The project investigates the notion of architectural surface and interface. Interface implies relationships between various and varying conditions. While surface, on the other hand, implies a concern with the visual and tactile effects of the space on our bodies.
Our intention is to duplicate and intensify these urban exchanges of surface and activity in the city by constructing an urban domestic space that mirrors the experience of lipping between the urban flows of street, building, commodities, and people. The apartment attempts to domesticate and intensify questions of seeing and being seen in daily urban street life.
It is the differing behavioral and programmatic responses of these three wall systems and their resultant, just off-center, perceptual effects that produce the dynamic spatial qualities of the apartment. The architectural wall surfaces are activated and transformed by responding to specific program needs (i.e. a bed, a kitchen, display) or activities (i.e. privacy door) and to framing art objects and views. Even down to the smallest act and detail the loose fit of differing materials and surfaces remains (i.e. the pull detail of a sliding door is a loose fit of wood panel, glass door, and perforated metal screen.) Here architecture is discovered in the sensuous play of surfaces, objects, and the gaps between the three walls that mark the borders of the apartment.
Photography by © David Sundberg/Esto