ODA 搬家 by Luccas Dias

ODA (manual)

INDEX

introduction

domestic today

domestic/dwelling landscapes archizoom superstudio dogma italy: the new domestic landscape

7 9 17 29 37

domestic future: one room dwelling architecture

dwelling and domesticity: urban/rural china urban china rural china today

69 73 91

rural china tomorrow

119

bibliography

110

n the age of Anthropocene, an age where man has dominated the planet earth and has reached the point where we are terraforming to survive and germinate to all parts of the globe one of the biggest issues related to human expansion is how to habitat them. Since the industrial age where people started migrating to urban centers to work in factories, the discussion of housing, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purpose and the question of domestic space has become of great priority. During the industrial age, we se a shift in the definition of the domestic space as a way which the object was the management of life, creating houses that were mere illusions of safe refuge and had the real objective of organizing the workers for efficient means for more production1.through these notions that we live by, would it be possible to break away from this system and try to understand the role of domesticity in a different way? The role that this little manual has is to demonstrate that the role of house will change drastically. With the constant evolutions of technology and the lack of opportunities in crammed urban sprawls, the need for a new type o living is needed. Not only to think about the architectural aspect of the dwelling, but also rationalizing the need for ideological change in how we work/live and think about our planet.

DOMESTIC TODAY T

he identity of the domestic space today is a result of a long process of transforming the basic notion of what is it to work and what is it to live. Since the rise of the capitalist system and the need to maintain a reproduce more capital, life of most people has been dictated by this system and gradually brainwashed society in general of this infinite loop of maintain the reproduction of means of production2. Through ingenious apparatuses that this ideological state employs, it has imprisoned all, led us into being a society which has to always being consuming materially and visually flourishing this vicious cycle that will only stop when people are aware of this system that they have been so elaborately throw into. More and more people are absorbed in this state of mind and since the initial of the industrial revolution, mass migrations to urban centers have been occurring in hopes

of a better life and in hopes of more capital which of course, leads to happiness. All pawns trying to become queens in the checkboard which is life. while older generations might have had more success in constructing a better life within this system, today we see a market which is both over populated and over saturated complicating a guarantee of a life with quality for generations to come. In the megalopolises throughout all continents, most, are a symbol of success and have led people in live in them, leading to a speculative housing market resulting in extremely expensive housing. This often times leading large amounts of population to live in the periphery in environments which can be unsuitable for living and also leads to the propagation of crime and less education due to these groups being prone to prejudice and distance from important resources.

It is important also to realize how technology has affected our way of living and how we urban design has been affected by the role technology has played. In the agricultural revolution which started about 10,000 BCE, enabled humans to harness the power of cultivation and domestication of animals enabling to settle in one land and abandon a nomadic way of life which lead to the first typologies of settlements. Later in the time-line, the invention of the steam machine during the industrial revolution, made masses of people to move into the cities and permanently altering the distinctions of rural and urban zones. Later on, urban spaces would turn to the complete rational with the importance of the automobile. The Modernist movement dictated the paramount importance of architecture and its interconnectivity with technology primarily through dictating the importance of the automobile. The automotive in conjunction with Modernist’s lack of individuality laid down the foundations for extremely finite urban formations3. These strict urban formations can be clearly seen in the society of today, this limited organization has resulted in the degree of difficulty to be able to manipulate the urban fabric for the needs of today’s societies3; large scars in the land as result of rationalizing a time period which did not truly understand what time really is. Housing and the domestic space were also thought in a similar sense, Houses were composed as machines for living but did not adequately think about the population that would live in these houses. This universalization discards the idea of the domestic as a place of protection, shelter personal identity to only strengthen the ideology of the reproduction of the means of production2.

Today technology is implemented in much more personal scale. The exponential advancements in electronics, everything can be adjusted to personal specifications. The internet has also enabled ease of action to information and any form of entertainment. While today’s technology is changing how we perceive the home in a physical way through the implementation of hardware which is identified as the “smart home”, electronics has influenced the domestic in a non-physical way. Work which often required an office to document and archive physical files, today, that need has disappeared; with improvements in technology there is no need for a physical space. With the interconnectivity which exists today with the mobility that advancements have enabled, people are able to work from wherever they want. With this, people have the possibility from working from their own homes which starts to blend the line between work and home. To not have this distinction, the worker has the ability to work and live in the manner which he deems more fit and so the typology of house starts to disintegrate3. Through customization and individual screens for each of us, humans have become more secluded from each other, becoming less attached to world around us and making humans slowly more individualist and egotistical people that become more and more reliant on technology to be able to live through life. In summary, it is possible to recognize the effect that capital has on the way we live and can clearly identify that our domestic space is defined by the modes and necessities of where we work and how we work.

