The Lifeless Life of Clinical ‘Homes’

Objectic Living

there is no hierarchy.

things & mess living as multiple entities.

Fig 07, Tour Bois-le-Prêtre, Frédéric Druot, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal. Accessed on October 14 2021. https://www.dezeen.com/2013/04/16/tour-bois-le-pretre-by-frederic-druot-anne-lacaton-and-jean-philippe-vassal/

The Beginning of Mess, Dirt, Things & Domesticity

An Urban Chaos: architecture that is never complacent but challenges the conventional.

We tend to associate ‘dirt’ with an offensive stature.13 But such dirt is a part of our daily life. We live in a world ruled by fictions of every kind - mass merchandising, advertising, and the constant blurring of identities. For the dirty architect, the fiction already exists. It’s then the job of the domesticated human and dirty architect to invent the reality.14

We look towards the life of an obsessional artist. Their studio in a constant state of chaotics. They “sleep there, urinates in the hand basin or out of the window”.15 These are the realities of Mess and Dirt we are confronted with in a true domestic scene. The assemblage of such an architecture is completely disordered, everything appears out of place, but feels comfortable.

13 Campkin, B. (2007) Ornament from grime: David Adjaye’s Dirty House, the architectural ‘aesthetic of recycling’ and the Gritty Brits, The Journal of Architecture, 12:4, pp 367-392. 14 Allen, S, SANAA’S Dirty Real ism, 2020, pp 58. 15 Campkin, B. 2007, Ornament from Grime. pp 367. In Tour Bois-le-Prêtre, the assemblage of things does not act to decorate spaces which is evident in Miesian forms. These messes of things and artefacts themselves occupy and inhabit space. You begin to immerse yourself in a place of the known; the mundane. A red bucket acts as a plant pot, it’s not a sterile ceramic, it’s humanised, it’s known. It’s presence on the balcony begins to inhabit it. The mop next to the bar fridge in case spills occurs. We notice in the Tour Bois le Pretre the concrete flooring becoming possessed with stains of the everyday. Materiality is a crucial element into communicating the messes of domesticity and a sense of adaptation.

There is an objective to admire the impure varieties of the surfaces. To enjoy such impurities when the concrete flooring becomes scuffed, stained, and weathered.16

16 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, pp. 18-19

Domestication exists with a disorderly mode of function. There is a necessity for site to be seen as one of decay and the image of the home originates from recycling and reinvigoration. The architecture should appear

completely in place in the urban environment albeit

with its “dirt and grime”. 17 Contemporary homes should take form of The Dirty House (Fig 08). It conveys a ‘grit’ of urban ‘mess’ that appears incomplete and ambiguous.

The contemporary home is most successful when the inhabitant gains control and can adjust and perfect the space they dwell in. ‘White cube’ architecture, then, is one that appears brilliant in diagram, however clinical in its execution. Such pristine language turns its back on the homogenous harmony between humans as designers, their artefacts, and the place it sits within.

17 Campkin, B. 2007, Ornament from Grime. pp 370.

Fig 08, Dirty House, David Adjaye. Ornament and Grime. Accessed October 15 2021.

The Contemporary Home should not only celebrate the structural frame of a home but utilise its accessibility and displaying capabilities. Apartment House by Takahashi Ippei expresses its steel frame, with the shell only infilling plywood sheets where needed for inhabitation. This accessibility to the architecture engages humans to utilise the structure as an anchor in which we can attach and detach from. From hanging clothes to attaching make-shift benches for things to inhabit in a disordered way. We begin to achieve this ‘grunge aesthetic’ 18 when amalgamations of banal materials come together.

There is ambiguity to the completeness of the architecture. Only utilising materials for what is needed for our artefacts to inhabit and for the inhabitant to live.

18 Campkin, B & Dobraszczyk, P., 2007. Architecture and Dirt Introduction, The Journal of Architecture, pp. 347-351.

Fig 09, Apartment House, Takahashi Ippei. http://www.takahashiippei.com/UKI.html. Accessed October 15 2021.

