Housing Home and Contents journal

Housing Home and Content(s) It’s not that I don’t believe in the signs and symbols of domestic occupation…it’s just that I don’t believe they bear the slightest message of such domestic anticipation or actualisation, and it is in that respect they are truly signifying.

YICHEN CAO

Contents

i-iv

Studio Preface Housing Home, and Content(s) Finding Home IN: Site Finding Home for: Content(s) A House and Home

v-xx

Precedent Research Material

1

A Concept to Find Home for: Simulacra

2

Finding Home In: Context as Site

3-28

Finding Home For: Content(s)

29-64

House and Home: A House in Urban: Melancholic Disappearance from A Saturated World

65

A Critical on Reflection on Contemporary Domesticity

Preface Housing Home, and Content(s)

The home may perhaps be the best avenue to explore “contemporary life”.

That is, the convergence of human(s) in space, facilitated by the ideas, content(s) and containers of humanism, humanities and the physical human body.

The house not only plays host to the physical human body, but all things that entertain the notion of life-style: thought, activity, ritual, signifying objects and spatial arrangements; this is where the house becomes home.

“Architecture houses. It is at home

in - and provides a home for philosophy [concepts and

thought], aesthetics [cultural and

material objects] and those

discourses which are thought to

describe it.”

Andrew Benjamin Eisenman and the Housing of Tradition

Philosophical, aesthetic and cultural reference will generate contextual frameworks that allow the home to find place, sustenance and content(s). Here, architecture will be considered an inbetween of the ideal and the experiential, where the house may mediate between two parallel states, the abstract and the material; revealing the unexpected slippages, transitions and tension between ideas, content(s), user and space. i

This investigation will argue for the critical agency of architecture, evoking discourse and dialogue between disciplines, technologies and representations.

The house produced will act as an agent for mediating, critiquing and navigating through the limitations, possibilities and transferences between the abstract and material.

In doing so, the project may become a critical survey, experiment or meditation between humanism, humanities and the physical human body. This is where architecture may be at home in - and provide a home for - the real, ideal, fetishised and/or romanticised contemporary life(style).

Finding Home IN: Site

CONTEXT, FRAME AND SITE Students will each be assigned a precedent concept:

Simulacra

Jean Baudrillard Like a ‘regular’ brief, this will provide

Paranoiac Critical Method students with parameters to adhere to, Salvador Dali critique, destroy or challenge.

Rhizome Gilles Deleuze

Deconstruction Jacques Derrida

Plasticity Catherine Malabou

They 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 a presentation as model, image and text.

This material will act as a brief; a plan, representing a place, to frame and materialise their set of thoughts around the domestic condition, establishing relationships between their respective ideas; its users, content and space, a contextual container that houses the content(s) and design to come.

This brief will establish a critical and abstract site for the rest of the semester the students will begin to develop ideas around entry, edge, transition and statis via the use of planes, fields, sequence, surface, spans, voids, frameworks etc. ii

This will enable students to position the ideas they choose to explore within a spatial context, setting the site for what they will inherently house in the next phase of the studio.

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.

iv

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.

Precedent Research Material

Housing Home, and Content(s)

urne School of Design

images inhabit

Tanya and Zhenya Posternak

Images Inhabit, Tanya and Zhenya Posternak v

Contoured playground, Isamu Noguchi vi

Office Interior, Denton Corker Marshell vii

House in Byoubuguara, Takeshi Hosaka viii

“There is no front facade, only a front door. The weekend house is conceived as a passage from physical entry to optical departure or, simply, a door to a window“

Slow House, Diller Scofidio+Renfro ix

House in Gotanda

Nerima Apartment, Go Hasegawa x

Antivilla, Brandlhuber+Emde xi

Two gently sweeping curved planes form a sheltered internal volume, which provides a raised seating area through a crescent shaped bench. A single tree rises through the design, puncturing the floor and roof surfaces. The planes are joined at each of the structure’s four corners, evoking a sense of weightlessness integral to the pavilion’s composition.

