The
British Pavilion - Home Economics
Commissioner: Vicky Richardson.
Curators: Shumi Bose, Jack Self, Finn
Williams
Exhibitors: AYR, Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino
Tattara (Dogma) with Maria S. Giudicci (Black Square), Julia King, Hesselbrand
“Britain is in the grips of a housing crisis. This is not
only a failure of supply to meet demand, it is a failure of traditional housing
models to accommodate new patterns of domestic life. The way we live is
changing radically through time. Home Economics is not about designing
better versions of established housing models that are already broken. It is
about designing new ideas for the home understood through the duration of
occupancy. That is why we have chosen room designers and advisers who are
working outside of traditional models, pushing boundaries and challenging the
status quo. We believe that British architecture is not responding to the
challenges of modern living – life is changing; we must design for it.”
challenges of modern living – life is changing; we must
design for it.”
The
British Pavilion - Home Economics
A Home for Hours – Own
Nothing, Share Everything
Jack Self with Shumi Bose
and Finn Williams
Their
individual practices run across teaching, planning, developing policy,
designing, writing, editing and curating.
Great Britain. The central interior
space presents a new kind of shared domestic environment, restructuring the
current requirements for ‘communal amenity’ in residential development.
Cross-referencing research on how contemporary Britons use their homes and
policies dictating minimum standards of space, the proposal re-imagines sharing
as potential luxury, rather than as a compromise. The room is dominated by two
new pieces of furniture: modular daybeds arranged in different configurations
allowing the user to tailor the space for diverse forms of work, rest and play;
and a large transparent communal ‘garderobe’, containing a selection of clothes
curated by the fashion designer J.W. Anderson and common objects that future
residents can share.
The
British Pavilion - Home Economics
A Home for Days – Home is
Where the Wi-Fi Is
Ayr - (Fabrizio
Ballabio, Alessandro Bava, Luis Ortega Govela and Octave Perrault)
is an art
collective based in London whose work focuses on interiors, domesticity,
internet culture and the city.
The second proposal in the sequence imagines a new type of personal and
portable space, responding to the global domestic landscape that has been
created by services like Airbnb. Reflecting our increasing engagement with
social media, entertainment and virtual consumption, the proposal – more than
clothing, but less than architecture – demonstrates ambivalence towards its
short-term physical context. The room contains two inflatable spheres that are
designed to be easily personalized and transported to different domestic
environments. Visitors are invited to climb inside and experience a familiar
home away from home.
The
British Pavilion - Home Economics
A Home is for Months – A House without
Housework
Dogma and Black
Square
Dogma is the office of Pier Vittorio Aureli and Martino Tattara. Aureli
has a teaching practice with Maria Sheherazade Giudici (Black Square) at the AA
in London, looking at the political relationship between architecture, dwelling
and the city.
The
British Pavilion - Home Economics
A Home is For
Years – Space for Living, not Speculation
Julia King
Julia King is a British-Venezuelan architect
who works as a sole practitioner in the UK and India, and whose ongoing
research looks at affordable domestic typologies.
The fourth space relates to the period of years and resists the
assumption of home as an asset rather than a place to live. In this
circumstance the cost of purchasing a house is minimised and, thanks to a
custom-designed mortgage product, property speculation is opposed: home
improvements are made for the purpose of dwelling rather than profiteering. The
approach to the room along a corridor frames the view of the most important
element, the WC. This is a home designed from the bank’s perspective – a shell
construction that strips out every cost not required by a mortgage lender,
leaving just a roof, running water, electricity, a lavatory and basin. Visitors
can collect a letter explaining the terms of this potential new mortgage
product.
Photograph by HOME ECONOMICS #10, 210X297MM, OK-RM AND MATTHIEU
LAVANCHY, 2016 – courtesy the British Council
The
British Pavilion - Home Economics
A Home is for Decades – A Room Wothout
Functions
Hesselbrand
Hesselbrand is an architectural
practice based in London and Oslo, founded by Martin Brandsdal, Magnus Casselbrant
and Jesper Henriksson. Their research and design focuses on new forms of
living and working for an unpredictable way of life.
Very long-term occupancies,
suggesting inter-generational life and changing conditions of technological and
physical capacities, are considered in the fifth and final space. The proposal
is for a house that is defined by spatial conditions rather than specific
functions, to allow for a different form of flexible space. In this room there
are no predetermined activities denoted by domestic fittings, just different
qualities of light and dark, open and closed, private and public, wet and dry,
and soft and hard surfaces. Mediating between light and dark is a large square
bed designed, like the rest of the room, without traditional specifications of
capacity or orientation, inviting visitors to recline and consider the need for
adaptable, useful and timeless spaces.
The
British Pavilion - Home Economics