Daniels Faculty of Architecture Landscape and Design
Option Studio ARC3016
Winter 2010
Domestic Futures <part II>
Intelligent infra/structures
“When your house contains such a complex of piping, flues, ducts, wires, lights, inlets, outlets, ovens, sinks, refuse disposers, hi-fi re-verberators, antennae, conduits, freezers, heaters -when it contains so many services that the hardware could stand up by itself without any assistance from the house, why have a house to hold it up?” Reyner Banham
“Madam, do you know what your house weighs?” Buckminster Fuller
“The studio locates itself at the intersection of domesticity and responsive systems*, picking up where Reyner Banham left off by way of Buckminster Fuller’s experiments in efficient structures. Addressing the prescient issues confronting the domestic environment on two fronts: 1. Its responsiveness to the health of the inhabitant, and 2. Its responsiveness to the environment.
In doing so, we will rethink, to put it simply, both the plumbing and the brick. New modes of infra/structural organizations will be projected. Heating, plumbing, air, sound, temperature, humidity along with various structural systems will be analyzed, rethought and redeployed, with enhanced capabilities towards new social experiences.
We understand the domestic environment to be one of the most complex crystallizations of psycho-social and technological forces, where architecture enjoys its closest proximity to the human body. The consequences are a greater visibility of architecture as a technique of regulation, control and order over the wildness of our body. The studio is an ongoing investigation into the domestic environment as we attempt to reintroduce the wild into the house, breeding the campfire with the shed.”
