‘I’ THE TYPOLOGY PAUSE, AND, IN THIS INSTABILITY, DOUBLENESS APPEARS
Housing Home, and Content(s) V LIANG CHEN
Housing Home, and Content(s) V FRANK BURRIDGE LIANG CHEN ANGUS CUNNINGHAM QUYNH DANG ADAM FAN MING FANG SU GU YUXIN JIANG CHANDLER PYKE JOCELYN WU JULIA XU with Studio Leaders PRICILLA HEUNG COLBY VEXLER
p.27
A Dyson Cordless Vacuum leans on a plasterboard wall, serenaded by the faint sound of a neighbour ’s UE Boom. Two slack postures slumped over something from Ikea scroll lethargically. Creases and folds in a pile of energy bills illuminated by the glow of a screen. An UberEats delivery arrives.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in angels… it’s just that I don’t believe they bear the slightest message, and it is in that respect they are truly signifying.” - Jacques Lacan, Encore.
Contents
Studio Preface Housing Home, and Content(s) Finding Home IN: Site Finding Home for: Content(s) A House and Home Precedent Research Material Research Material Text Personal Journal Precedent Study-House VI Reference Projects Suburban Reference
i-iv
i ii iii iv v-xxx v-xiv xv-xvi xvii-xx xxi-xxviii xxix-xxx
A Concept to Find Home for: Plasticity
1-2
A Critical Reflection on Plasticity in Today
3-4
Finding Home In: Context as Site Plastic Suburban Site Finding Home For: Content(s) Domesticity Doubled Centre Faded Edge Directional Entry
5-10
11-30 11-12 13-18 19-24 25-31
A Critical Reflection on Content(s) in Contemporary Culture
31-32
House and Home: ‘I’ the typology pause, and, in this instability, doubleness appears
33-56
Concept and Typology Site Instability Pause Doubleness
33-34 35-38 39-44 45-50 51-56
A Critical Reflection on Contemporary Domesticity
57-58
Preface Housing Home, and Content(s)
From banal and overlooked phenomena to the tropes and concepts given a high value in contemporary culture, Housing Home and Content(s) critically re-evaluates architecture’s role in understanding what housing, home, lifestyle and domesticity might mean in 2019. From the socio-political and economic dynamics of shared living to the proliferation of convenience culture, the romanticised, the real, the habitual, signifying objects and spatial arrangements is where a housing typology becomes home. “Architecture houses. It is at home in - and provides a home for philosophy, aesthetics and those discourses which are thought to describe it.� - Andrew Benjamin, Eisenman and the Housing of Tradition We are not interested in an architecture that only serves a pragmatic means, that is, to provide shelter and comfort for the physical human body. Rather, we will explore reference usually considered outside the traditional architectural milieu to guide our explorations, establishing a framework to find place, sustenance and content(s) for our designs. In studio 26 architecture is considered as a mediator between the ideal and the existential, where it oscillates between two parallel states: the abstract and the material; revealing unexpected slippages, transitions and tension between ideas, content(s), user and space. This is where architecture may be at home in - and provide a home for - the real, ideal, fetishised and/or romanticised contemporary life(style).
i
Finding Home IN: Site
Context, Frame and Site Students will identify and locate a set of contemporary phenomena that aect the domestic realm. Here we will develop theoretical positionings to frame and map such conditions, establishing a contextual framework for the design to come. To initiate this, you will each be assigned a precedent concept to guide you through your investigation: Jean Baudrillard Salvador Dali Gilles Deleuze Jacques Derrida Catherine Malabou
Simulacra Paranoiac Critical Method Rhizome Deconstruction Plasticity
You will spend the early stages of the semester exploring this precedent via the web, print and various other sources, collating and filtering information regarding this project into the presentation of a model, images and text. Your interpretation of this concept will act as a lens for you to critically generate an abstract site, where you will begin to develop your initial ideas around your precedent concept and its relationship to architecture, home, housing, lifestyle and domesticity via moments of: entry, edge, transition and stasis. This stage will provide you with theoretical and architecturally abstract parameters to adhere to, critique, destroy or challenge.
