Speculative Architecture VI
THE POSSIBILITY OF A COLLECTIVE
Zachary Nelson
The home is the origin of architecture and the universal center that each of us bases our lives out of. Historically, it was treated as a place for shelter, to share culture and stories in, and to reflect the intangible qualities of our lives through the built environment around us. Today, the home serves as an investment vehicle in the United States, rather than its original humanistic purpose. The consequence of this is the housing crisis we’ve fallen into, and the “American Dream” of homeownership being pulled out of reach from millions of citizens who are forced to perpetually exist as renters or consumers rather than owners.
In an effort to combat this, the federal government has explored various social housing programs across the country throughout the last century, with many of them failing for a myriad of reasons. The most notorious of these failures was at Pruitt-Igoe, in St. Louis, Missouri. This artefact recreates first hand stories and historical accounts of the site as pieces of a puzzle, each depicting individual stories and buildings on the old site. When assembled, they visually represent the mismanaged dystopian plan that Pruitt-Igoe was, while revealing through their stories the lack of self-agency that bred the cruel conditions that those people had to endure. To address this, the pieces were shattered collectively by multiple people and are left to be reassembled as a collective mosaic, rather than an imposed plan.
Architects possess the tools to design the built environment that shapes our lives, and have the ability to share those tools with others; the design process can be broken down and split between both the architect and the end user. The translation of this idea is to create a community over the old site of Pruitt-Igoe around incremental housing, in which residents can claim cooperative ownership over a small and “incomplete” shelter, equipped with basic elements to serve necessary living functions at a low initial cost. These shelters can then be customized and added onto by the occupants over time, enabling the possibility of a collective community to have agency over their own lives, without barriers to quality shelter or design, while injecting humanity back into the home.
Speculative Architecture VI
THE POSSIBILITY OF A COLLECTIVE
Zachary Nelson
The home is the origin of architecture and the universal center that each of us bases our lives out of. Historically, it was treated as a place for shelter, to share culture and stories in, and to reflect the intangible qualities of our lives through the built environment around us. Today, the home serves as an investment vehicle in the United States, rather than its original humanistic purpose. The consequence of this is the housing crisis we’ve fallen into, and the “American Dream” of homeownership being pulled out of reach from millions of citizens who are forced to perpetually exist as renters or consumers rather than owners.
In an effort to combat this, the federal government has explored various social housing programs across the country throughout the last century, with many of them failing for a myriad of reasons. The most notorious of these failures was at Pruitt-Igoe, in St. Louis, Missouri. This artefact recreates first hand stories and historical accounts of the site as pieces of a puzzle, each depicting individual stories and buildings on the old site. When assembled, they visually represent the mismanaged dystopian plan that Pruitt-Igoe was, while revealing through their stories the lack of self-agency that bred the cruel conditions that those people had to endure. To address this, the pieces were shattered collectively by multiple people and are left to be reassembled as a collective mosaic, rather than an imposed plan.
Architects possess the tools to design the built environment that shapes our lives, and have the ability to share those tools with others; the design process can be broken down and split between both the architect and the end user. The translation of this idea is to create a community over the old site of Pruitt-Igoe around incremental housing, in which residents can claim cooperative ownership over a small and “incomplete” shelter, equipped with basic elements to serve necessary living functions at a low initial cost. These shelters can then be customized and added onto by the occupants over time, enabling the possibility of a collective community to have agency over their own lives, without barriers to quality shelter or design, while injecting humanity back into the home.