Interiors of Isolation

INTERIORS

OF INTERIORS OF ISOLATION

ISOLATION

“One of the central human acts is the act of inhabiting, of connecting ourselves, however temporarily, with a place on the planet which belongs to us, and to which we belong.�

- Charles Moore, 1977

INTERIORS OF ISOLATION LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

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Valerie Marshall & Jana R. Nitschke

COVID-19 STUDENT AWARD

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University of Toronto

www.interiorsofisolation.com Copyright © 2020 Interiors of Isolation, Valerie Marshall & Jana R. Nitschke Edited by Jana R. Nitschke & Valerie Marshall

CONTRIBUTORS

8 Sonia Mancxia, Manchester, UK Isolation for Two

44 Aureliana Tumiwa, Jakarta, Indonesia Lonely Cocoon

10 Stephanie Tung, Hong Kong, China Life in Quarantine (HK & Toronto)

46 Ghazi Ziben, Toronto, Canada Wonderlands

12 Drew Doyle, Omaha, USA Sensing Change

48 Bruno Xavier, Houston, USA Isolation Nest

14 Jessica Ho, Markham, Canada Nowhere Else

50 Joanna Ribeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil My Bedroom for Two

16 Max Cooper-Clark, Cambridge, UK Soliloquy

52 Clarence Tan, Singapore, SG Single Unit

18 Faizaan Khan, Scarborough, Canada A 2500sqft Closet

54 Roman Romanov, Vancouver, Canada One Tent, Two Realities

20 Adam Krajewski, Toronto, Canada I Stare at My Terrariums A Lot

56 Daniel Barbosa, Toronto, Canada 1440 mins in a Day...

22 Jared Calvo, Pleasant Hill, USA A Bare Minimum

58 Jainami Shah, Mumbai, India No Place Like Home

24 Elissa Palmer, Boston, USA The Void

60 Sanjana Patel, Toronto, Canada Virtual Meeting

26 Lamis Amamou, Monastir, Tunisia Under the Sun

62 Salma Akermi, Tunis, Tunisia My Little Quarantine

28 Fong Shi Yuan, Singapore, SG The New Workplace

64 Isabel Amos, Toronto, Canada Isabel in Isolation

30 Jana R. Nitschke, Hildesheim, Germany Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall...

66 Richard Quittenton, Los Angeles, USA A Small Studio

32 Valerie Marshall, Toronto, Canada Quarantini

68 Krushalni Mohanarathnam, Pickering, Canada Snakes and Ladders

34 Julia Kanz, Vienna, Austria An Inner Journey

70 Gabe Tiberius Colombo, Boston, USA Room With a View

36 Cherry Kong, Sidney, Australia En Suite

72 Lori Chan, Toronto, Canada COVID Workspace

38 Varun Sethi, Atlanta, USA Walls

74 Shreya Sethi, Delhi, India A Chair Once Covered

40 Tzvete-Lina Kostoff, Toronto, Canada Daily Routine

76 Bushra Tellisi, Leeds, UK Virtual Reality

42 Michel Massolar, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Self Reflection

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LETTER FROM THE EDITORS As architecture students dedicated to exploring the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit, we were profoundly impacted by the shift to staying at home which was implemented worldwide in March 2020, to curb the spread of COVID-19.

This shift has forced us to contemplate, now, more than ever, how we use the places we call home, and how we adapt to these spaces under unique circumstances. Within the academic body of our own school, the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, and the architecture community at large, we are surrounded by a diverse set of talented designers, all of whom have been affected by their countries’ stayat-home orders in different ways. The intent of this publication was to engage designers by having them produce creative drawings exploring their relationship with the spaces they were confined to during the pandemic.

The lockdown measures, implemented by countries across the globe, forced students to remain in their homes alone, with roommates, or their families. Some stu-

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dents had to vacate their homes in the city and move back in with their families, either domestically or internationally, or find alternative living situations. Despite this disruption, the academic and professional work required of design students did not cease.

Our daily routines were dramatically adjusted, and for the most part became limited to our own homes. As classes moved online, we indulged in the voyeuristic pursuit of peering into our peers’ personal spaces during zoom calls. The trying circumstances of the pandemic presented a new set of challenges for students who are trained in creative problem solving, and who have a close relationship with the built environment.