ii
Finding Home For: Content(s)
Users, Activities, Rituals, Events, Objects, Fixtures, Fittings and Materialised Content. Students will develop a taxonomy - A curated selection of material, content and objects that signify a particular value toward the thoughts, activities and rituals related to the ideas generated by the site in phase 1. This content will be housed in the design to come. Outcome: Students will produce a mixed media visual presentation (painting, photography, drawing, collage, rendering, film etc.) This visual representation will outline and detail a number of selected objects and unpack notions of connections, overlap, nodes, field, distance, proximity, edge etc. Successful outcomes should generate an abstract inventory list or taxonomy and a distribution plan through the use of an organisational / operational strategy. The success of this task will be outlined by the students ability to understand and communicate a clear and abstracted system of representation derivative and relational to the previous “site� task.
iii
A House and Home
The house will augment the relationship between: Where architecture may be at home in - and provides a home for - an exploration around: the real, ideal, fetishised, and/or romanticised contemporary life. The house produced will act as an agent for mediating, critiquing and navigating the limitations, possibilities and transferences between the conceptual and material, revealing the unexpected, through the slippages, transitions and tension between ideas, content(s), user and space. Here, students will begin to explore the use of materiality, program, tectonics, scale and junctions between the site of ideas and objects of content(s). Students will design a “home” highlighting relationships between the context it is housed in and the content(s), users, activities and rituals it is home to. Projects will focus on the transference and meditation the home may play between the contextual and the material via three moments of the student’s choice. Here, students will explore the moments and their in-betweens with successful projects revealing the unexpected, through the slippages, transitions and tension between ideas, content(s), user and space. Successful projects will also develop a critical position on what “House” means, “Home” means and what it is to be at “Home in” and at “Home for.” The home may become a critical survey, experiment or meditation.
iv
Precedent Research Material
“The notion of plasticity simultaneously belongs to theoretical discourse and to stark material reality.� v
Catherine Malabou
Plasticity
vi
MALABOU, C. (2000). The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectic. Hypatia, 15(4), 196-220. vii
Research Material
MALABOU, C. (2000). The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, Dialectic. Hypatia, 15(4), 196-220. Research Material
viii
Dalton, B. (2019). What Should We Do with Plasticity? An Interview with Catherine Malabou. Paragraph, 42(2), 238-254. ix
Research Material
Malabou, C., Jeannerod, M., & Rand, S. (2008). What should we do with with our brain?. New York: Fordham University Press. Research Material
x
Review of Catherine Malabou Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction and Deconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010) xi
Research Material
Review of Catherine Malabou Plasticity at the Dusk of Writing: Dialectic, Destruction and Deconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010) Research Material
xii
Street, A. (2019). Catherine Malabou and the Concept of Plasticity - ThÊâtre, Performance, Philosophie Colloque 2014. xiii
Research Material
Street, A. (2019). Catherine Malabou and the Concept of Plasticity - ThÊâtre, Performance, Philosophie Colloque 2014. Research Material
xiv
Research notes and analysis on definition of “Plasticity” and notions of “Plasticity” xv
Personal Journal 01
Research notes and analysis on definition of “Plasticity� and plastic system working direction Personal Journal 02
xvi
Peter Eisenman - House VI Living Room View 1975 xvii
Precedent Study Case
Peter Eisenman - House VI Exterior View 1975 Precedent Study Case
xviii
Peter Eisenman - House VI Ground Floor Plan 1975 xix
Precedent Study Case
Peter Eisenman - House VI Centre Ground Floor Plan 1975 Precedent Study Case
xx
House in Nobeoka SCHEMATA xxi
House in Nobeoka SCHEMATA xxii
Antivilla Brandlhuber xxiii
Antivilla Brandlhuber xxiv
15 Clerkenwell Close Group Work xxv
15 Clerkenwell Close Group Work xxvi
Maison Margiela Anne Holtrop xxvii
Shaikh Ebrahim Centre Anne Holtrop xxviii
Suburban Lifestyle xxix
Suburban Lifestyle xxx
A Concept to Find Home for: Plasticity
Malabou’s concept of plasticity refers to a general condition of malleability or mutability under a circumstance. It is also a capacity to give, take, receive and obliterate form, involving with forming, explosion and healing process. In other word, plasticity comprises both a constructive and formative capability, also a destructive capability. Plasticity dwells in the notion of time. There is no diachrony, only a kind of perpetual present. Plasticity in time will enable every moment to extend to both past and future. Time is the way the system works, and the system itself is plasticity. Plasticity is the way in which time shapes us without destroying our subjectivity, at the same time allows resistance. Structures and forms considered as rigid and firm can be re-evaluated as plastic due to constant changes and transformations. Its openness to the new and the unpredicted future defines the uncertain creative as a form of plasticity. Interweaving diverse interpretation of plasticity, the notion of plasticity simultaneously belongs to material reality and theory.
