CORNER LOT

Reflected plan of the open living room / kitchen during and after removal of two previous drop ceilings. Each hung from the other.

November 23

Not Yet

The airplane shows us that the problem well stated finds its solution. To wish to fly like a bird is to state the problem badly, and Ader’s Bat never left the ground… to search for a means of suspension in the air, and a means of propulsion, was to put the problem properly: in less than ten years the whole world could fly.

The problem of the house has not yet been stated.

- LeCorbusier in Vers une Architecture

November 22

IOU

November 21

The Garage

To:

From:

November 9

The Wall

September 10

The Closet

Typical alotments for closet storage in a new build at the cusp of the millenium were around 10% of the residential footprint. No surprise, but closets made their way into the house plan during the post-WWII suburbanization period we might call the “great accumulation”. So for the last half century we have typically had 10% more stuff than we needed at any given time (and for those of us who treat their cars as a closet a great deal more than that).

There are kinds of space that were nursed from fledgling form by suburbia (not to say invented there). Another suspicion: spaces start as furniture. The chair before the sitting room, the bed before the bedroom, and the cupboard before the closet. Not a radical proposition, but now that we have computers and the home office is replacing the “study” the corporatization of the American household is almost complete. Leisure time will become business time in no time.

September 1

Invention

“The invention of the railway is also the invention of the train wreck, the automobile of the car smash, the computer of data crash, and genetic engineering of biological collapse.” paraphrase of Paul Virilio.

The photo above is the train wreck at Montparnasse station from 1895, via artofmemory. The photo below is Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Falkestrasse project, or the invention of architecture.