The “You” Experiment
The only thing we have changed about residential architecture is the level of comfort. However, in terms of what we actually need or desire, most of us have no clue. We take what we are given without actually researching for ourselves what we need in order to thrive. As we grow up we get used to our apartments and houses and take them as a given. But what if you could actually remove most of the standard elements and learn what you actually wanted to keep?
What if you were given a space with no interior walls. What if you could add and move walls, curtains, furniture as you pleased. What if you could discover day by day what enhances your experience. An experiment to learn about oneself and one’s space.
In my book all elements would have to be flexible. However, two spaces haven’t yet reached that desired level: the kitchen and the bathroom. The kitchen has a much higher degree of flexibility though. So, what if there could be multiple points of connecting the water pipes allowing one to reorganize its cooking space. Now, the bathroom on the other hand is a much bigger elephant. And for the sake of the experiment I’d start by having it fixed, but once again free of walls so that they could be added (or not ?) as the space gets discovered. True, from a (present time) practical and financial point of view, having a network of pipes under the floor with multiple connector points might sound tricky, however for an experiment it would be bringing it one step further. And who knows, as technology evolves we might have just reinvented the wheel.
We design architecture as if we know what we are searching for. So, what if, this time we stop to actually play with it and see if we can learn something new.