Interiors of Isolation is an investigation into how architects and designers, specifically, have adapted to their quarantine environments. We asked participants to answer the following questions through two drawings: How has the pandemic effected your living/working environment? Where and how do you spend most of your time within your home? Have you come up with creative solutions to adjust your space to your needs? How do you think about your space now, compared to pre-quarantine?

While the government mandated lockdowns and restrictions have been lifted and eased since the spring, many schools, including the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design, will be resuming online in September. This means that for the year to come, a substantial group of students will continue to spend prolonged periods of time in their own homes, and that many of the themes presented in the following drawings will continue to remain relevant for the foreseeable future.

Through the drawings featured in this book, we sought to represent a diverse set of international experiences. We welcomed submissions both from the students at our own faculty, and from any design student, or recent graduate, globally. The drawings in this book come from students living in Asia, Africa, Australia, Europe, North America, and South America. As this project has been published and distributed online on www.interiorsofisolation.com people from all corners of the world will have access to the drawings, which show the unique experience of designers in different countries.

It is our intention to continue building this collection of drawings, and to feature them on our website.

Valerie Marshall & Jana R. Nitschke Editors August, 2020 Toronto, Canada

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COVID-19 STUDENT ENGAGEMENT University of Toronto

Interiors of Isolation gratefully acknowledges the support of the University of Toronto’s COVID-19 Student Engagement Award.

In recognition of the dramatic effect that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on students, the University of Toronto provided financial support to students who were developing inspiring innovations and projects that contributed to the COVID-19 crisis response.

We believe that small ideas can have a large impact on morale, and we hope that this project will make design students feel united, and give them the opportunity to contribute to our community. Every student from the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design who submitted work was paid a stipend. As well, an award of $100 was given to Michel Massolar of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil for his exceptional submission.

When this book goes to print, we plan on donating proceeds to charities devoted to alleviating the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Sonia Mancxia, Manchester, UK

MArch1, Manchester School of Architecture

Isolation for Two

Just as table for two became isolation for two: As normal as it may seem; little did we know that everything beyond the interiors of isolation can become so surreal.

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Stephanie Tung, Hong Kong, China

MArch4, U of T

Hong Kong – It feels less restricted in my home in Hong Kong as my parents are around the house. I am also able to get good food cooked by my parents and delicious treats outside. The sense of time is less regulated compared to that in Toronto as it feels more relaxed and as though I am on vacation.

Life in Quarantine (HK & Toronto)

Toronto – During COVID, I have been mostly staying at home and only going out once every 10 days for groceries. My days are scheduled to make my mundane life more organized through regular activities. Cooking became one of the more exciting times of the day when I got to learn new recipes.

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Drew Doyle, Omaha, USA

MArch Graduate, South Dakota State University

duction wasn’t an option at my apartment, I was forced to explore the senses through computerized means, exemplifying the unpredictable nature of architecture and the innovativeness with which we must design.

Sensing Change

My capstone studio project, ‘Nothing Makes Sense,’ explores the role of sensorial experiences in a contemporary era of architecture that has left them behind. In order to fairly explore these analogue practices, I was producing four-foot-tall physical models weekly; the pandemic, of course, threw a wrench into things. Because large-scale pro-

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Jessica Ho, Markham, Canada

MArch3, U of T

recipe (not really caring about the taste, but more about plating the food), playing the guitar or piano, or physically constructing something. Prior to the quarantine, I never thought that my bedroom could protect me from an unexpected pandemic, and now it feels like it is the safest place in the world.

Nowhere Else

Since the quarantine began, I have not left my property line in months! I spend almost 85% of my time in my bedroom in my parents’ suburban home. You will mainly find me at my desk browsing the web on my laptop, or on my bed scrolling through my phone, but I always try to make some time to exercise my creativity. That may be trying a new

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Max Cooper-Clark, Cambridge, UK

MArch Graduate, University of Cambridge

transposed across the globe in calls and messages and the unconquerable warmth of the hospital inhabitants.

Soliloquy

The past few months for me have not been defined by the Bachelardian status quo (whereby ‘home’-liness is indebted to childhood memory or the amicable embrace of a bedroom). These senses became estranged as I was isolated in an English hospital, across the world from friends and family. Home became not a physical place but a state

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Faizaan Khan, Scarborough, Canada

BA4, U of T

The bedroom, the bathroom, the kitchen, and the hallway have always existed as transitory spaces pre-COVID, spaces I returned to out of physical necessity after spending as much time outside of the house as possible. You’d find only a closeted and angry version of myself. Now the only spaces I exist in, as my authentic self, are the virtual realms of Instagram DMs, Facebook chats, and maybe even a Zoom call if I whisper.