p.01
Key concept extract from plasticity “Constant changing”,”Form and been formed” Concept Sketch
p.02
A Critical Reflection on Plasticity in Today
What should we do with plasticity? The future of our brain is plastic. The thinking of plasticity itself is plastic. Plasticity has high capability of adopting. Plasticity is the result of high constructive ability which is giving form, and destruction ability, which is receiving form. It has constant reactions to each action happens in a plastic system. The notion of plasticity belongs to multiple fields, such as neuroscience, social issues and writing. It fades the subjectivity of the object or event, what’s left is only the resistance. Plasticity can be used to solve problems and develop new transformation. The system of plasticity is never linear but each moment inside the system is doubled with positive and negative, while the definition of those is not defined.
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p.04
Finding Home in Site Plastic Suburban Site
Plasticity is a double logic system that invariably involves formation and destruction. Also, the suburban area is the most plastic domestic site typology that formed by the urban principles and keeps forming the rural area. The low-density residential blocks usually dominates the suburban system, which often associated with the decentralised pattern of suburban frame. Their interrelationships form the spatial hierarchy from the centre to the edge, from urban to rural. There is no permanent boundary between the urban and suburban, suburban and rural, but there was permanent negotiation between the two aspects of them. The growing scale of urbanisation will swallow up the previous suburban area and landforms, and reforms the interface continually. The integration of a set of repeated residential mass will expand to the edge of the suburban system. However, this simplicity masks an underlying richness in the complexity of transportation and community networks. The entry to the site can be any openness of the suburban network, which is also the linkage, a highway that connecting the urban and the rural.
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Site Model
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Roads Connecting Suburban
EDGE
CENTRE
Y ENTR
1 2
N
Site Plan
0
5
10
20m
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0
p.09
5
10
20m
Site Section 1
0
Site Section 1
5
10
20 m
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Finding Home for Content(s) Abor as et eossi omnis adist, corporem et
Domesticity is a division between the public and privacy that refers to the lived or dreamed experience of domestic life. Domesticity also shows how the doubleness operates through the material dimensions of the home, and an ideology that imaginatively organizes complicated and often contested ideas about privacy, public, home, family, subjectivity and objectivity. Domesticity is an object-based and spatial sensed aspect of living. In the object layer, it can be stable and timeless, while adding another layer such as users, the system will become active. Change is paramount, nothing can remain fixed and stable. Significantly, doubleness involves the interdependence between object and space, with neither aspect being the primary. If the spatial sense is dominant, and the object is supposed to provide a transparent window on to the spatial. The relation between the element and space enables a domestic system to become plastic and involves more transformation. Domesticity comes to realisation in dierent ways and any sense of its supposed spatial essence cannot escape the means by which it is represented and circulated.w
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Mid-Semester Presentation
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N
p.13
0
0.25
0.5
1m
Centre Plan
The logic of plasticity has been shown through its doubleness. The centre of domesticity locates where the plastic two-way transformation happens. Projection is an event of light, but it is inside of the view layer on top of the object layer. Projection is created under the eects of light, object and time layer, also it is a way of showing the three layer that formed it.
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0
p.15
0.25
0.5
1m
Centre Section
The centre will not exist on its own. The entry will always orient to the centre implicated by light. The superimposition of an object layer and an view layer shows the doubleness of the plasticity. Objects form the view, view reveals the way time moves, and time is the way plasticity works. There may not be direct contact between site and domesticity but the method that a plastic system works will inherent.
