Housing as Verb, Architecture as Catalyst
This project responds to Eric Bunge's central provocation of "Housing Life": housing as a verb, an active armature that catalyzes life across multiple scales. Following Bunge's pedagogical approach that armatures could bypass the conventional apartment and family as housing's irreducible units, we explored how architecture might sponsor new forms of domesticity and collectivity. The project synthesizes Bunge's three scalar investigations: elemental systems as armatures, building-scale shared programs (specifically garden and theater), and neighborhood-scale social infrastructure.
From Monotony to Multiplicity
My design inquiry began with a precedent study of Les Étoiles in Ivry-sur-Seine by Jean Renaudie and Renée Gailhoustet, who challenged the monotony of public housing by embedding individuality within a collective framework. The analytical drawing I developed for this study illustrated how each unit retained its own identity while contributing to a spatial whole, revealing what Reyner Banham termed "megastructural indeterminacy," where systematic variation creates both collective coherence and individual agency.
Connectors as Event Spaces
Building on this foundation and Bunge's concept of "armature," we developed the connectors as spatial instruments, each with a distinct geometry and character that enables diverse patterns of life. These elements are not mere links between units, but what Bernard Tschumi would call "event spaces": performative devices that accommodate gardening, screenings, informal gatherings, and daily rituals. They foster cross-level interaction and embed sociability into the architecture itself.