A 2500sqft Closet

When you are a closeted queer person in a homophobic household, the way you must navigate that space, the self-imposed restrictions on movement to avoid the inevitable toxicity of interactions with family, renders that space as suffocating as any. In this 2500sqft detached single-family ‘home,’ I find myself drowning in the negative space.

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Adam Krajewski, Toronto, Canada

MArch4, U of T

I Stare at My Terrariums A Lot

A terrarium maintains an entire habitat sealed within it, nothing coming in or out but the sun and the views.

By that definition, my home has been indistinguishable from a terrarium.

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Jared Calvo, Pleasant Hill, USA

BArch2, Diablo Valley College

In doing so, I am able to continue with my obligations while maintaining a healthy environment for both me and my parents.

A Bare Minimum

Being an essential worker, I have to isolate myself from my parents in a 12x10 confinement—one that I would like to call my bedroom. Hence, I redesigned the space to cater to my daily routine as an architecture student. Taking space and functionality into account, I purged my room down to a bare minimum.

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Elissa Palmer, Boston, USA

MArch1, Harvard GSD

The Void represents an allowance and freedom of movement, and therefore, measuring the interstitial spaces is measuring the clearance, or tolerance that the void yields. This can be understood as a hoarder’s reading of the room, in a sense that the room is understood not by the objects floating freely in space, but rather, by the gaps that allow for the objects to fit. How much space is there between the desk and the bed, or between

the chair and the bed? Can a 7� bucket fit between the model table and the desk? Does the gap between the shelf and the closet door allow for the closet door to open? The moulding on the doors and window frames is also the shape of the void and govern our movement and placement of objects.

The Void

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Lamis Amamou, Monastir, Tunisia

MArch4, ENAU

Under the Sun

Misery seems to be less painful under the sun.

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Fong Shi Yuan, Singapore, SG

BArch5, NUS

that I was given 4 years ago since we moved into this house was forsaken due to my absence. The short three months of circuit-breaker (Singapore’s version of quarantine) really made me cherish what I had, and I thought it was a perfect time to capture this traditional workspace that has always been there for me before it adapts to the future of the post-COVID-19 era where everything becomes high-tech.

The New Workplace

Before, I preferred to stay in school as it was much easier for me to attend classes and to also mingle with friends. The pandemic forced us to move out of our school residences, and for the first time in my 4 years of study, I was actually doing architectural work from home. It was a workplace that for the first time, I felt really belonged to me; the room 29

Jana R. Nitschke, Hildesheim, Germany

MArch4, U of T

We are experiencing a time of places full of disorder, confusion, and chaos. I was privileged enough to live in a small apartment located in Northern Germany. The castle, as seen, was built in 1898 and is located next to the Seven Hills from the original story of Snow White. Having access to nature, being able to see and listen to birds and other

This is where I can be free.

animals, made all the difference. COVID-19 made us look at our surroundings and appreciate the things that we have available to us in our close proximity.

Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall...

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Valerie Marshall, Toronto, Canada

MArch4, U of T

For a boozier Negroni, double the ratio of gin.

Quarantini

Negroni Recipe: 1. Combine equal parts Gin, Campari, & Red Vermouth in a shaker filled with ice and stir. 2. Fill a glass with ice and rub an orange peel around the edge.

3. Strain alcohol into glass. 4. Garnish with the orange peel.

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Julia Kanz, Vienna, Austria

MArch3, TU Wien

An Inner Journey

During the six-week isolation I was lucky enough to have a safe place to stay and a roommate I could spend time with. I spent this time reflecting on my life and thinking about the limits we come across during a lifetime. The walls of my room are one of them.

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Cherry Kong, Sydney, Australia

BAE3, University of Sydney

and to other rooms, while working perpendicular to the natural light source improves productivity and eliminates eyestrain during the long working hours of quarantine.

En Suite

The bed and desk are placed against a wall that allows for clear circulation of my bedroom. The bed is placed away from the balcony’s glass panels to mitigate disturbance from the outside, and create a defined path to the bathroom with a 0.56m distance from it. Placing the desk in the corner maximises my walking distance to the bathroom

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Varun Sethi, Atlanta, USA

MArch4, Georgia Institute of Technology

Walls

I miss people, the need to go out, but now I have walls.

