THE FUTURE HOME: PLANETARY WILDERNESS
in collaboration with Xiaoqian FengCritic: William MacDonald
WHAT WILL THE FUTURE HOME LOOK LIKE?
WHAT IS VALUABLE TO OUR DOMESTIC LIVES?
HOW CAN WE CREATE DEEPER CONNECTIONS BETWEEN HUMAN, PLANTS, AND ANIMALS?
As the boundary between urban and country life dissolved, as seas rose and temperatures fluctuated, people in the urban centers retreated back to the land. They asked themselves if it was possible to revalue the home beyond personal commodity. What was valuable to the home? Privacy, proximity to nature, the freedom to choose spatial functions, and the ability to change things over time.
Excavating what was needed to occupy underground spaces, they embedded themselves beneath the contours of the land. With the excavated soil, they created rammed earth forms from an accrual of elements (roof, floor, wall, balcony and fireplace). The landscape was transformed, defamiliarizing the familiar to allow the human, plant or animal, to interpret new affordances. Through the construction process, an intimate relationship grew between human, soil and air.
Spaces are no longer utilized for a singular purpose - they are overlapping, multi-layered and indeterminate. This layering of formal familiarity and unfamiliarity, of functioning and dysfunctioning initiates a turbulence of fascination, exhilaration and discovery.
This project reconfigures our relationship with the wilderness to form a deeper understanding of our existence within the universe. The sensation of planetary, of belonging and not belonging at once, is produced. We are no longer attached to one piece of land... each spot belongs to us as much as any other spot.
Excavating what was needed to occupy underground spaces, they embedded themselves beneath the contours of the land. With the excavated soil, they created rammed earth forms from an accrual of elements (roof, floor, wall, balcony and fireplace). The landscape was transformed, defamiliarizing the familiar to allow the human, plant or animal, to interpret new affordances. Through the construction process, an intimate relationship grew between human, soil and air.
Spaces are no longer utilized for a singular purpose - they are overlapping, multi-layered and indeterminate. This layering of formal familiarity and unfamiliarity, of functioning and dysfunctioning initiates a turbulence of fascination, exhilaration and discovery.
This project reconfigures our relationship with the wilderness to form a deeper understanding of our existence within the universe. The sensation of planetary, of belonging and not belonging at once, is produced. We are no longer attached to one piece of land... each spot belongs to us as much as any other spot.
