OBJECTS WITH AGENCY
Spring 2020
Academic
GSD 1102_Core II: SITUATE
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Instructor: Alfredo Thiermann
Academic
GSD 1102_Core II: SITUATE
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Instructor: Alfredo Thiermann
Objects that come to occupy a space are usually secondary—or even tertiary—to the architecture. Often not afforded a proper place within architectural discourse, objects are kept in the realm of interior design and largely considered outside of the architect’s domain. After a building is designed and constructed, the space is then populated with furniture, appliances, and a myriad of other objects, all placed there to serve specific functions or to accessorize a space. However, this project explores the usage of objects as the driving force behind the design.
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FRAGMENT 01_GRANDMA'S HOUSEThe project first began with an investigation into flexible spaces as a response to COVID-19, where “shelter in place” orders and remote work have blurred the lines between the home and workplace. Multifunctional spaces are nothing new—they have not emerged as a direct response to the epidemic, and for some, this has been a normal mode of living for centuries. Fragment 01 documents a room in my grandmother’s house in Iwatsuki, Saitama, Japan. Traditionally in Japanese homes, rooms were multiuse and convertible. During the daytime, families would bring out their low tables and zabuton floor cushions and treat the space as a living room. At night, these same rooms would be transformed into bedrooms, as daytime furniture is tucked away and futon beds are laid out along the tatami floor. This fluid program was marked by the different furniture occupying—and subsequently vacating—the rooms, highlighting the adaptability of the people, spaces, and objects.
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FRAGMENT 02_TRAVEL TRAILERFragment 02 examines a travel trailer, a more extreme example of a multifunctional space, where it is at once, a house, room, and vehicle, among other things. This particular model, the 1996 Fleetwood Wilderness 19LN, which I came across in a Craigslist ad, comes with everything from a kitchen with a sink, stovetop, oven, microwave, and refrigerator, a double bed, dining area (which can be converted into another double sized bed plus a twin size bunk bed), shower, toilet, solar panels, and plenty of storage. All the necessary amenities are efficiently and economically packed into their little corners, the dense programming made possible by compact or multitasking furniture.
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FRAGMENT 03_ROOM FOR RENTFragment 03 investigates a bedroom peppered with architectural oddities that seems to reflect the building’s HVAC system and roof profile. Not only does the architecture display the inner workings of the building, but objects also begin to map these idiosyncratic moments. In two locations of one of the room’s long walls, there are a system of shelves that help fill the void created by the angular walls. This example shows a subtle feedback loop of architecture being informed by objects and systems, and in turn the objects and systems also respond back into the architecture.
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OBJECTS WITH AGENCYIn performing these room studies through near-obsessive representational means, it was evident that even the most banal spaces can become very intimate and personal, and in many cases, this could be attributed to the objects. Adrian Forty in Objects of Desire goes in depth in explaining how objects are both a representation of the contemporary condition—i.e. economic, political, social—while being active enforcers of it. Meaning, the furniture we see today is already embedded with our biases. Perhaps even a rectangular table, what many consider as “mundane” or “normal” is already reflecting our bias of what we consider to be a room. Rectangular tables are easy to place against a wall or corner in a rectangular room. But there are many examples of cultures whose cultural norm is not a rectangle, such as the Fujian Tolou in China, where rooms are arranged radially with a large open central courtyard. Or perhaps due to current methods of industrial production, the most cost-effective shape for mass production in a capitalist society has become the rectangle. Whatever the case, even with what seems like the most banal of objects, this “banalness” has been socially and economically constructed. Nothing exists in a vacuum. With this in mind, it seemed like a mere curation of furniture did not afford the object enough authority over the architecture, as the objects are still at the mercy of larger forces.
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In the plan, the building is split into two main parts, divided by a staircase and corridor that helps juxtapose the conditions above and below the threshold. The top portion contains a field of objects across an open floor plan, where the furniture begins to define the programs and conditions for “roomness.” This area contains a lounge chair by Pierre Paulin found in OMA’s Maison a Bordeaux, a larger-than-life object that is also architectural it its space-defining qualities. This side of the building is where objects hold the most agency.
Below the threshold (in plan) includes the more private programs, where there is a need for more containment and separation. The spaces are partitioned into ordinary definitions of rooms with a more typical ground plan, as the architecture remains the primary and objects secondary, However, conventional objects are elevated through unconventional means, placed like museum artifacts.
Below the threshold (in plan) includes the more private programs, where there is a need for more containment and separation. The spaces are partitioned into ordinary definitions of rooms with a more typical ground plan, as the architecture remains the primary and objects secondary, However, conventional objects are elevated through unconventional means, placed like museum artifacts.
FRAGMENT A_LOADED STAIRCASEThe loaded staircase is the critical threshold, itself an object packed with programs. It is simultaneously an occupiable object (containing seating areas and individual booths) and an organizational device, juxtaposing what occurs above and below it in plan while facilitating the circulation across the two portions and from floor to floor.
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ROOF PROFILE |
Across these two different zones the roof profile begins loosely grouping the programs vertically in plan. A mirroring of program occurs, where similar programs are expressed in different ways above and below the threshold via the architecture and objects. Under a roof more characteristic of factories or offices, people are inserted as part of the industrial machine through a conveyer belt-like table for study and a study tower contained in the corner of the building.
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FRAGMENT B_GUEST HOUSEFragment B and C are placed under the same pitched roof, an icon of domesticity. Fragment B shows the private guest room. This room for a bed elevates the mundane object—in this case, quite literally elevating—to the status of a museum artifact. It is only here that the rooms must directly engage with the form of the roof, no longer just a demarcation of the coupled programs underneath, but becomes the fragment, and becomes the architecture. Here, the roof is both the fragment and the whole.
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FRAGMENT C_READING AREAFragment C shows what domesticity and its objects may look like in a public and open space, Pierre Paulin’s lounge chair as one expression of the humble bed in this new context. The zone becomes a reading area with flexible and casual programs, characterized by the furniture.
These are only a few examples of the kind of architecture that could emerge from considering the object first and giving it a sense of agency. We have come to understand the bed as an object for the room, but what is the room for the bed? |