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p.17
Doubled Centre
Domesticity is a carrier of time, while time is the way a plastic system works. The moment captured shows sets of doubled elements by the scale of the windows, the reflection on the floor based on material reality. Through one static moment, the appliance for dierent seasons shows the time lapses inbetween.
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N
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0
0.5
1
2m
Edge Plan
The line, as a boundary, is separating the land titles. The line, as linkage, is the utility connection between adjacent blocks. The superimposition of dierent kinds of lines creates intersection, overlapping and discrepancy, which eases the eect of solid separation and generates the faded edge. The process of forming new edge and dissolve old edge is a plastic action.
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0
p.21
0.5
1
2m
Edge Section
The intersection only exists in one viewport of the site with particular layers, but not as physical existence. Shadow created by intersection and is beyond the boundary without resistance. The change of view happens interlayer, which means the boundary in one layer becomes a faded edge when considering the plastic site as a system.
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p.23
Faded Edge
The base plane has been sofenten by the touch of window screening. The edge mixes with the shadow and lights that adds spatial senses and depth to the space. The physical solid boundary of the site mixes with boundaries in other layers such as land titles, which shows how doubleness of an object results in its initiative faded edge.
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N
p.25
0
0.5
1
2m
Entry Plan
The entry is the opening of the domesticity also the linkage to the site. The doubleness of the entry is also the transformation from a large site scale to a small domestic scale by overlapping and extending. Parallel steps that represent the rules of a suburban site takes the eects of domestic subjectivity and starts to show unevenness and direction of the space.
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0
p.27
0.5
1
2m
Entry Section
The direction entering the domesticity is implicit by the light. Objects (steps) as a reflective plane makes the space distinctive and visualise the entry direction. The way light forms the view of the domestic space follows the principle of how a suburban site is generated. There may not be direct contact between site and domesticity but the essence that a plastic system works will inherent.
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Directional Entry
Light is working as a vector. Steps act as the obstacle that shapes a negative, the dark area. The light has divided the space into small parcels with various luminance. The amount of luminance creates the pathway leading to the centre of domesticity.
p.30
A Critical Reflection on Content(s) in Contemporary Culture
Contemporary culture has been broadly divided into urban, suburban and rural. Their relative position to each other has defined and classified its role. The experience of culture can be visualised based on presence of domesticity. The culture is the origin that the lifestyle developing from. In another word, culture shapes the subjectivity, and subjectivity of the individuals construct the domestic lifestyle. And lifestyle developed could keep forming the culture. The doubled process enables the system to have no start or end but a permanent negotiation between the two. The interpretation of culture has been shown through one’s domestic life. Culture is the origin, an origin been formed by the process, an origin no longer exists, or an origin never existing.
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p.32
House and Home for: ‘I’ the typology pause, and, in this instability, doubleness appears
Flexible and malleable, yet resistant, the guiding lens of plasticity, derived from Catherine Malabou’s theory, offers insight into the realm of domestic instability and its amalgamative contemporary typologies. Plasticity dwells in the notion of time. There is no diachrony, only a kind of perpetual present. Notions of ‘house’ and ‘home’ can be built, traced and renovated through such a concept, projected onto time scales that show the evolution of surrounding environments without destroying its subjectivity, at the same time allows resistance. Perceptual lenses usually unconsidered or un-critiqued when designing residential architecture. Its openness to the new and the unpredicted future defines the uncertain creative as a form of plasticity. Interweaving diverse interpretation from the occupants who lives in the house, and the visitor coming to the house with no prior understanding, resonates in multiple different ways, the notion of plasticity simultaneously belongs to domestic material reality and temporal theory.
p.33
Typology The project is a renovation and combining project of a small industrial warehouse and a two-story townhouse that have a party wall. The shared wall in-between works as a touching but also separation edge of the site. There is no permanent boundary between the surrounding and the site, the warehouse and the townhouse, the private and the infrastructure, but there was permanent negotiation between the two aspects of them. The transformation of the role of warehouse from site context to an extended ground accommodating future passion shows how plasticity comprises a constructive and formative capability. Operating in the in-between space of the house and the warehouse, and the voids between the building envelope and interior generate a space with high malleability arises expectations for unknown possibilities. The project becomes a dynamic space that embedded the future timeline.
