of the company and their families, having all the facilities of a small city such as a school, stores, church and etc.

An example is one of the company towns in Bayreuth (Germany), destroyed after bombardments in the second World War. The castle is the name of this town and belongs to the Mechanical cotton spinning Bayreuth built in 1861. It is comprised of twelve detached Swiss style archetypes of housing, which were more common in the following years. Each plot of housing had 52 square meters of living space with two floors and a small garden. The company offered cheap food and clothing, communal entertainment facilities, library, a sewing and knitting school and even a kindergarten.10 Further, studies on these new forms of living and working developed more precise designs for the condition of the worker of the time; to both increase the life quality of the worker and consequently increase production. For instance the twenty-four hours of a day

10 “Burg (Bayreuth)� Wikivisually, accessed April 14, 2017, http://wikivisually.com/lang-de/wiki/ Burg_(Bayreuth).

28

29

Learning From Circumstances

became divided by three to host the three main forms of activities of a desired worker; eight hours for work (production), eight hours for rest/sleep (reproduction), and another one for leisure (reproduction).

On the one hand, this model of living and working rendered the presence of the workshop in the dwelling space inessential, and on the other hand created separate new spaces made solely as workspaces which ran under the supervision of an employer. Responding to these changes in forms of labour, forms of dwelling also changed. The common form of housing ownership changed from privately-owned property to the rental house for as long as their work contract in factories lasted.

This form of life was a model of the deliberate separation of living and working. House was the place of domestication and reproduction, and the factory was the place of work.

Precarity Since the beginning of the 20th century, many big companies divided into sub-companies or even independent sectors, as a result of the privatisation to recover from economic issues such as scarcity and bankruptcy that emerged after World War II. Privatisation of companies was an idea to invent small private businesses rather than big factories which meant large amounts of production, higher expenses, and lots of workers. 11 On the other hand, privatisation and breaking down of the working market, results in less work pos-

11 Parker, David, and David S. Saal, eds. International handbook on privatization. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003.

12 Activities such as making and updating portfolios, making personal websites, making applications, researching.

30

sibility for the working-class, and made the population of the class comprised of educated people grow in number.

This working class growing in number, later on included office workers as a consequence of the emergence of administrative systems and institutions. The two systems of labour became the main criteria determining the changes in organisation of everyday life within the family, following similar logics to the ones of the factory in relation to the rental house.

The precarious conditions of working and living of this group stems from their position in socio-political and work conditions set up in the society at large; meaning for instance they often do not have fixed work contract, their work does not involve exact or fixed times

31

Learning From Circumstances

and schedules, and that most of their activities related to their career are not seen as a “work”. 12 The recent conditions of working and studying, because of the pandemic of studying in higher academic levels (and hence, for longer), has created an expanding population of young workers with special skills that are part of this unbalanced and precarious cycle of production and reproduction.

Large numbers of educated workers cannot find fixed jobs, or one base city, or a fixed salary. Consequently, millions of people come to live in precarious conditions. Although it has been a recurring issue already in the early 20th century, we see it on a more vast level today because of general structural shifts mentioned earlier. For instance Walter Benjamin has mentioned his precarious condition of living in many of his essays, compiled in Selected Writings Volume 2 (1931-1934). 13 At the age of 40, Benjamin found himself living in a situation of constant uncertainty, working as a freelance critic, and changing address frequently. 14 Today, the sphere of production, mainly in the West but also all around the globe, is moving less towards creating goods and physical products, and instead towards generation and exchange of services, social skills, and knowledge. Work follows these knowledge-workers wherever they go. Labour is not anymore bounded to the factory or the office, but is achieved everywhere at any moment particularly the house. 15 Precarious knowledge workers consist of a large and growing group of people who are essentially interns, students, artists, architects, graphic designers, freelancers in general, and etc. This group of people do not always work based on specific contracts, while at

13 Benjamin, Walter, Michael William Jennings, and Rodney Livingstone. Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings. Vol. 2. Harvard University Press, 2005.

