HYDROPHILIAC

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HYDROPHILIAC - Stripped-Down Villa : Micro-Estate - S*D*V . 03

Jason Vigneri-Beane <jcvb@splitstudio.com>

Project Statement

Stripped-Down Villas : Micro-Estates (S*D*V) are part of an on-going project thatcompact selected aspects of luxuriant living conditions down to a formulation of MICRO-ESTATES.

A few of ways in which normative architecture seems not to be able to come astride with developments in the contemporary world are scale (size), mobility and intelligence. While competition over space increases in relation to population growth measured against available real estate, normative (residential) architecture continues to become increasingly larger. While other disciplines and industries have been developing techniques of miniaturization architecture has been participating in the production of wasteful enlargement on a number of fronts, from material use to environmental conditioning. One could almost say that size equals both present and future waste. It may not be a stretch to say that size is in a feedback-relationship with (lack of) mobility. While normative architecture is obviously and understandably involved in the production of fixed objects on fixed grounds there is something to learn from the range of alternative architectural lessons demonstrated by informal settlements, trailer parks, displaced populations and societies organized by collective intelligence. In these conditions, the question of a fixed relationship between living space and property is in play and, although complex, strategic and finely-tuned, also minimal. What is important to note here is that the combination of object-location relationships and the evolution of an object in relation to the specificities of how it must perform in its non-normative state leads, in a sense, to an adaptive intelligence that is specific to site and program without being fixed to them. This special formulation of specificity without fixity shows in a kind of non-optimized efficiency wherein architectural identities and the operations out of which they emerge are clarified, distilled and compacted without genericizing normalization. This interest in compacted architectural operations and constrained identity form the basic framework within which both Stripped-Down Shelters and Stripped-Down Villas / Micro-Estates are developed.

SDV.03 --- HYDROPHILIAC is a future niche-filler. It distills the fountain-garden combination from the estate to a kind of spray-gun unit that provides its owner with the opportunity to irrigate dry and unusable ground for gardening, agriculture, and animal grazing. Its catchment basin store 3,020 gallons of water for use through its six-nozzle output array that connects two hygenic water supplies to the interior, two irrigation guns, and two optional-use potable sources. The HYDROPHILIAC exists in anticipation of forecasted water shortages, the immanent subsequent privatization of the water supply, and the need for energy independence. Its water-catchment basin, water-filtration/management technologies, and photovoltaic arrays are engineered to sustain.