ACT 4 City becomes a floor, dwelling becomes a ground
M: “Pity the bathtub.” D: “I’ve been wondering how to register urban living in the unit.” “Pity the bathtub.” “Its forced embrace of the human form.”
“So how does the city become a floor?” “What is the city? What is a floor?”
“Woo. I can begin through distinction. The city offers a series of alternate grounds, a chance to re-appropriate the horizontal. The floor is less resilient to such change.” “The floor and the ground, that’s a distinction that needs to be made.”
“The freedom in the city, where it does exist, stems from its adaptability. Anne talked about the square in Marrakech, how its uses are not predetermined but that they determine the design of the square as they occur.” “The ground does that.”
“Grounds do. Floors not so much. Floors want to be determined.”
“Do the two ever become one?” “I don’t know yet. They offer different sensibilities. The ground provokes a freedom of use, the floor establishes a sense of comfort by restraining certain uses. A problem with the stacked floor plates of dense living is the limited condition on which we can act.”
“And their separation from the ground. But some buildings strive to create grounds. Or they try to create a hybrid.
And some grounds become floors. Objects become entrenched in the material of the earth. The ground becomes a plinth for something else, restraining the freedom of other uses.�
“We return to the space between the two. I want confusion between the two. I want the freedom of the ground and the comfort of the floor. And again I want a confusion between the two, not everywhere, but in the doily edges, in the collective comforts—where the washer is placed.”
“The confusion is the pull of the city you were talking about. Maybe it’s tidal?” “Yes, but not erratic.”
“And the ground incites different articulations.�
“Completely. It can be designed as activities occur. But the ground must always retain a sense of its initial inciting state. Sous les pavés, la plage!” “So French.”
“I know. Curtis mentioned it. He said that in May ’68 the protestors were lifting the cobblestones up revealing the sand that sets them below.” “They were re-appropriating.
Could your ground or your floor reveal those multiple meanings, depths, edges of vertical stratification?” “It should.”
“Explain…to the imaginary client.” “The tolerances of material surfaces is where the leverage lies. Just as the sand allows the cobblestones to settle individually one by one, the ground space of the apartment unit should do the same. Where ground is the objective, the tolerance expands. Where floor is the objective, tolerance contracts. Specifically in the unit, the ground space tolerates more refraction of light enhancing the admixtures of light; and it seeks the super flat floor like the floor of a warehouse optimized for distributing products. The floor is the result of the ground left to the inhabitant’s own devices everywhere but in the core, just outside of the strike of light. In this space the floor begins soft and fabric like in all but the area of the kitchen island. It unapologetically and functionally defines areas for comfort both machinic and individual. Its tight tolerance catches sound and light, movement between levels is deliberate and clear—almost infrastructural.”