Architectural Origami

Architectural Origami Housing the Young Professional Through a Time Based Organization William Sergison

Abstract

This paper offers a re-examination of the interface between the growing force of young professionals and the home. Initially, themes of temporality and flexibility are explored through two seemingly contradictory typological examples, the traditional Japanese home, and the Victorian terraced home. Secondly, the traditional model of urban housing is interrogated to provide a framework for how to rethink housing for the global talent migration. Then, the class of young professionals themselves are examined for the traits that can become advantageous when reimagining their domestic environments. These traits focus on their willingness to be geographically mobile and their ability to develop advanced social networks outside of the home. The investigations provide the impetus for an archetypal trend, specific to housing young professionals, that focuses on adaptable spaces that can be incredibly functional, drastically reduce the space required for the home, and foster relationships and synergies among its inhabitants.

1. Temporality as Design Strategy All architecture, in a sense, is temporal, albeit at different scales. Consider the seeming immutability of Europe’s cathedrals, slowly decaying against the weathering of time. Conversely, tent structures are routinely deployed, sometimes only for a day, and then repositioned elsewhere around the globe. But temporality need not only describe the length of a building’s stay on the earth. Too often perceived as containers of permanence, buildings are actually in constant flux (Koolhaas). Even when the building envelope remains unchanged, a building’s interior use can often change entirely, evidenced by the constant reuse of buildings that are converted from office space to housing and vice versa, as the market dictates. But sometimes, the ephemeral nature of building use is designed intentionally, and this can become quite advantageous when designing for non habitual residents, such as young professionals who’s home is viewed as a tool. This idea of ephemeral architecture is typified by centuries old Japanese dwellings. Supported by finely sculpted wooden posts and beams, the ancient Japanese home has no bearing walls. In fact, it has no permanent interior partitions whatsoever. Moveable walls and sliding shutters, inserted within the frame, are used in place of more permanent barriers (Teige). While many modern architects make the claim to “bring the outside in,” often through the use of glass walls, the Japanese home embodies this idea. It simply makes no distinction between interior and exterior as sliding walls are employed as opposed to doors and windows. Their materiality too works towards this emancipation from enclosure as the sliding walls themselves are often constructed from simple, transparent, or translucent materials. But the idea of temporality manifests itself within the functional capabilities of these simple homes. Through the use of moveable walls, the house can be “either subdivided freely into a number of individual spaces or transformed into a single large, open space” (Teige). This ultimate flexibility, however, is only achievable because the Japanese home is essentially without furniture. One sits on the floor, eats on the floor, and sleeps on the floor on mats. Built in closets between the partitions serve to store unused items, and any unused furniture is not tolerated in the first place. The end result is a complete and utter contradiction to today’s typical housing typologies and their spatial redundancies. The traditional Japanese home remains free and uncluttered, and can remain entirely open, or closed, depending on how the user sees fit. This hyper-flexibility, achieved through a delicate articulation of minimal built form and the temporal nature of the home’s interior, is a trait that can become increasingly more relevant in current considerations for how to house the modern young professional. A more local example, the Victorian terraced home, employs a very different form of temporal use that can be extracted and used for the design of the young professional’s new dwelling. Seemingly monotonous from their exteriors, the repetition of a singular aesthetic ideal, the Victorian terraced house can be found in cities throughout the western world, particularly in London. While their surfaces may remain the same, the interior of the terraced home changes quite often. Many have been converted to new uses, with their ground floors taken over by commercial functions, but many take on new residential uses, and have already begun to be taken over by the young professional. Cherished for their inner city locations, young people love to rent out single rooms on the upper floors of these homes, sharing the ground floor with their flat-mates. It is an intriguing example; one where shared functions become the center of the home, and living spaces are tucked away on the upper floors. The ground floors typically remain incredibly open, with little to no dedicated circulation space.

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Rooms flow easily into adjoining spaces, accepting a multitude of functions. They can just as easily be a workplace during the day as they can be a place to entertain guests at night. This sort of temporal use and flexibility of the ground floor, accomplished not through moveable walls, but through simple design decisions, is incredibly advantageous for the inhabitants of the home. This is something that must be enhanced as one begins to imagine new forms of dwelling, but all too often society repeats the same mistakes and continues to develop incredibly redundant homes.

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2. The Spatial Redundancy of Typical Housing Archetypes Virtually every housing type evident today falls victim to one thought process that has plagued architectural design for centuries: separate as much as possible. Even as the envelope changes, housing projects continue to fall to the tendency of assigning functions of the home their own private space. Sleeping, cooking, dressing, bathing, and working all are assigned their own room to serve their own sole purpose. The result is an architecture that is differentiated only by its functional individualization (Teige). Even Le Corbusier is not immune. In the ultimate irony, the man who coined his residential projects as “machines for living,” designed dozens of villas that dedicate only a mere third of their floor area to legitimate dwelling functions. The rest is allocated to halls, galleries, terraces, ramps and roofs (Teige). In typical housing schemes, it is only the living and dining rooms that remain designated as common spaces in the modern apartment. The remaining rooms are strictly individualized as homes attempt to accommodate each resident with their own bedroom, bathroom, dressing room, etc. leaving very few shared spaces. The spatial qualities of the room attempt to change to meet their sole functional needs yet all too often each room’s spatiality can remain the same.

