HOUSE FOR THE LIVING
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SHILLONG, MEGHALAYA
Is the house only a place to live?
Can the house become a
space that allows to you to express yourself?
How does the house allow for an accumulation of memories?
How do disparate homes come together as a community?
If the city is a home, who owns the house?
Is the home situated within the city or is the city contained in a home?
House (for someone (anyone))
500 sqm
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We work in one place, sleep in one, entertain ourselves elsewhere, think in some place, meet friends in somewhere else. The city is a large fragmented home, a space of exercising our choices and our expression. We walk in many spaces in the city everyday - walking is a mode of expression. Where does our expression find home?
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If the city is a feeling, is it the feeling of home? A home is a place of safety, an enclosure that is a place of freedom, a place of love, of community, In the way a home is within a city, so the city is contained in a home. The architecture of a home that belongs to a city, then, must be a truly democratic space, a public space that can materially redefine itself according to its users.
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A house as a park-a new public space that can quite literally redefine itself according to use. The project is a means of reconstructing the experience of being in gardens when I was a child, the wonder of freedom, exploration and play. The freedom to express by ‘playing’ with space. The perception of a house is questioned and the horizon of its experience is extended.
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The exploration started with the question:
How does the house truly belong to the city?
An I-Ching symbol
Before we go to Shillong we are presented with strange symbols - an I-ching. It is derived from a Chinese text, that has been reinterpreted in various religious and cultural contexts. It appears that since we are travelling to the Northeast part of the country, they become our "culturally appropriate" operative word and graphic.
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My I-ching stands for treading and can be further fragmented into two more symbols. We are asked to find stories emerging from these words and bring back evidences of the same. I wonder what is the meaning of the word treading and am desperate to find something that reflects that in the few days we spend there.
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Treading, a verb, means:
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To beat or press with the feet - treading leaves behind a mark - what is the most "evident" evidence of human life on the earth that they walk on - i collect my trash from the trip in one jar - layers
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To subdue or repress by trampling - we are in Shillong at a time when we don't get out of our hotel for three days, for there is a bandh declared in large parts of the state - this is commonplace - the kind of strife and dissent I don't see or hear about everyday - I collect a bunch of protest concert flyers i find there and cover them under a thick blanket of earth - repressed
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in noun form, upper or horizontal part of a step - while documenting a church, I find myself next to a small staircase - it shifts by an inch - i move it further and behind it lies a bunch of ikrah sticks - these are used as reinforcement in tread-itional (no? I guess I was trying too hard with this whole evidence thing) walls - I don't know what they represent - structure and strength in rising up? Or uncertain underbellies of structures that give us the ability to move up?
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I had no idea what was going on.
After returning home, we are told that we will be making a 'House'. Not quite sure for whom. I am given a site, a small piece of unoccupied land, I presume.
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A house for nobody? How can I build for someone I don't know, haven't met. It's a house for somebody. A house for anybody? At this point it where it sounds like a Queen song, I am inclined to think it's house for everybody. A house for the city. The container becomes the contained.
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Thinking about the three bottles of evidence, what information and feeling it provokes, the first model is about the ground plane and the act of movement. A forceful human movement, which changes the ground itself.
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What could be the purpose of such a space?
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Planes (or treads) that move are in a constant shift. The user, the citizen defines the configuration of space.
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A project about "reconstruction". A new form of freedom and expression. To find ways to re-construct communication of thoughts and feelings, to think of new ways of socialising, make new spatial forms (or revive old ones) and create a safe, expressive, free space that can truly become a home to everyone in Shillong.
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The house becomes a living museum, a public space, a park, a place to be,
a space for artists, musicians, performers, creators, those who want to express.
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The architecture of a multi-use, non-defined, yet suggestive, democratic space required an examination of possible technology, dynamic spaces and nature of material and form. A set of vertically adjustable square platforms can be changed in height, as per use. The roof is tessellated into a space frame, making space for changes in light, addition of fixtures and suspension of objects.
To find the right grain and an appropriate distribution of spaces, allowing more groups and individuals to occupy it simultaneously. One idea works - two separate underground voids, tiles of different sizes, a kitchen, a verandah of sorts on the road, different zones, integrated with services.
The house is thus reconstructed as a space of exploration and play, as a home should be.
That was the short or long of the project House For The Living