Standardization pursues to use a minimal variety of elements to adapt to most conditions. But the trade-off with economical desirability is often the weaponization of architecture into a colonial, oppressive tool, as is observed in the case of Edgemere’s urban renewal remnants, as well as speculated in the incubation of its Community Land Trust development, from which the community members themselves have largely been shunned. Standardization measures and controls buildings as well as people narrowly along with the metrics of efficiency and productivity, which we may argue discounts and suppresses the diversity that makes them wonderful. This project seeks to subvert standardization both architecturally and socially. Borrowing the pre-engineered butler frame and existing wall types of different thickness, materiality, and tectonics, this investigation seeks to capsize the agenda of the most common residential barn typology—the barndominium. Instead of demarcating spaces by function using a homogenous divider, the project begins by studying the affordance and spatial qualities that different wall types can generate, by removing, revealing, and lifting the steel frames. By translating gadgetized domestic functions into community programs, the building not only recalls the communality of various activities but also creates contingent spaces for flexible and creative use.