Figure 2.1

As figure 2.1 illustrates, while the size and setting of a home may change, their spatial logic remains the same. No longer a structural necessity, walls now serve only to further isolate oneself from their own home. Man becomes a prisoner to this obsession with separation and compartmentalization. As Robin Evans said, “walls, doors, windows, and stairs are employed first to divide and then selectively reunite inhabited space...” (Evans). But why do we continue to divide our homes in the first place? It is a habit that has invaded our every domain, not just spatially, but politically and economically as well. We see this evidenced by policies such as the U.K.’s “bedroom tax” where residents are actually required to pay their governments extra fees for the extra rooms in their homes that they do not use. We also see this in the ways developers choose to sell their units to the public, described only as a “2 bed, 1 bath” unit, etc.

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Figure 2.2

Figure 2.2 shows this habit at work, where the addition of a single wall and door will allow a developer to sell his/ her unit at a 50% higher rate for the simple “luxury” of being able to call one’s home a “1 bedroom, 1 bath” unit. As this process of compartmentalization continually invades the living cell, it also reveals itself in the building complex as multi family residential buildings often employ very few shared spaces. Most (if any) shared spaces are tucked away in basement levels, or other leftover, unwanted areas of the building. The result? Relationships between neighbors are relatively anonymous, and they are often considered loners who protect the privacy of their own homes and want to avoid relationships with their neighbors (Hildner). Considering this tendency towards isolation, what is it about the user, the modern young professional, that we can elicit to design with higher efficiency in modern dwelling types? Some strategies can be formed when considering their mobility as well as their ability to develop advanced social networks outside of the platonic home. 3. The Rising Class of Young Professionals The class of young professionals represents a class of paradoxes; they are idealized for their devotion and career driven nature, yet chastised for their lack of traditional family ties. They are migrants, leaving their homes for unfamiliar countries and cities, yet they simultaneously develop some of the most complicated social networks evident today. The growing importance of a career over the importance of a family to young people is becoming increasingly more evident. Relationships inside the family are taking a secondary role in young people’s lives who want to be successful, apparently at any cost (Bosely, 1999). If these trends continue, what then, can one analyze when attempting to design for this class of young people? The potentials lie in their increased geographic mobility and decreased need for societal ties to a place, a house, or a family. The current labor market is becoming increasingly more competitive as a result of an increase in undergraduate and postgraduate enrollments (Heath & Kenyon, 2001). The qualifications gained through university studies are becoming ever more casual, as the labor market is inflated with people who obtain more specialized degrees in attempts to gain an edge while seeking employment. What this means for the young professional is that they have less job security and thus a greater expectation of employee flexibility. There is an expectation that employees seek out training, work experience, and, more importantly, there

is an expectation that employees are geographically mobile in pursuit of career development, particularly in the early stages of a career (Heath & Kenyon, 2001). This is becoming more evident in employees of larger corporations who are expected to move between different sites both domestically and abroad as they progress through the ranks of a company. What this highlights, is that there is an assumption that the archetypal young professional is unencumbered by personal commitments, tied to specific locations, and is available, both geographically and temporally, to serve the company’s particular needs. It has been argued that “the market subject is ultimately the single individual, unhindered by a relationship, marriage or family... the form of existence of the single person is not a deviant case along the path of modernity. It is the archetype of the fully developed labor market society” (Heath & Kenyon, 2001). This is becoming today’s harsh reality as market competitiveness forces young professionals to advertise themselves as selfless employees willing to serve the growing needs of their employers, at any cost. These facts are critical to the design of new forms of housing as one begins to understand two thing: first, the young professional does not anticipate living in a single city for a large duration of their lives, and second, the young professional’s geographic mobility may decrease his/ her societal ties to a place or home. The demand for geographic mobility among young employees has become increasingly associated with single-person households (Heath & Kenyon, 2001). The time gap between the finishing of an education and the creation of one’s family is widening. Thus, in these early years, pertinent to the foundation of one’s career, young people’s drive toward success is often associated with a sort of self-centeredness and social isolation. While the family based household once existed as a self contained microcosm, where a person spent his/ her entire life time at home, today’s new era is witnessing the progressive loosening of the common bonds of family life (Teige). What has become evident, however, is that instead of social isolation, many young adults have fostered a wide ranging and complicated network of friendship and intimacy that begins to embrace both platonic and non-platonic relationships (Heath & Kenyon, 2001). For some, this manifests itself in shared living households. For many others, this simply represents the invasion of one’s domestic environment into the cities that they call home. Cities are increasingly filled with what were once considered solely domestic activities. We see this evident in laundromats, gyms, pubs, and, perhaps the epitome of domesticity invading the city, coffee shops that have now become synonymous with workplaces for the mobile worker and their laptop computers. What this means for the design of housing for the young professional is that the home is becoming more of a tool to be used however the user sees fit, and less of a sanctuary from the outside world. Thus, functions of the home can be compressed, as more and more programs are being removed and added to city life. What is also evident is that the design of housing must address the ways in which these complicated networks of friendships and intimacy can be fostered. Modern housing trends, unfortunately, all too often resort back to the redundant model of housing design which becomes incredibly inefficient and fails to address these needs of the young professional. So where would one look to find precedent towards a new form of housing? The answers lie within the themes of flexibility and temporality. 4. Architectural Origami Designing for the paradoxical class of people that is the modern young professional is incredibly challenging because it is difficult to define their habitual nature. One habit they all have in common is that they cease to have habits. One spends as much money on unused food

