Through our methods of representation, we have focused on the aesthetics of the object. In relation to housing, objects transform a house or building into a “home”. Opportunities for ornamentation provide families the ability to see themselves reflected in an otherwise neutral space. This ornamentation can: reflect cultural resilience; create a sacred or spiritual space; and/or represent an expression of one’s individual and familial identity, respectively. These objects are visible throughout our visualizations, and are completely out of control of the overarching architectural hand. Ultimately, we embraced this lack of aesthetic control to allow the objects to define the program and boundaries of our apartment building. As such, the representation of our space is one that looks “lived in”. The object has a level of imperfection and disorder that contrasts the highly sterilized renderings of New York City’s housing market. What is important to our project is how we address and design for our target demographic, which are non-nuclear family models: queer/queering, intergenerational, and guardianship/caretaker. Since these family models are often sidelined or not present in design discussions related to housing, we made sure to bring them to the forefront of our project.
