Indeterminacy

What does indeterminacy mean in architecture? How can assemblages as a concept manifest itself in the built environment?

The Mushroom at the End of the World

Anna Tsing

The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing postulates the idea of assemblages and precarity in relation to matsutake mushrooms. Tsing likens assemblages to polyphony and mixed agricultural plantations, where autonomous elements are intertwined. These elements may be gathered with purpose or by chance. Nevertheless, each element changes as a result of encounters with others, unless they are self-contained individuals resistant to transformations. This rejection of the self-contained and its associated selfish stability makes me think of the International Style of the Modernist era and the Featurism which Boyd critiqued in The Australian Ugliness. In pursuit of simplification and scalability, the Modernists designed inflexible, rational buildings which were often self-contained models with little regard for the climatic, cultural, social contexts. Featurism was borne from a similar lack of consideration of the whole; this aesthetics can perhaps be attributed to the assemblage of individual parts unwilling to collaborate.

Applied to architecture, what might assemblages look like? Do the buildings have moveable elements which gradually change in relation with each other? Or can architecture provide a framework for such chance encounters and subsequent transformations to occur between the users? Can architecture enable resilient living through flexible design? Can architecture avoid simplification of the dwelling typology and instead embrace the complexity and indeterminacy present in human (and mushroom) interactions?

Flexible housing: the means to the end

Till and Schneider

Diagoon Housing plans

Herman Hertzberger (1967-70)

A Slack Space is a space that is anticipatory of potential occupation, or unprogrammed spaces. I have identified such a space in the 50 Housing Units project by Bruther where an unprogrammed room increases the resilience of the unit while the two-metre-wide bridges act as each dwelling’s customisable front porch and semi-private space.

Flexible Housing raises Herztberger’s Diagoon Housing as an example project that is essentially a framework that is to be filled in by the user/participants. The spaces revolving around a stair and utilities core allow the freedom of appropriation and sub-division. Other potential slack spaces include a balcony that can be glazed and converted into an additional room, communal stairwell with occupiable landings, and a double height space to be filled into two single-height space to double the floor area.

This essentially feeds back to the principle of affordances, and it is something I have explored in Suspension, W-House, Liminal Library and Roofscape. In Suspension and the Liminal Library, stepped seating in the park and the sunken plaza allow stepped circulation and seating. In W-House, a brick platform at the entrance is an urban brick landscape with multiple usages. In the design of Roofscape, the large canopy supported by a forest of columns provides a sheltered, open, and unprogrammed public space that welcomes a variety of uses such as markets, sculptural display, dancing…

Diagram of slack space within 50 Housing Unit by Bruther (2013)

Roofscape concept sketch

Floorplan Manual Housing

edited by Oliver Heckmann, Friederike Schneider, and Eric Zapel

Cité Manifeste plan

Lewis/Block Architectes (2005)

I was interested in the low and dense typology of houses. Among those, the few projects that stood out to me are Kasbah by Blom, Cité Manifeste by Lewis/Block Architectes, and Seijo Townhouse by Sejima & Associates.

Kasbah is characterised bis characterised by its shared patchwork of gabled roofs and the building volumes which are lifted off the ground plane on stilts to create covered outdoor spaces below. These ground floor areas can be adapted as parking, community activities, or shops. The base unit can be expanded by the addition of modules to create 4 different unit sizes A, B, C, and D (when A and B are combined), fostering diversity and variation.

Cité Manifeste exhibits floorplans where two households have interlocking bathroom and kitchen units, ensuring that the rest of the building can be adapted and expanded. Bedrooms are rectangular blocks attached to the main body of the unit while wire mesh blocks enclose open spaces and encourage vegetation growth over time. There is also opportunity for external staircases to the roof terrace. I love how the top of a bedroom block becomes a balcony on the second floor while a covered car space is created under a second-floor bedroom block.

In comparison, Seiji Townhouses also utilise living blocks but the units link blocks together both vertically and horizontally, creating 14 types of apartments, each with unique layouts. This becomes a complex spatial patchwork where living rooms and courtyard rooms define each other.

In Tree-ness House, the window is fused with the planter-box to create character as well as a privacy screen of plants.

Kasbah

Blom (1974)

Seijo Townhouse site plan

Sejima & Associates (2007)

Das kleine i (The small i)

Dirch Möllmann (2014)

Multivalent joinery design for bedroom (Interwoven)

Möllmann discusses the contemporary function of the bed in this exhibition writeup. He describes the bed as an in-between space, where traditionally antithetical acts of work and sleep can both take place. It is a place of limbo where we can fluidly move between different passiveness and activeness, where we can easily transition between gradients of being asleep and awake, passive and active. The bed has become a flexible sanctuary with its functional indeterminacy enhanced by technological advancements. While this allows the individual to occupy the bed in multiple ways throughout the day, extending to the collective realm, the multiplicity of function and purpose of an object caters for a diverse range of users, their activities and preferences. However, privacy and ownership are challenged while the negotiations of space and schedules, which have now become a necessity, become a point of interaction but potentially conflict between users.

Stairs and nooks were some elements I explored to offer more affodances to the user. While designing the joinery for a small bedroom, I recognised that the bed nowadays has taken on more functions and meaning. Hence the bed is envisaged to be a part of the bedroom landscape, offering surfaces at different heights for various types of occupation. The window nook as an extension of the desk can be a place to read. Storage above act as lightshelves reflecting sunlight deeper into the room.

Staircase offering multiple affordances: circulation, seat, plants

Reference List

Boyd, R. (2012). The Australian Ugliness. The Text Publishing Company.
Heckmann, O., Schneider, F., & Zapel, E. (2018). Floor plan manual - housing. Basel: Birkhäuser.
Möllmann, D. (2014). Das kleine i. The Century of the Bed, 177-181. Retrieved November 5, 2021.
Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2007). Flexible housing. Amsterdam: Elsevier/Architectural
TSING, A. L. (2021). MUSHROOM AT THE END OF THE WORLD: On the possibility of life in capitalist ruins. S.l.: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRES.