ATMOSPHYTE_HEX

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strip : ATMOSPHYTE_HEX : custom graphics

ATMOSPHYTE_HEX - Stripped-Down Villa : Micro-Estate - S*D*V . 04

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.04 --- ATMOSPHYTE_HEX is a future niche-filler for the potential domestication of, reliance on, and hazards in the atmosphere. It is a compact living unit that reflects the pressure of atmospheric impurity on the one hand and atmospheric provision on the other. It is equipped to purify air quality, harvest and filter water from the atmosphere and detect changes in the airborne environment. In addition, it processes algae for bio-fuel in order to maintain its independence from centralized utility infrastructure. A rooftop array of sensors monitor air content for moisture content, particulate matter, toxins and other products of escalating environmental decline. ATMOSPHYTE_HEX is semi-mobile and, due to its structural self-sufficiency and resource independence, sees micro-living as interconnected with property-independence and decentralized infrastructure.