14 For instance in the 1930s he moved 19 times.

(Less is Enough, P.23)

15 Aureli, Pier Vittorio and Giudici, Maria S “ Grand Domestic Revolution Revisiting the Architecture of Housing”. Diploma Unit 14(Academic year 20132014), P.9

32

the same time, most of what they do does not count in the category of a job or work. For instance, the young architect, student or intern, producing design and knowledge during their study on paper, making a portfolio, website, and applying for jobs is seen neither in category of knowledge, nor work. My own experience in the past few years, as well, has been one of moving in between universities, freelance jobs, research projects, and making applications.

Furthermore, in architectural studios the interns produce work everyday that does not belong to them, just like the previous generation of factory workers did. Crafting and producing a product, be it a physical object or ideas and research while the product belongs to someone else or a larger system, is the capitalistic notion of labour.

Beside that, unlike before, being skilled in one specific field is not considered sufficient anymore; one has to have multiple skills. For instance working in architecture studio, or just being a student, the worker needs lots of various skill. Take a look at the example of X studio; the list of skills, in relation what is offered to the young architect is as follows:

33

Learning From Circumstances

YOUR SKILLS • Professional degree in Architecture or urban planning • 1-8 years of proven professional experience • Working experience in international environments is an asset • Strong conceptual talent, graphic and design skills.

• Strong AutoCAD, Rhino, Adobe suite and rendering skills • Strong knowledge of Revit • Good team player • Knowledge of X’s work and theory is an asset • English language skills combined with Dutch, French, German, Danish or Mandarin Besides architects we are also often looking for visual designers and business developers.

WE OFFER • Salary according to collective work agreement • International environment with creative, talented colleagues • A great, friendly place to work Most of these skills and knowledges required from the worker (architect) is not even gained and practiced in academies, but by him/herself or collectively with friends. Here, I would call these skills knowledge devices, mostly practiced at the private sphere of home; practices such as making one’s portfolio, writing an article or an essay for a publication (online of offline), participating in competitions, making (personal) websites, etc; so once again, this form of work demands more skills/work and offers less wages. Even the word ‘wages’ does not have a fixed meaning: “a payment usually of money for labor or services usually according to contract and on an

16 Wage. In Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary (11th ed.). Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wage 34

hourly, daily, or piecework basis... 16 For affording the expenses of their life these workers need to work more, find places with cheap rent, and other such strategies to sustain themselves.; while also changing work and living place is a relatively regular activity for them. Their work situation depends on what offer they get from the clients or other entrepreneurs, and their housing situation is based on moving from one place to another depending on the unsteady conditions of housing provided; while mostly ending up with a room in a shared apartment still obligating quite expensive rent prices.

35

Spaces of Precarity

Learning From Circumstances

Sharing the spaces of living and working, is the kind of tradition that schools and their dormitories have had in modern times for decades. For instance, Bauhaus provided this condition as a designed, ‘pleasant’, and almost utopian situation; a dormitory for young architect/student to work and live in, with no payment for the facilities. The dormitories being very close to the faculty created a convenient work and life relation for the students.

But even that model is not as effective today to solve the general issue; not only because the tools of architectural work today make architectural study a practice not limited to the school but also a practice to do at home, but also as the precarious living condition is not limited to the time of study but extends to longer spans of time of one’s life after graduation. The dormitory model, a series of living units put together for the purpose of housing (solely) students, although a successful housing strategy for this group, cannot be a comprehensive solution today since precarity is not only the condition for student life, but also larger groups of (young) practitioners.

So the new forms of life and work have to currently combine working, living and entertainment activities together in one space.

There is no specific form of housing dedicated to these forms of life today, as the dorms are supposed to accommodate only students. Hence, these forms of life are using the same type of housing as the modern factory/office workers’, as a result of the lack of thorough acknowledgement of the situation of these workers by the architects and the authorities, and hence, not having a living space designed to correspond to their needs. They are using

36

the same family house as their parents’, the same type of house as other groups of workers inhabit. To cope with their available budgets and spatial needs they have to use strategies such as changing the spaces of the house and appropriating the existing conditions with tools feasible to them. What we witness today in many cities is that the personal bedroom is a sleeping space and a work space at the same time; while the so-called living room is the space shared with the other inhabitants of the place.

Existing forms of housing and dorms are not changing or adapting as fast as necessary for these conditions. So the first step towards improving these conditions is for the architects and designers to take a step to acknowledge the issue in order to make change in larger scales possible. They have to not only re-imagine categories assigned to groups of people based on their living realities, but also find practical and genuine ways to investigate them.

