Fall 2017
Exploring the potential blurring of interiority and exteriority through the reconfiguring of relationships within minimal housing units(POOL)HOUSE acts as a proposal for housing. The project attempts to frame itself through the potential generation of larger, localized communities via the appropriation of the iconography of pool, its position within the American cultural imaginary, and its formal and programmatic juxtaposition with housing.
The project began by questioning the constituent parts found within standard housing units, and reconfiguring the relationships between these parts, to extrapolate a conceptual driver. By arranging these parts according to their level of interiority, it is postulated that spaces can be divided between the strictly programmed, and loose, “non-programmed” spaces that could be appropriated based on the multifarious identities of specific users. Despite the systematic arrangement of the units between program and non-program, the operative gesture of bending creates idiosyncrasies within each unit that lead to an infinite amount of variation within the units, while still maintaining their adherence to a fixed, organizational system.
The premise of the non-program came to define the communal spaces within the project, and lead to the establishment of the pool as a primary, formal driver. The pool, acting as a flexible social condenser, serves as an intensely public space that allows the complex to interface with the surrounding community, as well as a space alongside which residents can coexist with water (affecting dynamics relative to health, collectivity, recreation, privacy, microclimates, etc.). Elements of pool culture, such as the ubiquitous, blue hue that accompanies the imagined image of the pool, matriculate themselves throughout the project to generate a singular collectivity, and produce a particular experience of living alongside water in its various forms.
