Studio leaders: Colby Vexler & Pricilla Heung
Subtle gestures turn ground into site.
Pegged out and legislated; fenced in and given tangible measurements.
Boundaries and area. A series of steps “allow” ground to be domesticated.
So, ground becomes site, site becomes potential. Negotiated, zoned, cultivated, tended to, cared for. Setbacks and provisions; foundations, slabs and openings under a roof.
A bed, essential utilities, and some storage; site houses home and house occupies site.
But what dwells between site and building? The garden of course! Call it the front yard, the backyard, the courtyard, some gravel, weeds growing along side, or even those potted plants that inhabit a kind of interior - the garden dwells at the ambiguous edge of domesticity, somewhere between house and its site.
From the banal to the absurd Housing, Home and Contents: A Soft Focus on Domestic Things critically re-evaluates architecture’s role in understanding the relationship between site, garden, house and home in 2021.