Fukita Pavilion, Nyue Nishizawa xii

Casting, a process of recording, is by nature an endless back and forth between the negatives and positives that carry the memory of each other. As material flows and forms into the mould, an inevitable loss of control is revealed by those unique imprints.

Green Corner Building, Anne Holtrop xiii

Curtain Wall House, Shigeru Ban xiv

Naked House, Shigeru Ban xv

House with One Wall, Christian Kerez xvi

Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard

xvii

Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard

xviii

The Temporary Contemporary, Sylvia Lavin

xix

The Temporary Contemporary, Sylvia Lavin

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xx

A Concept to Find Home for: Simulacra

The Real is manufacturable.

It can be produced an indefinite number of times from fundamental units. It is no longer rational or measurable, but operational.

Everything can be reduced to a signal in a gigantic Simulacrum. It is a hyperreal.

Such is Simulation, a copy of real without origin or reality. As opposed to representation, it stems from the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference.

Simulation envelopes the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.

The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord

p.01

Finding Home in Site Urban

A floating fabric.

An artificial landscape.

A massive grid that keeps replicating,expanding, and subdividing.

The original ground is eroded.

Instead of relying on geographical coordination, title boundary or strata title.

A domestic urban site is now defined by signs, symbols, and contents within the site. A simulacrum replaces the real site.

It is the paradox of fundamental banality and radical authenticity that matters now.The site mediates between external and internal space.

p.02

Finding Home for Content(s) Domesticity

Choose life. Choose a 43-inch television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.

Domesticity resides in a narrowed space in an urban context, where activities and events mostly happen in indoor rather than outdoor. Since our physical engagement to the site become distant and restrained, what still left for leaving a personal imprint are the contents we choose to populate that 50 square meter box.

Home, more specifically, what’s inside the home mirrors who we are. It represents our taste, identity, social status, relationship status, etc.

Brands like Dyson, Alessi, even Nintendo, they target on customers dwell in a compact apartment more than others. They tackle phenomenon like solitude or social anxiety, which are usually associated with urban life. If chores are inevitable ---- they designed products to solve it with humor. They release products at a speed that is way shorter than their products’ life expectancy.

Contemporary life is constantly changing and evolving, by adapting our domestic space to the trendiest products we feel the relief of being not left behind by the ever-changing urban life. However, if we all pursue the same trend, eventually, the domesticity we dwell in will become homogenous. The pursuit of ideal domesticity now resides in simulacra.

We dwell in simulacra.

p.03

Contents render on trends and ritual within domestic

p.04

Simulacra and Simulation The Real is manufacturable.

It can be produced an indefinite number of times from fundamental units. It is no longer rational or measurable, but operational.

Everything can be reduced to a sign in a gigantic Simulacrum.

It is a hyperreal.

Such is Simulation, a copy of real without origin or reality. As opposed to representation, it stems from the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Simulation envelopes the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.

1:1

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Silty Clay

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The Urban Site An artificial landscape. The geographical condition is covered up by concrete, gravel, sand, earth.

A fake smoothness covers up the origin undulating landscape. The effort of reimporting what has already been there to the origin is even more artificial. Its existence is purely creating hallucination on a made up reality.

Yichen Cao

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Entry - Lingering

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Doors, windows, walls and corners defines the boundary of internal space. The maintenance of domesticity stops at the entry, which indicates the threshold where domesticity operates.

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The Site

A floating fabric.

An artificial landscape.

A massive grid that keeps replicating, expanding, and subdividing.

The original ground is eroded. Instead of relying on geographical coordination, title boundary or strata title. A domestic urban site is now defined by signs, symbols, and contents within the site.

A simulacrum replaces the real site.

It is the paradox of fundamental banality and radical authenticity that matters now.

The site mediates between external and internal space.

Site Plan

Entry - Lingering

Urban domesticity dwells in the internal more than the external space. An interior, can be examined at three different moments, the facade, the corridor and the internal partition wall. Each moments encapsulate the relationship of internal and external.

