December 2024
Professor / Marcos Parga
Collaborator / Darius Polillio
“Living Otherwise” is a collaborative study of housing, examining the history and agency of living as it relates to labor, gender, and policy. Each team occupies a network of modules within the housing collective, highlighting a moment in the history of housing and offering a critique, rather than a proposal, of the systems that bend and shape domesticity as we know it today.
This exercise imagines a live-work space centered around hyper-productivity. The system is made up of three modules: the bunker, the factory, and the maintenance elevator. The hyper-productive housing module is not a proposal, but an interpretation and critique of the claustrophobic, monotonous and sedentary lifestyle that results from a society of capitalism and overconsumption. The need to produce, consume, and repair goods in a constant cycle necessitates a demand for labor which is often underpaid and undervalued.
These spaces mirror, and exaggerate, exploitative housing and labor practices which favor production over social reproduction. The project also questions the way we define convenience: is the convenience of experiencing the outside world in unpredictable ways, meeting neighbors, making connections, and witnessing events trumped by the convenience of working where we live?
01_ the bunker
The bunker functions as a compact space for sleeping and working. Employees are given small sleeping pods which don’t support activities for leisure, such as watching a movie in bed. The office, situated above the sleeping pods, is not tall enough to stand in, as employees spend most of their time sitting at desks while doing work on their computers.
02_ the factory
The factory produces and repairs goods for the other modules including electronics and household items.
03_ the maintenance elevator
The maintenance elevator acts as a distribution system for occupants of other modules to send broken items to the factory to be repaired. A vertical pulley delivers Amazon packages and monthly subscriptions to the employees, who are otherwise consumed with their work.