Bringing into light the role of the architect, there is an urgency to address the issue of living and working space for this new group of workers; an investigation that re-thinks and re-conceptualises the spatial conditions in which these workers perform. A study that rethinks the relation of these forms of living with issues such as potentials of existing spaces and unused spaces, experimental making with materials at hand, being a nomad architect, and today’s architectural tools that condition work rituals.

37

38

Chapter Two Learning from redrawing exercises and case studies (research part) 39

Learning From Redrawing exercises and Case studies

Definition In this chapter I divide my research in two parts; “learning from redrawing” and “learning from case studies”. In the first part, Learning from Redrawing, I redrew two spaces of living and working of my own experience; one from the past few years, and one of my recent situation. Through this exercise, I study the features of each space in relation to the general conditions of living-working that the larger group of young architecture students and professionals experience.

I analyse each case from the viewpoint of the subject who spends most of his/her time there. Here, I observe and investigate the issue of ownership and the conditions of existing space, the use of specific furniture arrangements in relation to both productive and reproductive activities, and how the specific tools and circumstances of architectural work today effects these spaces.

In the second part, “learning from case Studies”, I examine case studies relevant in the way they deal with living and working and their spatial conditions. Each of these cases are significant in that they offer a design proposal to the work/live condition of their time; both through design of furnitures and spaces. Through these case studies I aim to shed light on how architectural design could play a major role in responding to these conditions.

40

41

Learning from redrawing

Learning From Redrawing

In this part I will investigate my experience of living and working in different periods of my life through re-drawing the spaces I lived/ worked in and learning from them. Redrawing here is a method to study and understand particular qualities of spaces through the very bodily exercise of redrawing them; but also learning through taking steps further than merely ‘looking’ by drawing which introduces more informed understanding of details and complexities.

Additionally, the small size and compact conditions of these spaces render the use of drawing to represent details a necessity. Representing spaces that I have personally lived in, through axonometric drawings brings a rather neutral and analytical overview –as opposed to images capturing subjective points of view– which make communicating my lived experience clearer and more evident.

In this exercise I include two of the most important spaces I lived and worked in; my room in my parents’ apartment in Tehran, and my current room in a shared apartment in Rotterdam. Through redrawing these spaces I realised each of their specific characters defining them in relation to my particular precarious condition, and which changes make the space compatible with my condition of precarity.

My parents’ house in Tehran is a common apartment 17 that follows the same spatial layout analogous to the majority of apartments in the city. In the five-storey building consisting of twenty residential flats, there is our three bedroom flat in which we have been living since I was in middle school. I left the house to study my bachelors in another city for 4 years In the three years between my bachelor graduation and starting my

17 Wage. In Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary (11th ed.). Retrieved from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wage 42

masters in the Netherlands, I worked as a freelance architect on a variety of projects; be it done digitally and online (such as competitions and research collaborations), or the ones that involved making (such as cafe renovation, sculpture making for a boutique’s display, and a child’s furnitures).

At this time my bedroom hosted all my freelance work activities through re-arrangements responding to the necessities of each project. As the room was my living space for years already, the general pressure to leave the space at a certain point did not apply to my freelance situation. Additionally, the minimum furniture of the room offered quite enough freedom: all my small belongings were stored in a large built-in cupboard, and hence the room was furnished with essential basic elements of a bed and a desk, which made rearrangements easy. To facilitate that even more, I removed my bed structure leaving only a mattress. This system made it pos-

43

44

Learning From Redrawing

45

sible to transform the arrangement of the room efficiently according to my needs each time. For design works the desk was the core of activities, while for making objects and large craft work I rearranged it into an open space setup.

Learning From Redrawing

A crucial criteria making these adaptations possible is the minimisation of tools of architectural work. It has become significantly limited and practical, as for instance drawing plans on a drawing table has transformed into computer work. Thus, the big and particular objects of drawings table and adjustable chairs are replaced with the light and relatively generic object of the laptop.

Even though I did not officially own the space (it was my family’s property) I had the privilege to use the room permanently with no costs, and could host friends and colleagues staying for collaboration; I could as well use it as a workshop and hang sculptures with no landlord supervision; or even occupy more spaces of the house occasionally (corridors, living room). Thus, I was provided with a decent level of freedom in this space.

