A House with Blended Boundaries I

Knowlton school of architecture

Exit review project

Spring 2020

Instructor: Curtis Roth

The Home Competition Director’s Choice Award: Winner

Jury: Peter Eisenman, Tatiana Bilbao, Andrew Zago, Neil Denari, Toshiko Mori, William O’Brien Jr, J. Yolande Daniels, Sean Canty, Vishaan Chakrabarti, Amanda Levete, Aya Maceda, Jennifer Newsom, Clark Thenhaus

Building Code by which houses are legislated, Builder’s Catalogs as shopping platforms for selling houses and Revit as a tool for making them encourage distinctions and boundaries, breaking the house into specifically defined discrete units that map on our ways of life as social actors. This project subverts this principle of architectural and social distinction, providing an alternative to notions of domestic life by destabilizing the boundaries of the house and spaces of its occupants. The Revit sample house as a base is challenged in terms of individual programmatic units, relationships between occupants and divisional properties of its components. This single family house that is fully accommodating for a single family is now occupied by five families. It is put into tension by the new circumstances challenging the presumptions of privacy and boundaries, resulting in a house with three different levels of performance, changing through occupants perspectives, and read differently depending on points of view.

Absolute clarification of territories due to distinctions of inside and outside, public and private and specificity of use through elements and materials.

Draw

Distinctions though library, commands, limits, hierarchical structure. A room is defined through its distinct closed boundaries, overlaps are discouraged and elements are bound to limits through hosting.