p.34
Site Plasticity is a double logic system that invariably involves formation and destruction. The suburban environment could be seen as the context typology baring the most plastic qualities, as it is literally an environment formed by its proximity to urban principles and in turn, re-forms the rural context it colonises. The decentralised pattern of suburban frame is dominated by lowdensity residential areas, constrained by the existing social value orientation, such as land titles, zoning codes. This simplicity masks an underlying richness in the complexity of the realm of domesticity. The house is designed to reevaluate the framed rigid context. Perceptual lens based on participant’s experience and spatial hierarchy established from the centre to the edge is be explored simultaneously, thus finding a pinpoint balancing.
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Site Plan
Centre
Entry1
Entry2
Edge
5m
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Land Title
Set Back
2m
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Site Elevation
Land Title
Set Back
Cropland Barn
2m
Site Section
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Instability
p.39
Outer shell of the warehouse frames the lounge, while the Timber wall of the townhouse is the extension of the shell. Domesticity is an object-based and spatial sensed aspect of living. Once the solidness of domesticity established and redeveloped. Softness of domestic joins in and re-divide the space. The softness allows the space to be redivided using the plasticity of the fabric separation. Change is paramount, nothing can remain fixed and stable. Pause is the current state of instability while the doubleness is its moving direction. Superimposition of the visible and invisible boundary lines creates overlapping, intersection and discrepancy, which oscillates the edge of the house and put it onto a cusp that makes the routine of time explode. It’s openness to various users no matter occupants or visitors. Openness creates possibilities. The experience of occupants and visitors inside the lounge space overlaps and distinguishes from each other. Lounge is the most plastic place in the home. In the object layer, the setting of the space can be stable and timeless, while adding another layer such as the experience of the occupant, the system will become active. Structural instability occurs where the pause exists. The pause between the existing outer shell and newly constructed townhouse wall is the habitation of instability. the When the program uncertainty encounters the instability of the material. Doubled instability occurs, it is where you can feel the house with particular layers, but not as physical existence. The edge of the house starts to fade out and become unstable. The sprawl of the edge will not stop at any kind of boundary. Resistance will disappear as a result of one boundary becoming a faded edge when changing viewport from one layer to another and considering the plastic site as a system. There is never a wall but hanging fabric as a separation edge between the private space and the old warehouse.
p.40
Rail 1
Set Back
2
Rail 1 3
il Ra 2
Rail 2
1
3
4 6
5 1 Retro Lamp 2 Timber Floor 3 Fabric Seperation 4 Existing Log Column 5 Extending Townhouse Wall 6 Concrete Remaining Outer Shell Land Title
M1 Ed
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[I t bilit ] PLAN
05 0.5m
M1 Edge [Instability] PLAN
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Retro Lamp Fabric Seperation Wood Rocking Chair Extending Townhouse Wall Concrete Remaining Outer Shell Tree Growing from Neighbor’s Yard White Translucent Window Screening
Land Title
Touching Edge
Fabric Seperation Rail Detail
Rai l1
Rail
2
5 2
2
1 ting Ligh 6
4
3
7
M1 Ed
[I t bilit ] SECTION
Bree ze
02 0.2m
Inside
M1 Edge [Instability] Section
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Touching Edge Concrete Outer Shell & Timber Strcuture Connection Detail
Renovated Townhouse Wall
Remaining Wareh ouse
Outer Shell
0.2m
Outside Unrolled
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M1 Edge [Instability] SECTION
M1 Edge [Instability] STILL LIFE
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Pause
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The pause is the product, not the origin, of repetition. The nature of a pause is instability, only the motional can be stopped, but the inertia will drive the pause to keep moving. The formation of the garage space formed after the destruction at the end of the warehouse, it is a plastic action. Renovated garage space without enclosed shell is instable; a left-out warehouse wall cannot stand by itself. The assemblage of the two creates the pause in the process of merging. The pause is only existing with the support of the double performer. The garage is the start of suburban domestic life. When the user of the space changes from a car to the house occupant, it is a paused moment and the interpretation is doubled. Entry will exist at where the car enters the garage, car is the user. And at where the car parked in the warehouse, the occupant starts to become the user of the space, it has double users at the exact moment when stopping the engine. Only the occupant will continue approaching the next entry to townhouse, while the car is no longer the user. Resistance of the plastic system pushes this moment out, while the doubleness bounds it back. The spatial arrangement divides the space according to the change of users and show the internal direction of the plastic system, creates the pathway leading to the centre of house. The void in the space indicates the possibilities of future implementation. A pause just before another plastic moment generates.