Additional to the right to use the space without owning it, and minimisation of furniture of reproduction (e.g. bed), the current tools of architecture which are minimum, light, and online, made it possible for me as a young architect with no established professional position to use it as workspace.

My current room in Rotterdam houses my most temporary precarious condition as a masters student. This room is an old typical three-storey Dutch house shared with two other architecture

46

students and two young architects. The room is created through dividing the living room with a wooden partition into two spaces, a bedroom and a hangout area (living room).

Having moved to The Netherlands had already minimised my belongings as I was allowed one luggage with my most essential belongings; and like many others, I had to not only provide myself with all the furnitures I need here, but also already consider the convenience of getting rid of when moving – a tradition common among students studying abroad. Hence, my room is furnished with objects that are easy to assemble and disassemble mostly serving double function, to fit more in a limited space as I cannot spatially afford more objects.

Additionally, I used spatial strategies to make it more advantageous. For instance, I lifted my bed up to use as a compact storage for stuff with occasional use. Or my desk is made of a common

47

48

Learning From Redrawing

49

pair of foldable triangle legs and a light piece of plywood, easy to put aside. These two common strategies, to make affordable and flexible furniture, and to strategise the existing unused spaces are examples to look at the building and its furnitures as a field of potentials to be used for certain conditions.

Learning From Redrawing

Another key feature is the shared character of the flat. While the rooms are individual working and living spaces, the living room is a shared space furnished with a long table both for working and dining, instead of the typical family setup of sofas and TV set. This shared rental flat provides extra spaces of work beyond the rooms: the living room, kitchen, balcony. The whole flat is a space of living and working together, especially considering the peculiar forms of architectural production we practice today. Living in a shared rental housing has pushed me to try to an autonomous space in my room through appropriating the existing space to fit my needs.

A main finding through this exercise was the important aspect of appropriation in the already existing apartments. Be it through seemingly banal acts or through profound designs, appropriation plays a key role in this form of living. Together with flexible and changeable arrangements of furniture, it creates more possibilities for the subjects fulfilling their needs. In other words, the toolbox of strategies of this group of people has two important elements, appropriation of the existing situations/spaces through ordinary means at hand, and using minimum belongings in changeable ways.

50

51

Learning from case studies In this section I investigate three examples of living and working condition, through the viewpoint of three main criterion explored in the re-drawings chapter: the issues of spatial circumstances, ownership, and furniture influencing the life and work of this group. The aim here is learning about different approaches to spatial design for specific groups of people.

Learning From Case studies

Absalon (1990-1992) Cells 1-6 The young artist, Absalon, in his short life produced a quite complex artwork; an unusual series of units made in 19901992 (“Cellules d’habitation“). He made six units to be put in the six cities 18 that he had lived and worked in before. With his critical view of spaces and furnitures he argues “nothing forces us to make a chair look like a chair” 19 so he created an unconventional system of space based on principles different from function-based single objects. He framed essential human activities in basic spaces in the form of a rectangle, a square, a triangle and a circle.

He made six cells of approximately 10 square meters each, smaller than a standard bedroom, each accommodating essential human activities like lodging, sleeping, washing, working and eating. The arrangements were made based on dimensions calculated from the size of his own body, and his needed spaces. He created extreme minimum spaces reaching almost the level of unbearability, but still working decently.

18 The cities are as follows: Paris, Tokyo, New York, Tel Aviv, Zurich, and Frankfurt.

19 “Absalon | The Artist” The Artist, accessed April 14, 2017, http://the-artists.org/artist/absalon 52

He created spaces that were as personal as possible. His way of designing space for his own lifestyle as a nomad artist moving between six countries, was not only a way of protecting himself from the outside, but also to have a place of his own as opposed to renting a standard generic apartment or a hotel room. He found that no place that he ever lived in were made for his body or was responding to his conditions. In a way, he built his own property (without owning any piece of land) as a project, to not only criticise existing housing models for a nomadic precarious worker like himself, but also to tackle it by making spaces that were meant to be actually used. He takes steps beyond just criticising through words or works of art, but through actions and making; he responds to this condition by means of design to in fact make his “own home” and “own territory”.

