Homescapes

Yale School of Architecture
Spring 2020 Advanced Studio
Critics Tatiana Bilbao w/ Andrei Harwell
Studio Website 

As a society we live very distinct lives which are not static but mutable on many time scales. How we create a home for ourselves changes across a lifetime and even in our daily routines. Currently, we conceptualize our homes around spaces - bedroom, living room, kitchen. This project attempts to conceptualize the home in time and seeks a form which addresses the mutable nature of dwelling. Interchangeable model parts are used to investigate the home at a series of scales including objects, furniture, and partitions.

The historic neighborhood of Santa Maria la Ribera has undergone significant change over the past century. Originally a planned community of single family row-homes, it has increasingly been the site of new multi-family construction and gentrification. Within the neighborhood, there remains a private street of single family homes known as Loto. Many of these homes have been abandoned, providing an opportunity to organize a new community within the shells of the former homes while maintaining the character of the neighborhood. 

Mexico City has an ongoing history of private streets or “privada” as they are known. They occur at many scales, sometimes acting as communal courtyards, sometimes as dead end streets. The surrounding neighborhood has many of these streets left behind and, as demonstrated in the vecindad typology, provide opportunities for commoning between families.

Common Model

Midterm Review

The semester was driven in large part by a desire to work in a common style. Research was a collaborative process and the studio worked to produce a large common model on which to display our work. In contrast to a typical site model, it was intended to act as a live tool, constantly undergoing changes and demonstrating the life and culture of the neighborhood as much as it demonstrated completed designs.

Prior to the midreview, my focus was on studying how we make a home for ourselves through elements not considered traditionally in the realm of architecture: partitions, furniture, and objects. The models were a way of tracking how our definitions may change over time.

The initial investigation instigated a conceptual framework to design spaces within a home not based on a specific use but based on timescales. These included homescapes at the scale of one minute, one hour, one day, one night, one week, one month, one season, one year, and one decade. The focus was on creating intentionally designed spaces, without an intentional use.

The homescapes were then dispersed across the homes of Loto, creating a series of objects and spaces as part of a dispersed commons for residents. The timelines of homescapes could then be combined to consider what experience might result when it is intended for a series of timescales, for example one day - one week - one season, or one minute - one hour - one day.