Domestic /dwelling LANDSCAPES

hroughout the 20th century, especially during the 60â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and 70â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, with the rise of technology and consumption being a large part of culture, and the rise of urban migrations, a significant amount of architecture studios started to question the role of the dwelling and how we understand the domestic space. The three studies presented here, try to elaborate on a new type of domestic space and demonstrate how our dwelling is a pure extension of our body and way of existence. The examples demonstrate an understanding of the ways we work, the influence of the capitalist way of thinking and reimagining a life which could break this system. What all have in common is the notion of a more conscious way of living. Through representation, installations, furniture and architectural objects, the studios represented in this manual elaborates on how architecture dictates and pushes our way of living through the domestic space and creating new spaces or no spaces.

ARCHIZOOM

NO-STOP CITY

(Archizoom - No-Stop City)

No-Stop CitY a Manifesto created by the radical Italian group in the end of the 60’s, was a manifesto which took account the role of the capital system in architecture and how it has come to define how we live. Before going further, Archizoom’s project should be understood not as a single project but rather a combination and amalgam of ideas through years. A process which resulted in their theoretical study of the new domestic space. Through numerous illustrations created, Archizoom’s focuses on understanding the act of consumption and the capitalist system have influenced our ways of habitation and have influenced our way of thinking about the domestic space. Their aim became to create a city without architecture. A project which the habitat has no specific function, form or location. In t which the the house becomes an extension to the urban landscape, a grid of endless pillars and elevators which sustain each large floor slab, all mechanical, electrical and technological systems are suspended by the ceiling and other a technical floor4. In this large grid, there is no program; the endless grid is organized by the people in them and by few elements needed which people need in their day to day life. The architecture is reduced to nearly and becomes a background for the characters and objects which inhabit them4. The manifestation of no architecture introduces the concept that people and not the system should dictate how they live.

(Archizoom - No-Stop City)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The architecture is reduced to nearly and becomes a background for the characters and objects which inhabit them4. The manifestation of no architecture introduces the concept that people and not the system should dictate how they live.â&#x20AC;? 11

(Archizoom - No-Stop City)

SUPERSTUDIO SUPER SURFACE

(Superstudio Sketchbook, New York, 1969 – 1970)

Superstudio’s grid is an analysis of the society that we live in today, a society filled with acts of consumption and idolization of objects (architectural or not). Superstudio’s perception was that, with the mass production of objects, it loses its context and therefore creates a disconnect between the object and its context. Appropriating ideas from Pop Art, Superstudio utilizes the use of representation to create a revolutionary potential5 . Images have the role of inducing the consumer-subject to critically think about its environment (physical or not) and so promoting an elevated sense of awareness. Superstudio’s grid vision of a world without objects created through mediums of representation aims at not creating a new type of architecture, but create visual impacts that would change how we think as a society and instead of formalizing space to create how we should act, firstly, formalize our minds with how we should survive as a society. Superstudio envisions a world formulated by a grid which links the person it its environment and dissolved the notion of hierarchy which is implied the capital system by eliminating the world of both labor and objects5. In this sense the designer does not design objects any more but subjects behaviors.

(Superstudio, “Life, Supersurface (Fruit and Wine),” 1972)

(Superstudio, “Life, Supersurface”, 1972)

“Superstudio envisions a world formulated by a grid which links the person it its environment and dissolved the notion of hierarchy which is implied the capital system by eliminating the world of both labor and objects5. In this sense the designer does not design objects any more but subjects behaviors.” 27

DOGMA

STOP CITY LIVING AND WORKING

Contrary to Archizoomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s and Superstudioâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s disembodied concepts of the domestic space, Dogma essentially is trying to understand the flexibility of the system which we are engrained to and trying to adapt the city and our way of living into new means which can be thought out in a physical space. By encapsulating work and living in a limited boundary, new relationships emerge6. In both Stop City and Living and Working, Aurelli and Tattara identify through precedent work that the house before the industrial revolution used to be a place which involved reproduction and production. During and after the industrial revolution, with the rise of the capitalist system, the investment became in managing the city, and so the domestic-scape was discarded for the higher purpose of consumption. Today, the domestic life is closely connected to our work life; we tend to create relationships with people in our realm of work. Dogma argues that there needs to be changed in the domestic landscape so that this relationship of work and living can be met without large office buildings, but with spaces which inhabit both work and private life. The studio elaborates on this idea by formalizing into massive blocks which have no segregation between modes of living. This new type of housing/ working is able to create spaces which a freed from a type of ownership and becomes more of a cooperative between people who live there to share facilities and create boundaries between private and public space1. Dogma contrary to Superstudio and Archizoom, utilizes the capitalist system in a transformative way to change the system from inside through new modes of living and sharing.