53

Joe Colombo Total Furnishing Unit (1971)

Learning From Case studies

“The possibilities presented by the extraordinary development of audiovisual processes are enormous…… Distances will no longer have much importance; no longer will there be any justification for the ‘megalopolis’….Furnishings will disappear…the habitat will be everywhere… Now, if the elements necessary to human existence could be planned with the sole requirements of maneuverability and flexibility…, then we would create an inhabitable system that could be adapted to any situation in space and time…” 20 As explained in his quote, Joe Colombo tried to create a mega autonomous furniture setup, to have an adaptable interior spaces. This simple set of modules for various activities opens up the possibility of adapting and changing environments according to various uses during the day. His project breaks down the everyday activities into various separate categories, for which he designs modules, and compacts all in one single frame. His mega-furniture includes kitchen, cupboard, bed and bathroom in a compact unit instead of individual pieces or separate spaces connected through corridors.

He designed the compact unit to put in the middle of rooms whose arrangement could be expanded and changed in relation to the user’s needs. This compact unit replaces all the furniture and even walls and other spatial divisions needed in a standard working and living space, while taking up even less space. The keywords for this project include modularity and adaptability of furniture, as it provides the possibility to experiment with living and working in arrangements according to the subject’s needs and the room’s conditions.

20 “Joe Colombo, Total Furnishing Unit (1971)” Sock Studio, accessed April 14, 2017, http://socks-studio.com/2013/10/16/joe-colombo-total-furnishing-unit-1971/ 54

55

Joe Colombo Minikitchen1963

Learning From Cases

Another example in the work of Joe Colombo is his Minikitchen, a mobile mini-kitchen including two stoves, refrigerator, cutting board, electrical outlets and multipurpose storage cabinet. His view on the ideal modern home is as follows: “The problem today is to offer furnishings that are basically autonomous; that are independent of their architectonic housing and so interchangeable and programmable that they can be adapted to every present and future spatial situation. 21 This project is progressing Joe Colombo’s Total Furnishing Unit to a new level. Here he condenses the tools and objects of an activity which usually has a whole room dedicated to it (kitchen) into a compact mobile unit. This minimisation of one space into a piece of furniture opens up the possibility to move the space in different circumstances, and create spaces based on where and when the object would be used. In this way, his design is responding to subjects in whose daily life might deal with issues of limited space, nomadic life/work, or even lack of ownership. He rethinks a daily reproductive activity and its space into a movable piece of furniture and liberates it from the fixed standard norms in which it is supposed to operate.

21 Joe Colombo, Minikitchen� MoMa accessed April 14, 2017, https://www.moma.org/collection/ works/89891?locale=en 56

57

58

Conclusion

59

The precarious worker and more specifically, the architecture student and young professional living in rented rooms or studios in shared buildings is an accepted and normalized scenario. Today, however, there is a condition in which the nomadic knowledge worker and young practitioner experiences a blur of borders between places of work and life. Their modestly small bedrooms are centres connecting them to the world, through both online and offline working. Preparing to work in architectural offices requires a long preparation time (of gathering skills, making portfolios, etc) mostly taking place at the private space of their homes. On the other hand, to afford the separate working space of a studio while working as a freelance architect is a challenge, and in some cases impossible.

Conclusion

I put myself and my precarious condition as example, since I have lived this precarity just like many other young people in similar circumstances; my case serves as a more detailed example for the young architect and architecture student to investigate this issue.

In this way, being the subject and the designer at the same time, brings the project into an extra level of challenge as well as tangibility.

Precarity in the case of young architect and student does not solve with proposing just a cheap situation for living and working. Being an architect, one needs to be constantly ready for changing the living and working conditions and places, for instance as of getting offers for job/work/project. Temporary living has a different set of conditions from permanent spaces in terms of the amount of belongings, kinds of furniture, sharing space, ownership and adaptability of space to activities. Additionally, the current way of architectural work, both individual and collaborative, although using

60

61

different tools according to each project, are mostly minimised and homogenised in using computers and sharing via the internet.