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1 2 3 4 5
Cloth Hanger Wood Stool Socket Timber Platform Stairs to Next Level
P1-Car P2-Occupant & Car
4
3
1
2
Outdoor Parking
Set Back
Driveway
5
P3-Occupant
1m
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M2 Entry [Pause] PLAN
Structure Pause Detail
Hanging Rod
Existing I Beam
Newly Added Concrete Slab
Occupant Entry to Warehouse
Existing Brick Wall Detail
Car Entry to Garage
0.2m
Car Entry to Garage
M2 Entry [Pause] SECTION
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Double Stud Wall Detail
Entry to the Next Floor
Occupant Entry From Garage
0.2m
Occupant Entry to Home
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M2 Entry [Pause] SECTION
M2 Entry [Pause] STILL LIFE
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Doubleness
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The centre is the home’s response to the vibrating system that is working on the basis of temporal potentials. The pause of doubleness is precisely the balancing point; however, the balancing will not last long due to the instability of suburban domesticity. Read the remaining of warehouse to be double, both as disappearance and accomplishment. The contrast between the rusty column and the treated timber panel has been eased by the same tone of colour presented. The grid shadow fell on the wall, the projection of repetitive screen is an event of light, but it is inside of the view layer on top of the material layer. A desk for afternoon tea oered to the occupant placed in the seeming undisturbed space, the static inside of still tension. With the repetition of the desks, the space gained ability to accommodate more and transform to a workshop. The presence of renovated timber structure and the old wooden floor allows the temporal doubleness with understanding of timeframe, grants ability to merge the rural essence into a suburban site. The centre with a high intensity of doubleness concentrates to a narrowed space that building for instability. The logic of plasticity has been shown through its doubleness, which involves the interdependence between object and space, with neither aspect being the primary. If the spatial sense is dominant, and the object is supposed to provide a transparent window on to the spatial.
p.52
1 Wooden Desk 2 Timber Mesh Screen 3 Remaining Universal Column 4 White Translucent Window Screening
Section View 1
Existing Warehouse
2
Section View 2
Void for Future Implementation
3 Section View 3
4
Renovated Townhouse
1
0.5m
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M3 Centre [Doubleness] PLAN
Bulrush Wooden Chair Timber Screening Repetitive Built in Desk Remaining Universal Column White Translucent Window Screening
Fold 1
Fold 2
1 2 3 4 5 6
Renovated Townhouse First Floor
5
6
1
2
4
3
0.2m
In Between
M3 Centre [Doubleness] SECTION
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Renovated Townhouse
Remaining Warehouse
0.2m
In Between
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M3 Centre [Doubleness] SECTION
M3 Centre [Doubleness] STILL LIFE
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A Critical on Reflection on Contemporary Domesticity
The notion of home is understood based on accumulation of daily life. Lifestyle is intentionally to be kept as still, while domestic life itself is a plastic system. A plastic system is dynamic, is constantly moving and changing, forming and been formed. Time is the way plastic system works. Domestic life dwells in the notion of time. There is no subjectivity of the individuals, but only the resistance. Each change made to the home is reflection of the plastic action happening in the system. Contemporary domesticity is the pause before the merging process, the destroying of subjectivity. There is no stable circumstance that could rest on. Domesticity has been pushed and shaped by occupant’s moving direction in the house. Superimposition of similar experiences creates doubleness, which is the definite destiny of domesticity inside a plastic system.
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p.58