Yichen Cao

Answering a doorbell and being monitored by camera forms a unique, yet quite common experience in urban life. Being watched, One must be invited to step into the internal periphery. Urban domesticity operates around mundane routines, and the capabilities to escape that routines.

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Domesticity

1:20 Choose life. Choose a 43-inch television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers.

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1000 mm

Domesticity resides in a narrowed space in an urban context, where activities and events mostly happen in indoor rather than outdoor. Since our physical engagement to the site become distant and restrained, what still left for leaving a personal imprint are the contents we choose to populate that 50 square meter box.

Home, more specifically, what’s inside the home mirrors who we are. It represents our taste, identity, social status, relationship status, etc.

Brands like Dyson, Alessi, even Nintendo, they target on customers dwell in a compact apartment more than others. They tackle phenomenon like solitude or social anxiety, which are usually associated with urban life. If chores are inevitable ---- they designed products to solve it with humor. They release products at a speed that is way shorter than their products’ life expectancy.

Contemporary life is constantly changing and evolving, by adapting our domestic space to the trendiest products we feel the relief of being not left behind by the ever-changing urban life.

However, if we all pursue the same trend, eventually, the domesticity we dwell in will become homogenous. The pursuit of ideal domesticity now resides in simulacra.

1:1

We dwell in simulacra.

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YICHEN CAO

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The urban site grows vertically. It moves beyond title boundary. Looking from a distance, every module replicates one another. The curtains wall act as mediator that separates the authenticity (the reality) and the banality resides in the site.

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Yichen Cao

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To live is to leave traces. A vacuum preserve the cleanness of the domestic space we dwell in. It act as a mediator between the external and internal space. It maps out the traces of life, the traces of daily maintenance.

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Scattered contents, piling up dirty plates. The center of domesticity lies in the conflict between routines and maintenance. One may escape the mundane and chaos temporarily by living another layer of domesticity in the digital realm. Nevertheless, domestic space still exert an impact and restraint on our physicality, through the walls, the lights, the temperature and the fit outs.

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Shadow-line indicates the existence of unaligned edges. It mediates between the gap of walls and ceilings. It hides the inconsistencies formed by walls and ceiling joints. A decorative feature that manipulates how we perceive the internal space.

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A signal was released when a vacuum hits the skirting board and stops operating. The joint between two surfaces was covered up. But instead of hiding it, the inconsistency was highlighted by the edge.

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Urban domesticity facilitates the Escapism by creating intimate ambiance. Internal space is set apart form the exterior by the use of materials. Separated by a wall, external space is framed by the use of robust materials and rough finishes --- brickwork, concrete slab, and metal joints.

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Center - Escapism

Edge - Inconsistency

Interior is enclosed by softened edges --- curtains, fabrics, diffused illumination. The center of domesticity resides in that coziness and intimacy. Augmented device facilitate the Escapism of living another layer of domesticity.

Dirt mediates between the external space and internal space, falling faintly on the ground, on the edges, on the convex and concave corners that are extremely hard to be cleaned. The inconsistency of domestic space and domestic life is magnified by the edge.

YICHEN CAO

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The Urba

An artificial landscape. The geographical cond A fake smoothness covers up the origin undulating lands there to the origin is even more artificial. Its existence

YICHEN CAO

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Sand

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dition is covered up by concrete, gravel, sand. scape. The effort of reimporting what has already been is purely creating hallucination on a made up reality.

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an Site

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Urban Sit

Urban domesticity dwells in the interior more than the extern ent moments, the facade, the corridor and the internal partitio internal and ex

YICHEN CAO

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te

nal space. An interior, can be examined at three differon wall. Each moments encapsulate the relationship of xternal.

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Site Se

The urban site grows vertically. It moves beyond title bou one another. The curtains wall act as mediator that separa in the

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ection

1:100 undary. Looking from a distance, every module replicates ates the authenticity (the reality) and the banality resides e box.