Conclusion

The redrawing exercise of two of my own pas living spaces was one comparing two situations in an equal way confronting my subjective lived experience with a neutral and analytical perception of the spaces; and it simply showed my form of life in relation to the corresponding spatial circumstances. The redrawing helped me make a synthetic image from my own life experience and show the compatibilities of my of form of life to the architectural features.

In two spaces the images are representing the minimization of furniture, and the flexibility or fixation of the objects and arrangement, while all responding to the form of life of the young architect; involving contemporary ways of architectural production, drawing, making models, collaboration, online collaboration, writing and etc be it architectural competitions or real clients. Giving me the possibility to add a third person view (through drawings) to my lived experiences, this exercise helped me understand how to translate the existing conditions into spatial strategies and/or potentials.

Further, looking at the cases I have chosen helped me to see what ways were practiced to address this condition through new arrangements. And see, for instance, how Absalon pick out his territory (the cells) out of the ordinary architectural orders of building, and creates autonomous units to be placed in the public space of the city; bringing up issues such as ownership and having one’s own personal mode of ownership in unique circumstances. Or in the case of Joe Colombo’s proposal, not changing the known architectural orders but proposing a unit for the interior of existing regular architectural spaces through his “mega-furniture”; as a strategy to take advantage of the existing spaces but arranging interiors for

62

63

the need of the user. Or in his mini-kitchen, proposing a minimized form of spatial arrangement by making a densified kitchen unit. I practiced my understandings and takes from the cases through making one-to-one sketches to understand the practical effect of such spatial rearrangements. Additionally, the case studies focusing on giving solutions to the issue through design and art, miss to take full advantage of the existing situations and buildings. What do the existing spaces offer us, and how could the designer take utmost advantage of the existing structures, and find and empower the possibilities within them?

Conclusion

In my research I practice the medium of architecture for learning through re-drawing and one-to-one scale sketches. In the contemporary history of architecture the issue of working/living unit, tackled in numerous projects, is still an issue; many of those projects have either remained partially on paper, or have seldom been realised because of their costly productions. In this context, there is place for a project to tackle this issue on an immediate level through one-to-one experimentation. These experimentations in which the architect/maker and the user are the same subject (myself), bring out tangible issues which adds an extra layer of veracity to the project.

So what keeps this form of life at work since 1930, when Benjamin was in this precarious condition till today? Maybe the answer to this question is to be found in the user’s professional and personal life and habits, in this case, the architect’s; to his/her body movement and living and working practices in their everyday life, making changes in the condition of their spatial arrangements.

I aim to investigate this condition which we are used to as a normal

64

65

everyday situation, but in fact should be tackled more precisely to give answers to the essential rights and requirements of the subjects’ life and work conditions. This project is a representation and also a proposal for the changing condition of the life and work relations of nomadic precarious architecture student and young architect in order to bring up issues that are frequently going unnoticed today because of their normality.

Conclusion

By doing that through an experimental process, the results shape an exploratory progress where the final results are not presumed in the beginning but unravel through the course of the project and through finding the possibilities and materials at hand. By having myself in the position of the subject while I tackle the design issues as the designer, the sketch models, experiments, and results would present a firsthand take on the issue and how it can be investigated in tangible, pragmatic, and yet open-ended experimental ways.

66

67

Bibliography - Aureli, Pier Vittorio and Giudici, Maria S “ Grand Domestic Revolution Revisiting the Architecture of Housing”. Diploma Unit 14 (Academic year 2013-2014).

- Aureli, Pier Vittorio. “Less is Enough. On Architecture and Asceticism” (2014).

- Parker, David, and David S. Saal, eds. International handbook on privatization. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003.

- Benjamin, Walter, Michael William Jennings, and Rodney Livingstone.

Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings. Vol. 2. Harvard University Press, 2005.

-Jeinić, Ana, and Anselm Wagner. Is there (anti-) neoliberal architecture?.

Jovis Verlag, 2013.

- Dogma and Realism Working Group. “Communal Villa: Production and Reproduction in Artists Housing ” (2014).

- Brigade, Precarious Workers. Fragments Toward an Understanding of a Week that Changed Everything... na, 2011.

- Gill, Rosalind, and Andy Pratt. “In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work.” Theory, culture & society 25, no. 7-8 (2008): 1-30.

- “Shelter” Volume Magazine, Archis 2015#4

68

69

70