(Dogma - Stop City, 2007 - 08)

(Dogma - Hidden Architecture: City Walls, 2005)

(Dogma - Stop City, 2007 - 08)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;...there needs to be changed in the domestic landscape so that this relationship of work and living can be met without large office buildings, but with spaces which inhabit both work and private life.â&#x20AC;?

(Dogma - Living and Working, 2015)

ITALY: THE NEW DOMESTIC LANDSCAPE SELECTED WORKS

The MoMA exhibition which occurred in 1972 was a demonstration of the pinnacle of radical design and architecture which was occurring in Italy. Some of the designers who exhibited their work were: 9999, Archizoom, Gae Aulenti, Mario Bellini, Joe Colombo, Gruppo Strum, Ugo La Pietra, Gaetano Pesce, Alberto Rosselli, Ettore Sottsass Jr., Superstudio, and Zanuso/Sapper. The exhibition was organized into two broad groups (objects and Environment), all having subcategories in them which assorted them into what they were trying to express or comment about. The exhibit was organized in a very contradicting manner; objects were displayed in the MoMA sculpture garden while the Environments were exhibited inside the museum7. Both objects and environments were demonstrated a profound interest in mutability and understanding what constitutes the domestic environment. Environments displayed interest in one room dwelling, to dwellings which had no physical aspect to them at all.

Ettore Sottsass - The New Domestic Landscape, 1972)

(MoMA Exibition Space, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, 1972)

(Emilio Ambasz, MoMA Exibition poster, Italy: The New Domestic Landscape, 1972)

(Gae Aulenti, Axonometric of “Three Elements” environment, 1972)

(Mario Bellini. Kar-a-Sutra Prototip d’hàbitat mòbil,, Italy: New Domestic Landscape 1972)

(Studio Zanuso, Mobile House,, Italy: New Domestic Landscape 1972)

(Joe Colombo, Total Furnishing Unit, Italy: New Domestic Landscape 1972)

Ettore Sottsass - Italy:The New Domestic Landscape, 1972)

T domestic future ONE ROOM DWELLING ARCHITECTURE

he issue of the dwelling and the domestic space has always been of paramount importance in architectural discipline due to the fact that this space dictates how people live their life and carry their daily routines. With the capitalist system being the cardinal manner, which governs our life and world orders, it has also engrained into architectural discourse through organization of spaces on the human scale and also in the urban scale. While the home is supposed to have the psychological feel of a shelter which protects us, we need to really ask ourselves what is it that we are trying to protect ourselves from? When going into shelter, from the outside world and unconsciously trying to avoid this ideological system which controls all our actions. While the speculative works presented before elaborated on trying to change the system through different ways such as: boundaryless spaces dictated by people, images which evoke change in how we think, building which incorporate work and living in the same space, and speculative furniture and environment creating new possibilities on living modes. While each tried to construct new systems, which enabled new heterotopic conditions, individually, lack the ability to really change how we view the dwelling and the effect it has on our urban conditions has been stagnated for some time. Combined, these hypothetical modes of living create an argument which is more compelling and culminates in a system which thinks about our living tendencies both through critical though and the enactment of physical space.

It is essential to create a system which conditions people to think about the physical environment and social environment as well. A system which is able to encapsulate the importance of work, but not to supply more means of production to the system which we are a part of. Instead, modifying the system which benefits from sharing of produce through means which are not always capital together with urban conditions which enable us to analyze how to redefine the subjective need of separating work and living. The grid as an organizational device is propagated and present in all antecedents, frequently in a physical form which acts in democratizing space for all. Today, the grid can be thought out in a different form, an invisible grid which organizes us, an invisible grid that more and more is dictated by advancements in technology. This invisible grid mostly dictated by the internet, enables us as humans to work, live, connect and move to nearly any spot in the world. This creates new possibilities of mode of living which are not bound anymore by urban form which is organized to be suit needs of production. People are now able to move freely around the earth and through implementation of a trading system rather than a capital one, each person is important for the larger society to function. To live in the invisible grid, the earth would occupy a new type of urban landscape, one which permits less urban dense zones where people are in more contact with the planet developing a deeper emotional connection to the planet and our environments. Universally generating a new type of nomadic lifestyle where we control our domestic/ work environments to our needs rather than it dictating who we should be and what we should do.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Combined, these hypothetical modes of living create an argument which is more compelling and culminates in a system which thinks about our living tendencies both through critical though and the enactment of physical space.â&#x20AC;? 53

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Today, the grid can be thought out in a different form, an invisible grid which organizes us, an invisible grid that more and more is dictated by advancements in technology. This invisible grid mostly dictated by the internet, enables us as humans to work, live, connect and move to nearly any spot in the world.â&#x20AC;? 55

â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is essential to create a system which conditions people to think about the physical environment and social environment as well.â&#x20AC;?