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Boun

Doors, windows, walls and corners defines the boundary ness of the domestic space we dwell in, and mediate betw stops at the entry, which indicates the t

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ndary

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y of internal space. A Dyson Vacuum preserve the cleanween inside and outside. The maintenance of domesticity 1:100 threshold where domesticity operates.

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Inviting

Answering a doorbell and being monitored by camera form must wait till being invited to step into the periphery. Urban by technology. Convenience and indifference, they are like t connects domesticity happen YICHEN CAO

p.15

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ms a relationship of watching and being watched. One domesticity operates around the convenience brought two sides of the same coin. A wall separates, but also ns in every households.

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Entry - L

To live is to leave traces. A vacuum preserve the cleann ator between the external and internal space. It maps

YICHEN CAO

p.17

Lingering

ness of the domestic space we dwell in. It act as a mediout the traces of life, the traces of daily maintenance.

p.18

Edge- Inconsistency The inconsistency of shadow-line indicates the existence of unaligned edges. It mediates between the gap of walls and ceilings. It hides the inconsistencies formed by walls and ceiling joints. A decorative feature that hides the truth.

p.19

Edge Skirting Board The inconsistency of shadow-line indicates the existence of unaligned edges. It mediates between the gap of walls and ceilings. It hides the inconsistencies formed by walls and ceiling joints. A decorative feature that hides the truth.

1:1

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1:5

Edge - In

Dirt mediates between the external space and internal spa vex and concave corners that are extremely hard to be cl life is magnifi

YICHEN CAO

p.21

nconsistency

ace, falling faintly on the ground, on the edges, on the conleaned. The inconsistency of domestic space and domestic ied by the edge.

p.22

Escapism

Scattered contents, piling up dirty plates. One may escape th mesticity in the digital realm to escape from the chaos. Nev body, through senses, through the light, the th

YICHEN CAO

p.23

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he reality (temporarily) by living another layer of dovertheless, domestic space still exert an impact on our hermal insulation, the sound insulation.

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Ambient

The internal space is framed by hard edges, plasterboard, c lighting. The center of domesticity resides in

YICHEN CAO

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concrete floor, and soft edges, curtains, fabrics, diffused n the intimacy stems from that ambiance.

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Center -

Interior is enclosed by softened edges --- curtains, fab resides in that coziness and intimacy. Augmented de domes

YICHEN CAO

p.27

Escapism

brics, diffused illumination. The center of domesticity evice facilitate the Escapism of living another layer of sticity.

p.28

House and Home for: Urban

An artificial landscape, where the original ground is covered up. Urban site grow upon the fascination of redundant signs, symbols of media and consumerism.

Our relationship with the site is gained from a distant experience through a certain medium. The surplus of meaning replaced direct engagement with the site.

We dwell in a simulacrum.

To resist the implosion of meaning and intense fashion in simulacrum, A disappearance of symbols and signs--- A hyper-real coating covers up the original site.

The reimportation morphs a desert-like, indifferent and melancholic counterpart away from an over-saturated simulacrum.

Domesticity acts as a contradiction of over materialization. It resides in such a narrowed space in urban, where the ground plane encapsulates our most sincere engagement and distant memory of the site.

p.29

House and Home for: The Domestic

Contemporary domesticity is the relentless process of rebuilding and restaging one’s collection to display ownership, aesthetic, status, etc. The state of Inhabiting has become secondary when excessive decoration and stylish fashion dominate space. The dwindling inhabitation of domestic space simplifies itself into nothing but an ever-growing container of collection.

To resurrect the state of occupying. Domestic needs to get away from over-saturated information of signs, symbols from the outside. Simulacra reflect on the excessive desire and implosion of redundant information in consumer culture. The simulacra domestic is a nostalgic and melancholic existence where hype-real precedes the territory of reality. It reimagined domestic space being covered by a singular, malleable coating.

The malleable surface facilitates inhabitants to rebuild and restage objects as well as invites them to occupy and to be exhibited within the domestic. It attempts to capture the temporal contingency through dynamic interaction and movement.

