Recursive House - B.Arch Thesis
Partner: Evan Preuss
Location: Pratt Institute SoA - Brooklyn, NY
Studio: Studio Free Time directed by Abigail Coover-Hume and Michael Szivos
When: 2017
The Recursive House investigates new potentials in domesticity by providing the inhabitants of a Greenwich Village Brownstone with an adaptable and individualistic architecture. This is accomplished through a dialogue and compromise between two architectural phenomena, the Modernist free plan, and the Parametric method of specification. By Utilizing semi-specific volumes of material <Blanks> in conjunction with an autonomous fabrication infrastructure the project creates a wholly detailed domestic space specific to the user and their occupancy. The project scans and analyzes the use of the space to modify the original blanks while the users are not present. As time continues an initially rough and primitive form is worn and adapted to suit the user's interactions. It is through this process that potentially endless formal variety is created in a closed-loop system, shaping the architecture around the inhabitant. The project then becomes not an Architecture designed for Free-Time, but an Architecture designed by Free-Time.
Delivery
The blanks are delivered to the front of the house via a flat-bed truck. They are made out of a theoretical homogenous, isotropic, recyclable material, and are custom shaped to dynamically establish performative relationships with the house-machine. By tailoring the shape of each block individually, the blocks will then be acted upon by both the house-machine and occupant in unique and specific ways to each blank. Unique spatial and occupational relationships emerge within these confines.
Operation
The recursive house is more than a scaffold for blank storage and occupation. It is an axial gantry system that allows for the motion of two bespoke robotic end-effectors in tandem with the material blanks. These end-effectors are capable of both subtractive and additive manipulation that, in tandem with the recycling machine and storage tanks, are capable of dynamically reshaping the home based on the occupant’s desires and actions.
Occupation
The house machine is capable of continuously removing and adding material to the blanks in order to meet the occupant’s use. Recursively, living spaces are manipulated, changing as the days progress.
