Trespassing: Houses x Artists

Kevin Appel, Barbara Bloom, Chris Burden, Jim Isermann, T. Kelly Mason, Julian Opie, RenŽe Petropoulos, David Reed and Jessica Stockholder, and the New York based architecture firm OpenOffice.

The exhibition reflects the vision of nine contemporary artists who, unrestricted by external demands of program, scale, site condition and finances, were invited to rethink and reinvent the house as a spatial and social entity, unconfined by architectural preconceptions and conventions.

Photo: arcspace
The Schindler House (1922), West Hollywood, California
The MAK Center for Art and Architecture

Historically, the house has been a testing ground for new building technologies and social paradigms. It is also the architectural form to which we attach our deepest aesthetic, psychological and physiological impulses about built space.

Should a domestic environment create and be responsible for its own subjective authority? Have spatial functions changed to accommodate current fluid social patterns? Why lapse into the conventional model of the house, when domestic relationships are changing?

Photo courtesy BAM

Jim Isermann's house introduces a folded plate-roof concept that creates a unique triangular clerestory light condition and undulating ceiling forms positioned over modestly scaled rooms. Using a modular system of structure, skin, and storage, the roof can be constructed in several configurations and adjusted to the demands of the inhabitant. The development of the roof design focuses on the diverse arrangements of the house's simple kit of parts and produces ways in which ceiling arrangements engage in the creation of unusual architectural environments.

Photo courtesy BAM

T. Kelly Mason casts the house as an assemblage of ideas of prefabricated spaces - rooms that are as detachable and flexible as furniture. The structure draws from both existing domestic and industrial building systems and technologies as well as from invented furniture typologies. The spaces between rooms where walls usually occur create a public common space that invites the occupants to prescribe function. Thus the house functions as a landscape of familiar domestic spaces and unexpected open common spaces allowing the user to create a normal dwelling experience alongside a personal public zone of multifarious program.

Photo courtesy BAM

Jessica Stockholder's house employs the typical, small house convention of a single wet wall as the site for the house's structural core and domestic interface. In her house, this usually minor element has been transformed into an unusual monolithic cast-in-place pink concrete wall. This pink wall crux supports a bivouacked lean-to style roof, stairs between levels, a nested bathroom, a suspended private wing, and a fireplace: all the necessary plumbing to live. The wall element functions like a Swiss Army knife to permit open plan living areas for the rest of the house that play formally and programmatically with the lodge house typology, incorporating broad, abstract geometric spatial delineations through color and material. A curving wall extends from the house interior and continues the geometric theme onto the site and gardens.

Photo courtesy BAM

"Is it possible for the rooms in the house to function like a computer "alias," as opposed to a "duplicate". so that what is altered in one space is automatically altered in another?"
Barbara Bloom

Barbara Bloom poses this and many other questions about how the dwelling can be both confusing and comfortable. It opposes the notion of ideal living conditions as prescriptive, and therefore restrictive, of one's freedom in choosing and creating the everyday environment. Here, the house functions as a place one is able to inhabit fluidly, effortlessly inventing new possibilities for use.

Photo courtesy BAM

Envisioned as a retreat and furnished with modest methods, Burden's dramatically vertical "small skyscraper" requires an intense re-evaluation of the terms of dwelling. Given the legally stipulated maximum floor area of 10' x 10' and the necessity of an elevator, Burden's house necessitates an extremely humble occupation of the scant floor area. By applying the formal language of the skyscraper to a modest domestic dwelling, Burden engages questions of power in the built environment.

Photo courtesy BAM

For David Reed art is too frequently viewed in a conscious, analytical state of mind. Reed takes on a potential program for a collector's house, and proposes instead a bedroom/gallery pavilion that aims to address this concern by positing a space for viewing art conducive to reverie rather than analysis - the private realm of the bedroom. Reed contends that this is the optimal modern space for a fluid and heightened state of awareness. The program resists the "white cube" tendency toward so-called "neutral" gallery space in favor of a complex and emotional spatial indeterminacy.

Photo courtesy BAM

Kevin Appel proposes a glass house in a garden that generates and elevates sensory and aesthetic experiences. Transparency and translucency mesh architecture and landscape to create unlimited visual freedom and openness while isolating and exposing the body in space. Domestic privacy and comfort are sublimated to the gaze.

Photo courtesy BAM

Julian Opie's house accepts the site of non-site as a pre-condition for the modern house and proposes a prefabricated building typology that can be configured on a case-by-case basis. The scheme places emphasis on the elegance imposed by the limits such a system requires while paradoxically capitalizing on the unusual meta-forms that will emerge from the struggle to formalize the dweller's personal domestic appetites.

Photo courtesy BAM

Petropoulos's house uses the gas station mini market as a model. The investigation distils a time-tested set of architectural devices used for mediating between people in various scales and balances of social exchange. For Petropoulos, her house design is a case study into the social traits imbedded in a given vernacular; the rules uncover a set of guidelines for her multiple future house designs, easily mapped into various dwelling programs such as multiple family occupations or time-share vacation properties.

Developed by Linda Taalman and Alan Koch of OpenOffice and curator Cara Mullio, the artists' projects are presented as architectural models, partial realizations and digital works using computer graphics and virtual software.