Such disappearance of conventional domestic elements has shifted attention from collection to the spatial quality, and facilitates reflection on constantly changing curatorial relationships between objects and subjects.

p.30

Yichen Yichen Cao Cao 900359900359 Studio C Studio C It’s not that I don’t believe in the signs and symbols of domestic occupation…it’s just that I don’t believe they bear the slightest message of such domestic anticipation or actualisation, and it is in that respect they are truly signifying.

Simulacra Simulacra and and Simulation Simulation The Real is manufacturable.

The Real is manufacturable.

It can be produced an indefinite number of times from

It can be produced an indefinite number of times from fundamental units. It is no longer rational or measurable, but fundamental units. It is no longer rational or measurable, but operational. operational.

Everything can be reduced to a sign in a gigantic Simulacrum.

EverythingIt can reduced to a sign in a gigantic Simulacrum. is a be hyperreal.

It is a hyperreal.

Such is Simulation, a copy of real without origin or reality. As

opposed toarepresentation, it stemsorigin from the the Such is Simulation, copy of real without or utopia reality.ofAs of equivalence, opposed toprinciple representation, it stemsfrom fromthetheradical utopianegation of the of the sign as value, from the sign theradical reversion and death sentence of every principle of equivalence, fromasthe negation of the sign as reference. envelopes whole edificeofofevery value, from the sign Simulation as the reversion and the death sentence itself as athe simulacrum. reference. representation Simulation envelopes whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.

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Re-Importation As material flows and forms into the mould, the surface stops when it touches the shear walls of neighboring buildings. Ground plane extends the old boundary, becoming part of the pathway itself. The traces of the site therefore remain in its new iteration.

YICHEN CAO

YICHEN CAO

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Re-Importation

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The disappearance of symbols and signs morphs a desert-like, indifferent, melancholic counterpart away from an over-saturated simulacrum.

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Simulacra and Simulation

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The Real is manufacturable.

It can be produced an indefinite number of times from fundamental units. It is no longer rational or measurable, but operational.

Everything can be reduced to a sign in a gigantic Simulacrum.

It is a hyperreal.

1:5 1:1

Such is Simulation, a copy of real without origin or reality. As opposed to representation, it stems from the utopia of the principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as the reversion and death sentence of every reference. Simulation envelopes the whole edifice of representation itself as a simulacrum.

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Yichen Cao Linearity Plasticity and fake smoothness hacked the real, and became the real.

YICHEN CAO

Site: Urban

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Linearity

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Entry starts from the outside, questioning the private and public boundary of urban domesticity.

Domesticity

An artificial landscape, where the original ground is covered up. Urban site grow upon the fascination of redundant signs, symbols of media and consumerism. Our relationship with the site is gained from a distant experience through a certain medium. The surplus of meaning replaced direct engagement with the site.

Contemporary domesticity is the relentless process of rebuilding and restaging one’s collection to display ownership, aesthetic, status, etc. The state of Inhabiting has become secondary when excessive decoration and stylish fashion dominate space. The dwindling inhabitation of domestic space simplifies itself into nothing but an ever-growing container of collection.

We dwell in a simulacrum.

To resurrect the state of occupying. Domestic needs to get away from over-saturated information of signs, symbols from the outside. Simulacra reflect on the excessive desire and implosion of redundant information in consumer culture. The simulacra domestic is a nostalgic and melancholic existence where hype-real precedes the territory of reality.

It reimagined domestic space being covered by a singular, malleable coating. The malleable surface facilitates inhabitants to rebuild and restage objects as well as invites them to occupy and to be exhibited within the domestic. It attempts to capture the temporal contingency through dynamic interaction and movement.

To resist the implosion of meaning and intense fashion in simulacrum, A disappearance of symbols and signs--- A hyper-real coating covers up the original site. The reimportation morphs a desert-like, indifferent and melancholic counterpart away from an over-saturated simulacrum.