DWELLING AND DOMESTICITY:

URBAN/ RURAL CHINA

hina, the country with the most significant population and one of the most active economies in the world, has a history which dates back to pre-historic times. A country which is packed with knowledge and history is also packed with people living in urban areas. The communist country which owes its strength to the working-class population has a history of people working and living in poor conditions. People (especially the younger population) are leaving their rural towns to live in big cities for working opportunities or even to go to school to have better chances at a more auspicious job; this is leading to the â&#x20AC;&#x153;extinctionâ&#x20AC;? of rural culture and all knowledge which comes with it. With compact cities with people inhabiting rooms which are too small for quality living and the vanishing of rural life, it is essential to understand the dwelling and domestic issues which occur in China. The Chinese domestic has become a result of their way of living, with rents expensive and lack of work in the rural towns it is time to rethink the dwelling and create better conditions and break the system which the Chinese worker is a puppet to.

(Yang Yongliang - Moonlight sleepless wonderland)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Chinese domestic has become a result of their way of living, with rents expensive and lack of work in the rural towns it is time to rethink the dwelling and create better conditions and break the system which the Chinese worker is a puppet to.â&#x20AC;? 71

URBAN CHINA The city being where the best-payed jobs are, it is easy to understand why people want to conglomerate and accept a poorer living condition in hopes that the city will give them a chance at a better future with a better lifestyle. This conglomeration leads to people living in compacted urban villages where houses are stacked in such a way that they resemble and were named the Ant Tribes or government rented bunkers underground which were built for sheltering the Chinese people from bombs have now become homes of many people who are referred to as the Mouse Tribe8. These intricate connections between the villagers tend to create a tension between what is private and what is public, creating spaces which help local population in selling/buying and communicating with each other but have implications such as having to share a bathroom with other ten people. These types of villages and other urban villages located in the city and around have become so dense in population and so poorly planned that they sometimes lack sanitary installations needed for the prosperity of a clean and healthy community. These villages also lack appropriate garbage collecting which increases the amount of garbage which can be encountered. These poor conditions and an increase of land value due to speculation have let the Chinese government demolish these villages leaving the indigent population with nowhere to go due to the cost of migrating somewhere else8.

(BASEBeijing - Mouse Tribe, 2012)

(BASEBeijing - Ant Tribe, 2011)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;These types of villages and other urban villages located in the city and around have become so dense in population and so poorly planned that they sometimes lack sanitary installations needed for the prosperity of a clean and healthy community.â&#x20AC;? (BASEBeijing - Mouse Tribe, 2012)

RURAL CHINA TODAY

“China today is reinvesting in the rural and have been renovating roads that connect the rural villages to the city to accelerate means of productions...”

Contrary to the bustling life of the urban centers, rural China is slowly fading and disappearing. Younger generations in hopes of earning more money, leave their rural villages gradually culminating in the decrease of population in the rural zones. Today most of these villages are comprised mainly by the elderly population. The rural villages tend to have a small population with the houses being concentrated close to one another, all with courtyards before entering a house which all face south due to Feng Shui principles. Usually, the kitchen is located at the entrance to the house where it is easier for the circulation of air to expel the smell of spices inside the house. The kitchen stove and the bed (kang) are connected through chimney circulation so that the heat from the stove help in heating the bed9. Normally houses tend to be of poor build quality due to the economic crisis in the 60’s and 80’s, but a lot of the villagers who now have more money than before are renovating their houses and making them more structurally sound, protecting them from earthquakes and another disaster which may happen. China today is reinvesting in the rural and have been renovating roads that connect the rural villages to the city to accelerate means of productions and also to make transportation of products faster. Some of the villages located are becoming ghost towns, and some may only contain one family in a whole village, the Chinese government is trying to relocate these people to what they are calling the Socialist Villages so that it is easy to control groups of people which are bunched up together9. Also, a lot of these villages still don’t possess infrastructure necessary to entertain or sustain a community. Essential elements such as a market or school are sometimes no present, and villagers need to travel to more prominent communities to be able to acquire what they need.

Living in rural China, especially in the north, the winter can be harsh and not all might have produce to last the whole period, so, farmers and villagers share crops and food with each other to keep the community alive. In these rural spaces, the system of production has not reached that far so the need for survival and community is more important than supplying and sustaining capital9. While large amounts of the population have migrated away from these rural villages, the idea of the rural lifestyle is associated with a long and healthy life and so, many people come back to celebrate festivals or for tourism; escaping the hectic city life.

(BASEBeijing - Rural China, Vol. 1, 2010) (BASEBeijing - Rural China, Vol. 1, 2010)

(BASEBeijing - Rural China, Vol. 2, 2010)