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Tzvete-Lina Kostoff, Toronto, Canada

MArch3, U of T

standing of why things were the way they were and, in some cases, why they should not be that way. By seldom leaving the house, I established a daily routine quite different from before. So, I question. Do we live in spaces designed for us or do these spaces design us? Who or what is more adaptive?

Daily Routine

During quarantine, we got to know the spaces we call home. For most of us, our home is a place away from it all. However, during this isolation period, we find ourselves bringing the “away� home. Over the course of 3 months, I isolated myself from the rest of the world. What was gained, was an appreciation of the space I occupy. An under-

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Michel Massolar, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

UFRRJ

Self Reflection

Living is the basic manner of relating to space. Currently, this space is the most sincere and profound way of relating to ourselves. It’s an extension and a mirror of us.

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Aureliana Tumiwa, Jakarta, Indonesia

BArch3, BINUS University

social value, because no matter how well a space is designed, it will still feel empty without the human interactions that create moments within the space.

Lonely Cocoon

I did my self-quarantine in a place Indonesians call “kosan,� a small flat consisting of a bedroom and a bathroom. Quarantine made me rethink my space, turning it into my little cocoon to accommodate multiple activities, including working, living, and playing.

The only problem is loneliness, and it made me realize that the soul of architecture is a

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Ghazi Ziben, Toronto, Canada

MArch4, U of T

Wonderlands

A word repeated over and over begins to sound peculiar.

A space occupied for days on end begins to look bizarre.

We stare out our windows, a peak at a world that stands still.

Simultaneously, the interiors we are confined to begin to warp as we create our own wonderlands, helping us escape the new realities.

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Bruno Xavier, Houston, USA

MArch3, University of Houston

The new furniture separates the space into smaller nests, where I can “escape� to when boredom gets the best of me. It also frames the view from my apartment’s only window, giving it the emphasis it deserves as my last remaining bridge to the outside world.

Isolation Nest

To combat living alone in a studio without furniture, I used my bored architecture student skills to design one piece of mega furniture to activate and reanimate my space of confinement, and turn my quarantine into a more pleasant experience.

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Joanna Ribeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

BArch7, UFRRJ

As an architecture student, I realized more than ever how important the capacity of adaptability is in a house, since these are the main spaces where human life will exist and resist.

My Bedroom for Two

Staying in my suburban home in Rio de Janeiro made me miss my university campus in a rural zone. I spend most of my time in my shared little bedroom: at night sleeping, and by day using it as an office.

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Clarence Tan, Singapore, SG

BArch5, NUS

Throughout the pandemic, words truly cannot describe how lucky I felt, and made me want to do more for the community in my future architectural career.

Single Unit

The pandemic has forced all of us to strategize a single unit and its rooms to fit multiple programmes, from office, work, and education, to fitness and hobbies. I find myself extremely privileged to have a comfortable 3m x 4m room where my personal work and fitness routine are smoothly executed alongside hobby plantings.

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Roman Romanov, Vancouver, Canada

MArch4, U of T

ticket to survival are an option. Considering the supposedly neutral tent as a contemporary mobile home, one is prompted to pause and reflect on current issues of social inequality and injustice in affluent countries such as Canada and on our position within them.

One Tent, Two Realities

For some, a tent is what you take as you afford the luxury of fleeing the city on your way to a campsite in rural British Columbia during the COVID-19 outbreak. For others, it’s a home, and there is nowhere to run. For homeless people in neighbourhoods such as East Hastings in Vancouver, neither isolation nor the means to afford an escape as a

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Daniel Barbosa, Toronto, Canada

Photographer

a method of representing data in a visual form. Using this form, I calculated my time spent in each area subtracting from 1440 mins.

1440 mins in a Day...

During the height of COVID-19, I isolated myself within my apartment, not even taking one step outside, consuming my space very similarly to an everyday product. One common graphic found on each product is a bar code:

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Jainami Shah, Mumbai, India

BArch3, KRVIA

This drawing is a map of some of these memories’ trajectories from the objects in our home, representing how we use the spaces together as a family, in this place we call Our Home.

No Place Like Home

This pandemic has given me and my siblings a break from the fast-paced urban lives we were living for our education, and has allowed us an opportunity to rekindle the relationships we lost with our parents, and our rural childhood home. The objects that we collect around us open up trajectories of the memories they represent.