Domesticity acts as a contradiction of over materialization. It resides in such a narrowed space in urban, where the ground plane encapsulates our most sincere engagement and distant memory of the site.

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Such disappearance of conventional domestic elements has shifted attention from collection to the spatial quality, and facilitates reflection on constantly changing curatorial relationships between objects and subjects.

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YICHEN CAO

Domesticity is centered around mundane practice--- cooking, washing dishes, vacuuming, which forms a temporal stability in everyday life. Different layer overlays to demarcate the unclear, ambiguous boundary of interior.

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Static moment is abrupt by the dynamic movement of curtains, The center of domesticity has no absolute boundary, and is subject to merge with other space.

YICHEN CAO

A surface acts as an agent mediates between internal and external. Uncertainty and ambiguity take place in the liminal space.

Domesticity Contemporary domesticity is the relentless process of rebuilding and restaging one’s collection to display ownership, aesthetic, status, etc. The state of Inhabiting has become secondary when excessive decoration and stylish fashion dominate space. The dwindling inhabitation of domestic space simplifies itself into nothing but an ever-growing container of collection.

To resurrect the state of occupying. Domestic needs to get away from over-saturated information of signs, symbols from the outside. Simulacra reflect on the excessive desire and implosion of redundant information in consumer culture. The simulacra domestic is a nostalgic and melancholic existence where hype-real precedes the territory of reality.

It reimagined domestic space being covered by a singular, malleable coating. The malleable surface facilitates inhabitants to rebuild and restage objects as well as invites them to occupy and to be exhibited within the domestic. It attempts to capture the temporal contingency through dynamic interaction and movement.

Such disappearance of conventional domestic elements has shifted attention from collection to the spatial quality, and facilitates reflection on constantly changing curatorial relationships between objects and subjects.

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A temporal curation

YICHEN CAO

The conflict of flatness and the undulation provides an abnormal perception of domestic interior. The curtain highlights the temporality and contingency produced by the false perception of reality.

A temporal curation

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p.31

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The geographical condition is covered up by concrete and fill.

A hyper-real smoothness covers up the origin undulating landscape. The gesture of reimporting what has already been there to the origin is even more artificial. Its existence is purely creating hallucination of reality.

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YICHEN CAO

The house is merely a continuation of urban fabric. Therefore the domestic engage with the context in a reimportation of material,tectonic and contents.

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YICHEN CAO

Followed by the handrails, direction is indicated and implied within domesticity. Distinction of zones and hierarchy are demarcated by those elevated gestures.

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YICHEN CAO

A ritual is established through an inhabitant’s interaction with the elements that facilitate domesticity. An implicit agreement is reached between user and contents, and is contingent to change.

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YICHEN CAO

Thickened surfaces of the walls permit the house to consume and to display. Every gesture becomes part of display, intended or unintended, restaging and rebuilding domesticity in an inconsistent and unpredictable way.

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YICHEN CAO

A framed display of the elements that made up the center. Here, linear form is emphasized to facilitate the maintenance of daily mundane.

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p.32

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The bed is embedded in the submerged slab. Bedside table, Headboard, and shelves are absorbed by the slab and walls. A blanket flows over the convex and concave surface.

A temporal curation

YICHEN CAO

Overtime, the surface has less and less to do with the division of space, rather the proliferation of display opportunities. The interior became a topology of exposition where every single trace of domestic life became displayed.

Re-Import

YICHEN CAO

p.33

As material flows and forms into the mould, the surface stops when it plane extends the old boundary, becoming part of the pathway itself.

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tation

t touches the shear walls of neighboring buildings. Ground The traces of the site therefore remain in its new iteration.

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p.35

The disappearance of symbols and signs morphs a desert-like, in simula

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ndifferent, melancholic counterpart away from an over-saturated acrum.

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p.37

The geographical condition is c A hyper-real smoothness covers up the origin undulating landscap origin is even more artificial. Its existence

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portation

covered up by concrete and fill. pe. The gesture of reimporting what has already been there to the is purely creating hallucination of reality.

p.38

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p.39

The house is merely a continuation of urban fabric. The t

Re-Importation

erefore the domestic engage with the context in a reimportation of material,tectonic and contents.

