This is Not a House
Centro II Sassu, Arborea, Sardegna
Spring 2025
with Sam Wiseman and Samantha Greenberg
Rhino 3D, Vray, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop
On the former colonial agricultural village, Centro II Sassu, families of the former inhabitants continue living in the blind eye of the government. We decided to exercise the continued use of the site by reclaiming the directors house. This process and proposal attempts to destroy the modern house, the machine for living and reproducing that many still live in today. Introduced initially by Albert Kahn through the open floor plan and Le Corbusier through l’Esprit Nouveau, today the modern house acts as a suppressant of identity and culture. Acknowledging Walter Benjamin’s “Destructive Character” this scheme proposes a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Through deconstruction, a sensibility of the existing materials can be developed for reuse, then reconstruction of a personalized isolated house for its inhabitants outside of the modern machine is possible. Intending to create a familiarity for its residents at a personal level while simultaneously developing an unfamiliarity for everyone else. Pushing to destroy the repetitive program typologies of modernist houses, each program opposes its significant element, that which helps maintain its systematized control. In this case, the focus is the notion of the housewife in the kitchen, privacy in the bathroom, gathering in the living room, and the nuclear family in the bedroom.
This is not a house.
Centro II Sassu, Arborea, Sardegna
Spring 2025
with Sam Wiseman and Samantha Greenberg
Rhino 3D, Vray, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop
On the former colonial agricultural village, Centro II Sassu, families of the former inhabitants continue living in the blind eye of the government. We decided to exercise the continued use of the site by reclaiming the directors house. This process and proposal attempts to destroy the modern house, the machine for living and reproducing that many still live in today. Introduced initially by Albert Kahn through the open floor plan and Le Corbusier through l’Esprit Nouveau, today the modern house acts as a suppressant of identity and culture. Acknowledging Walter Benjamin’s “Destructive Character” this scheme proposes a process of deconstruction and reconstruction. Through deconstruction, a sensibility of the existing materials can be developed for reuse, then reconstruction of a personalized isolated house for its inhabitants outside of the modern machine is possible. Intending to create a familiarity for its residents at a personal level while simultaneously developing an unfamiliarity for everyone else. Pushing to destroy the repetitive program typologies of modernist houses, each program opposes its significant element, that which helps maintain its systematized control. In this case, the focus is the notion of the housewife in the kitchen, privacy in the bathroom, gathering in the living room, and the nuclear family in the bedroom.
This is not a house.