About: OpenOffice

August 26, 2002





		Exhibition		Features
		Trespassing: Houses x Artists Bellevue Art Museum Bellevue, Washington January 29 - July 27, 2003.
		Kevin Appel, Barbara Bloom, Chris Burden, Jim Isermann, T. Kelly Mason, Julian Opie, RenŽe Petropoulos, David Reed and Jessica Stockholder, and the New York based architecture firm OpenOffice. The exhibition reflects the vision of nine contemporary artists who, unrestricted by external demands of program, scale, site condition and finances, were invited to rethink and reinvent the house as a spatial and social entity, unconfined by architectural preconceptions and conventions. Photo: arcspace The Schindler House (1922), West Hollywood, California The MAK Center for Art and Architecture Historically, the house has been a testing ground for new building technologies and social paradigms. It is also the architectural form to which we attach our deepest aesthetic, psychological and physiological impulses about built space. Should a domestic environment create and be responsible for its own subjective authority? Have spatial functions changed to accommodate current fluid social patterns? Why lapse into the conventional model of the house, when domestic relationships are changing? Photo courtesy BAM Jim Isermann's house introduces a folded plate-roof concept that creates a unique triangular clerestory light condition and undulating ceiling forms positioned over modestly scaled rooms. Using a modular system of structure, skin, and storage, the roof can be constructed in several configurations and adjusted to the demands of the inhabitant. The development of the roof design focuses on the diverse arrangements of the house's simple kit of parts and produces ways in which ceiling arrangements engage in the creation of unusual architectural environments. Photo courtesy BAM T. Kelly Mason casts the house as an assemblage of ideas of prefabricated spaces - rooms that are as detachable and flexible as furniture. The structure draws from both existing domestic and industrial building systems and technologies as well as from invented furniture typologies. The spaces between rooms where walls usually occur create a public common space that invites the occupants to prescribe function. Thus the house functions as a landscape of familiar domestic spaces and unexpected open common spaces allowing the user to create a normal dwelling experience alongside a personal public zone of multifarious program. Photo courtesy BAM Jessica Stockholder's house employs the typical, small house convention of a single wet wall as the site for the house's structural core and domestic interface. In her house, this usually minor element has been transformed into an unusual monolithic cast-in-place pink concrete wall. This pink wall crux supports a bivouacked lean-to style roof, stairs between levels, a nested bathroom, a suspended private wing, and a fireplace: all the necessary plumbing to live. The wall element functions like a Swiss Army knife to permit open plan living areas for the rest of the house that play formally and programmatically with the lodge house typology, incorporating broad, abstract geometric spatial delineations through color and material. A curving wall extends from the house interior and continues the geometric theme onto the site and gardens. Photo courtesy BAM "Is it possible for the rooms in the house to function like a computer "alias," as opposed to a "duplicate". so that what is altered in one space is automatically altered in another?" Barbara Bloom Barbara Bloom poses this and many other questions about how the dwelling can be both confusing and comfortable. It opposes the notion of ideal living conditions as prescriptive, and therefore restrictive, of one's freedom in choosing and creating the everyday environment. Here, the house functions as a place one is able to inhabit fluidly, effortlessly inventing new possibilities for use. Photo courtesy BAM Envisioned as a retreat and furnished with modest methods, Burden's dramatically vertical "small skyscraper" requires an intense re-evaluation of the terms of dwelling. Given the legally stipulated maximum floor area of 10' x 10' and the necessity of an elevator, Burden's house necessitates an extremely humble occupation of the scant floor area. By applying the formal language of the skyscraper to a modest domestic dwelling, Burden engages questions of power in the built environment. Photo courtesy BAM For David Reed art is too frequently viewed in a conscious, analytical state of mind. Reed takes on a potential program for a collector's house, and proposes instead a bedroom/gallery pavilion that aims to address this concern by positing a space for viewing art conducive to reverie rather than analysis - the private realm of the bedroom. Reed contends that this is the optimal modern space for a fluid and heightened state of awareness. The program resists the "white cube" tendency toward so-called "neutral" gallery space in favor of a complex and emotional spatial indeterminacy. Photo courtesy BAM Kevin Appel proposes a glass house in a garden that generates and elevates sensory and aesthetic experiences. Transparency and translucency mesh architecture and landscape to create unlimited visual freedom and openness while isolating and exposing the body in space. Domestic privacy and comfort are sublimated to the gaze. Photo courtesy BAM Julian Opie's house accepts the site of non-site as a pre-condition for the modern house and proposes a prefabricated building typology that can be configured on a case-by-case basis. The scheme places emphasis on the elegance imposed by the limits such a system requires while paradoxically capitalizing on the unusual meta-forms that will emerge from the struggle to formalize the dweller's personal domestic appetites. Photo courtesy BAM Petropoulos's house uses the gas station mini market as a model. The investigation distils a time-tested set of architectural devices used for mediating between people in various scales and balances of social exchange. For Petropoulos, her house design is a case study into the social traits imbedded in a given vernacular; the rules uncover a set of guidelines for her multiple future house designs, easily mapped into various dwelling programs such as multiple family occupations or time-share vacation properties. Developed by Linda Taalman and Alan Koch of OpenOffice and curator Cara Mullio, the artists' projects are presented as architectural models, partial realizations and digital works using computer graphics and virtual software. About: OpenOffice August 26, 2002