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Line

YICHEN CAO

p.41

Plasticity and fake smoothness

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earity hacked the real, and became the real.

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p.43

Entry starts from the outside, questioning th

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he private and public boundary of urban domesticity.

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p.45

Followed by the handrails, direction is indicated and implied w by those ele

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within domesticity. Distinction of zones and hierarchy are demarcated evated gestures.

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p.47

A ritual is established through an inhabitant’s interac reached between user

Linearity

ction with the elements that facilitate domesticity. An implicit agreement is and contents, and is contingent to change.

p.48

YICHEN CAO

p.49

Domesticity is centered around mundane practice--- cooking, eryday life. Different layer overlays to dema

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Restaging

, washing dishes, vacuuming, which forms a temporal stability in evarcate the unclear, ambiguous boundary of interior.

p.50

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Resta

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p.51

Static moment is abrupt by the dynamic movement of curtains, The merge with o

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aging

e center of domesticity has no absolute boundary, and is subject to other space.

p.52

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Resta

YICHEN CAO

p.53

Thickened surfaces of the walls permit the house to consume an unintended, restaging and rebuilding domesti

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aging

nd to display. Every gesture becomes part of display, intended or icity in an inconsistent and unpredictable way.

p.54

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Res

YICHEN CAO

p.55

A framed display of the elements that made up the center. Here,

staging

, linear form is emphasized to facilitate the maintenance of daily mundane.

p.56

A temp

YICHEN CAO

p.57

The conflict of flatness and the undulation provides an abnormal rality and contingency produced

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poral curation perception of domestic interior. The curtain highlights the tempoby the false perception of reality.

p.58

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A temp

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p.59

A surface acts as an agent mediates between internal and exter

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poral curation

rnal. Uncertainty and ambiguity take place in the liminal space.

p.60

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p.61

The bed is embedded in the submerged slab. Bedside table, H flows over the con

poral curation

Headboard, and shelves are absorbed by the slab and walls. A blanket nvex and concave surface.

p.62

A tempor

YICHEN CAO

p.63

Overtime, the surface has less and less to do with the division or became a topology of exposition where ev

ral curation

of space, rather the proliferation of display opportunities. The interivery single trace of domestic life became displayed.

p.64

A Critical on Reflection on Contemporary Domesticity Contemporary domesticity is the fleeting, the temporal, the contingent.

It is the relentless process of rebuilding and restaging. No matter who the occupant is--- whether they are landlord, tenant or visitor; what purpose the stay is for --- short-term or longterm, traveling, studying or working.

Domestic is centered around building one’s “ideal temporal”, or “temporal ideal“, a state which reaches optimal self-fulfillment.

Domesticity is always associated with one’s identity, situation. Hence it is constantly evolving, and constantly adapting.

Domesticity is the urge to display, the mood to exhibit. To establish domesticity is to establish one’s identity through a series of restaging and rebuilding. It’s no longer about the subjects, but the contents. The contents are used to display one’s ownership, aesthetic, status, ambition, and far more labels received from the consumer culture.

p.65

The state of Inhabiting has become secondary when excessive decoration and stylish fashion dominate the space.

The real is manufacturable.

The domestic is manufacturable.

Inhabitants are like parasites dwell in the empty shells packaged and sold from industrial lines. The dwindling inhabitation of domestic space delineates a dystopia future.

To resurrect the state of occupying, Domestic needs to shift allegiance away from an over-saturated system of signs, symbols, and to move beyond the repetition use of home as a collection container. Simulacra reflect on the excessive desire and implosion of redundant information in consumer culture. By reflecting on a simulacra domestic, which is a nostalgic and melancholic existence where hype-real precedes the territory of reality. This forces us to look back on the relationship of body and space. A space for dwelling first, then curatorial opportunities will emerge from that.