Dwelling with Care
Spring 2022
Advanced Studio: Archit/chtonics
Collaborator: Alexis Violet
E1027, as it exists, inherits myths of patriarchal norms, progress, and human exceptionalism. The characters involved in the history of the house have greatly shaped its legacy. Despite Eileen Gray’s work to define her own place as a designer in the modern canon, her efforts were long overshadowed by tensions with Le Corbusier and his unsolicited series of murals painted on the walls, threatening Gray’s vision.
“Home” should feel safe and non-threatening. Dwellers should be able to exist in their truest sense of being, without being marginalized. We are called to make space for those who have been excluded, restricted, or otherwise threatened from these past myths, to make space for dwellers to to freely practice their rituals of inhabitation. Inhabitants include but are not limited to women of all differences and abilities, trees, plants, small creatures, and sea life. The dwellers become the designers, shaping, shifting, and passing on their space to the next life forms.
In challenging the inherited myths, we hope to bring forward Eileen Gray’s idea of a dwelling as “a living organism,” viewing architecture through the following lenses: rituals of collective care and self care, cycles of growth and decay, and forms and systems of rigidity and softness. Our approach to an alternative E1027 seeks to filter through these concepts to create a dwelling that is shape-able, erodes, returns to the earth, and becomes a home for women and other animals, plants, and microorganisms over various scales of time.
Brick-making:
Through ritual of brick-making, we explored the dynamics of indivdual and collective rest, play, and creation. The bricks took three shapes ranging from straight to a full curved brick. The S-shaped wall offers an opportunity for sleep to be explored as together-ness. The kitchen wall challenges divisions between growing and creating food, by using the curved bricks as planting and harvesting devices.
Below: Plan of the Alternative E1027, a future where the house serves rituals of growing and sharing space to create (plants, food, brick-making) and to rest (bathe and sleep).