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Sanjana Patel, Toronto, Canada

MArch1, U of T

Virtual Meeting

My workspace changed the most while staying home. Where there was previously a clear distinction between sleep and work space, transforming the bed corner into a virtual meeting set created a threshold condition to meet my need for privacy and non-distracting backgrounds.

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Salma Akermi, Tunis, Tunisia

ENAU

My Little Quarantine

The COVID-19 outbreak had a huge impact on our daily life, we had to adapt, in rather strange ways, to this deadly virus hunting us at our doorsteps. For the first time after four years of university, I spent three months with my family and I didn’t realize how much I missed my room until I was quarantined in it.

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Isabel Amos, Toronto, Canada

MArch Graduate, U of T

Hopes of coming out of orbit and joining the rest of society is somewhere at the end of the flight path.

Isabel in Isolation

Working from home, calls with friends, and streaming live events, have shoved my world into my apartment. After hearing weeks of dispiriting news, having to go out comes with uncertainty and sometimes great effort. This moment has forced me to appreciate the simple nooks and corners that I can create in my apartment.

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Richard Quittenton, Los Angeles, USA

MArch Graduate, Taliesin

A Small Studio

A small studio in Los Angeles. Palm trees and a small projector provide entertainment.

The hectic streets seem so distant.

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Plan of My Main Space Main areas of leisure Movement over the months

Krushalni Mohanarathnam, Pickering, Canada

Plan of My Main Space Main areas of leisure

Movement over the mo

BA4, U of T

interior space, I tried my best to make slight changes to my daily routine. Every day would be a little different. Whether those changes are in how I spend my time in each space, or the amount of time I spend in each space, it is all a game of chance.

Snakes and Ladders

The plan of my room is what I consider my main space, or where I spend the most amount of time. This drawing shows the change in my room over the course of the isolation period. My second drawing is based on the game snakes and ladders. It conveys a game of chance that I adapted to during this period. Since you are stuck in the same

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Gabe Tiberius Colombo, Boston, USA

MArch2, Harvard GSD

wrapping enclosure of the bay. Through the simple but considerate manipulation of the walls, the architecture creates a sub-space within the larger space of the room and apartment that has mitigated my sense of isolation during the pandemic.

Room With a View

These drawings of the bedroom in which I’ve been spending most of my time emphasize how the vernacular domestic feature of the bay window creates an in-between, or threshold, space between interior and exterior, home and world. Sitting at the desk, I have a surround view of trees, houses, sky, and street but also feel protected by the

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Lori Chan, Toronto, Canada

MArch4, U of T

the furniture around a lot - whenever we ate, worked, or decided to exercise. This led us to move back to our childhood home, where I haven’t stayed for almost 10 years. Although not perfect, there’s much more space and I have my own privacy. I still spend most of my time in the “office,” but it’s nice to be able to walk around. Space is actually a luxury, as is privacy. I think virtual space use has increased too, and have noticed connecting with others now takes more intentionality.

COVID Workspace

I’ve never realized how much I value personal space until the pandemic forced me to stay indoors.

At my Toronto place, I share a small condo with my sister. Work conference calls were difficult... I literally went into the bathroom if we both had meetings. At the time, I also cooked more frequently and only went outside to get groceries. Since it was essentially one giant room, we had to move

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Shreya Sethi, Delhi, India

BArch2, GGSIPU

A Chair Once Covered

In my room I dance, work, chat, read, and cry while I talk to my friends on video calls.

It’s now my gym, college, movie theatre, and what not. The chair and the table that used to be covered with piles of clothes have been cleared and are being used.

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Bushra Tellisi, Leeds, UK

BArch3, University of Cambridge

real-life game of perception versus reality, manicuring my room to appear put together on camera. (I promise I did clean my room eventually).

Virtual Reality

The pandemic has meant that I have spent the majority of my time in my bedroom, and I am extremely grateful for the amount of space I have to myself. During the first few weeks, however, my room was heavily bruised by unpacked suitcases, boxes, and clothes from a university term cut-short. This mess was further exacerbated by not being able to have people come round, and being able to control what was presented on camera on various Zoom and Skype calls throughout the past couple months. It was a

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to extend a huge thank you to everyone who has taken the time to produce and contribute their incredible drawings and thoughtful insights to this project.

We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to go over your work. And thank you to the University of Toronto for the funding that made this project possible.

Valerie Marshall & Jana R. Nitschke Editors August, 2020 Toronto, Canada

www.interiorsofisolation.com