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left at home as they do on eating out in restaurants; just one example of the consequences of their lack of routines. A home is becoming another tool, and not the container for all domestic activities that it once represented. So how does one design for this? Some conclusions may lie in the hyper-flexibility of what we might call architectural origami. If the typical family villa typifies a series of mono-functioning rooms with mono functioning uses, architectural origami typifies the villa’s antithesis. If a formula for the family villa is: living hall + individual bedrooms + children’s room + sanitary, housekeeping, and communication room; and the formula for the conventional apartment is: man’s (bed)room + woman’s (bed)room + children’s room + kitchen + toilet + entry hall (Teige); then the young professional’s room can be formulated as: user’s (bed) (living) (kitchen) (bath) (study) (work) room. If designed with enough efficiency and flexibility, one room without interior partitions can house the young professional and all of his/ her uses. Architectural origami in the room can take on some of the principles employed through traditional Japanese architecture. Japanese homes worked because they had little to no furniture, but can these principles work in a room with no walls? One side of the room can become a thickened plane, a container of all the room’s functions. The user’s own cabinet of curiosities. This is ideal for a constantly mobile young person who would have less possessions with them. Furniture in this home takes on just as much of a psychological effect as it does a functional one. It is as much a symbol of what use should partake, as it is a device for living. When considering the makeup of a traditional family villa, rooms often do not vary in dimension, only in the furniture they contain. Thus, in this new form of dwelling, one room can employ different arrangements of furniture at different times, becoming whatever type of room is necessary for that time of the day. Architectural origami allows this time based organization of a single room to provide the functions of an entire home. Thus one can see architectural origami is not about compressing the cell to its minimum state. In fact, the room is actually larger than the required minimum for responsible dwelling. This allows the user to invite guests in, as arrangements of the room can be suited to entertaining a small number of guests. Once increasing functionality of this room is complete, it must be considered within the context of the building complex it inhabits. The room itself is not an isolated utopia, and this room particularly cannot function as an individual cell with no relation to its neighbors. After transforming the dwelling unit, architectural origami can invade the remainder of the building complex. As seen in the successful occupation of many Victorian terraced homes by young professionals, effective shared spaces must not be built as mono-functional rooms in disused spaces of the dwelling. By providing an increased area in the corridors, circulation space, often one of the least inhabited spaces of a building or home, can serve a shared and social function. If articulated correctly, multiple spaces can be created, allowing them to become a series of semi-private, collective realms. This would allow differing degrees of privacy: complete isolation in one’s own room, interaction with a small number of guests within the room, interaction with larger groups in the shared corridor and/or gathering space, and complete immersion with the surrounding city once one exits the dwelling. This division of privacy represents the ideal in shared spaces, as one is much more comfortable interacting with others when he/ she has a more private space (either perceived or physical) that they can return to. If Cedric Price was right, and “architecture is too slow to solve problems,” (Price) then perhaps the adaptability of architectural origami is needed to house the young professional. These denizens of a global world, constantly mobile, demand the flexibility of the spaces that architectural origami can provide.

References Boseley, Sarah. ‘Cheating, Lying And Sleeping With The Boss. Is This The Young Person’s Route To Success?’. the Guardian. N.p., 1999. Web. 28 Feb. 2015. Evans, Robin. “Figures, Doors, and Passages.” Translations from Drawings to Buildings and Other Essays 48 (1997): 73-95. Print. Heath, Sue, and Liz Kenyon. ‘Single Young Professionals And Shared Household Living’. Journal of Youth Studies 4.1 (2001): 83-100. Web. Hildner, Claudia. Future Living. Basel: De Gruyter, 2013. Print. Koolhaas, R. (Director) (2015, March 9). Elements of Architecture. Lecture conducted from Architectural Association, London. Price, Cedric Re: CP, ed. by Hans-Ulrich Obrist (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2003). p. 57. Teige, Karel. The Minimum Dwelling. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2002. Print.