HOUSE

Critic: Anastasia Congdon Fall 2018

When this project was pitched, Columbus, Ohio had one of the fastest growing Real Estate markets in the country. This project is sited in Franklinton, a neighborhood adjacent to the downtown alongside the Scioto River. This neighborhood has a history marked by floods, redlined disinvestment, and urban isolation. As a result of low rent prices, infrastructural fixes and a growing young professional interest in Columbus, Franklinton has been gradually finding new investment through the arts.

Columbus leadership wants to build on this cultural opportunity and rebrand Franklinton as a new arts district. While this could be a beneficial investment for the neighborhood, it could also suffer the same fate as many similar neighborhoods in the area already have in Columbus' effort to be as their website gleefully describes, "Developer Friendly".

Critiquing the gentrification symptoms issued by international style implants (an image of luxury with rent prices to match, an aesthetic that "others" vernacular architectures), this project aims to invest in the art culture of Franklinton without replacing the aesthetics that residents know to define it.

This project posits the Franklinton house as a fellowship residency. Two artists are to be housed here, one local one not, with formal organization driven to prompt social exchange between the two parties.

The aesthetic investigation stems immediately from the adjacent houses, mixing their material assemblies to code zoning, sidedness, and directionality within and upon the house. This practice enables the house to accommodate work, play, and home-- for two residents-- all under one roof.

Program Catalogue:

By recontextualizing the suburban aesthetic into new spatial configurations, cultural associations can begin to break down. Post-war suburban expansion was involved with notions of standardization, assimilation, xenophobia, and gadget driven consumerism. These themes needn't be inherently suburban, however. This socio-psychological baggage can be shed by exercising the aesthetic within new methods of space-making. The goal of this project is to subvert the conventions in an effort to rebrand suburban normativity.

1: Courtyard

The roof extends over the property as an organizing datum, altering to accommodate for the activities underneath. Here, the roof terminates on one

2: Front Entry

The roof begins, sheltering the entry patio. This patio is the houses' most vertical exterior space. The resident artist's living quarters float here, compressing the

3: Nexus

The suburban gable roof icon inverts into a sawtooth arrangement, producing south-facing clerestory that light this central gathering space.

4: Space Between Place

Vinyl often faces the interior of the inbetween spaces because its assumed sidedness implies interiors on its alternative side. This assumption is made because of its conventional use, and enables its communicative potential.

5: Trope

Bathing and nature have a long relationship. In suburbia, houseplants grow in the shower, and bathtubs house plants in the garden. This approach collapses the symbols in a new way, using the bath as irrigation for the garden.

6: Departures

The roof slants fully. The compression of the space pushes bodies toward its outerwall. Spaces away from the circulation exist in stasis, enabling prolonged programs to unfold. Work, Dining, and Contemplation happen toward the innerwall of this section. 3 circulation paths diverge from the nexus here, one for work, one for play, one for sleeping.

Borrowed from the adjacent houses, these material systems contrast, utilizing their distinct qualities to produce zones.

Exposed stud walls reveal the wizard behind the curtain. Spaces enabling the houses performance are left unfinished.

Some aesthetics carry spatial expectations. In this project they're manipulated to materially code interior zones.