Fig 10 & 11, Apartment House, Takahashi Ippei. http://www.takahashiippei.com/ UKI.html. Accessed November 10 2021.

To balance the structural frame of the contemporary home, the shell must hold equal weight to culminate temporal value. Texture, colour and form rely on light and shadow for their qualities to be interpretated, dependent on the time of day.19 Our things, mess and artefacts all have temporal connections to them, one that connects back to the domesticated human and their life. Therefore, it’s crucial to have varied transparencies of the shell to control the effect lighting has on the frame and the artefacts. Yoshichika Takagi’s House in Shinkawa utilises glass, polycarbonate, and concrete to highlight this effect.20 The reflectivity of such materials allows varied expressions of the colours and tones the artefacts possess, giving the artefact more value in its placed inhabitation within the home.

19 Tanizaki, In Praise of Shadows, pp. 18-19 20 “House in Shinkawa,” Yoshichika Takagi + Associates, accessed 15 October 2021, https://yoshichikatakagi.com/ enworks/2015/ house_in_shinkawa/ A make-shift curtain. The repurposing of a thing. Utilising a rug to prevent portions of sunlight inside.

Fig 12, Shinkawa House, Yoshichika Takagi. https://www.archdaily.com/778894/house-in-shinkawa-yoshichika-takagi/5670c57ce58ecee9c00002a3-house-in-shinkawa-yoshichika-takagi-photo?next_project=no. Accessed October 15 2021.

Once the frame and shell come together to create the “complete” home for to dwell in, there exists a consideration of the inhabitant in a constant state of change and flux. Therefore, the architecture intends to evoke a free-floating control.21 Yet also be aware of stagnation in one’s life. The Contemporary Home now gains the ability, like the inhabitant, to go through stages of flux and stagnation, as it continually shifts to provide the needs for the human to dwell.

The Contemporary Home should not be rendered rigid in its programme. The configuration to be nothing more than a series of loosely suggested spaces. The rooms are open and willing to be defined and re-defined as the inhabitant sees. It’s crucial to utilise mundane materials that can be bought from a local hardware store to assemble such a home for it to be changed and adapted to. Albeit, to perhaps provide basic plumbing services for bathrooms and kitchens, however these are fleeting in their own configuration. Nothing ever needs to be fixed to a wall, or whatever may be a wall.

A Contemporary Home functions to always be ready to take on the human and their lifestyle, whilst reflecting on the temporality that is possessed on the land it sits.

We gauge such notions within Peter Markli’s Atelierhaus Weissacher. 22

21 Allen M, 2010. Control Yourself! Lifestyle Curation in the Work of Sejima and Nishizawa. MIT Press. pp 25.

22 Beigel F & Christou P, ND. Room Non-Room. pp 36-41.

Fig 12, Unknown, Instagram. Accessed October 14 2021.

Mundane material assemblages that allows a constantly evolving relationship between the inhabitant, artefacts and its home.

Fig 13, Atelierhaus Weissacher, https://deseopolis.tumblr.com/post/189566666100/atelierhaus-weissacher-bern-switzerland-peter. Accessed October 14 2021.

An amalgamation of messes of things, with no set programme. The artefacts and things determine their own paths. The awkward assemblage of a box gutter through banal materials conveys the grit and reality of the home.

Fig 14, Atelierhaus Weissacher, https://deseopolis.tumblr.com/post/189566666100/atelierhaus-weissacher-bern-switzerland-peter. Accessed October 14 2021.

Things & The Contemporary Home A Cry for Objectism; Things and Objects

A graphical study.

Fig 15, SANAA, Moriyama House. Artefacts and things territorialise space. Messes of things have more agency than dedicating a strict programme. The bar fridge, sink, wine bottles, air-conditioner and bed are brought together in a nonconventional assemblage. It is a temporal space that conforms to the movements of daily life.23

23 Shinohara, K., 2011. Kazuo Shinohara, Casas Houses. 2G, pp 9.