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CHICAGO MODEL


Proposal for Collective Living II (Homage to Sir John Soane), Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago, Illinois, 2017  

Team: Andrew Kovacs, Erin Wright, Summer Liu, Colette Aro, Phil Donohue

Project Description:


Proposal for Collective Living II rethinks the iconic section, interior, and collection of Sir John Soane’s home and museum as a model for collective habitation. Soane’s assemblage becomes the impetus to Make Architecture from Architecture: reorganizing what already exists in the world for new architectural purposes.

A contemporary collection of architectural matter—wholes and parts, totalities and fragments, unities and bits—is meticulously documented, flattened, and valued equally. The collection turns Soane’s house inside out, covering and encasing the provided plinth in the Biennial’s room of plinths. Collection, contiguity, and composition produce a horizontal composite that speculates on new possibilities for human habitation.

In the cityscape of Proposal for Collective Living there is a single digital billboard broadcasting Life of a Model. This film documents the creation of the model, covering major developments in the production of the Proposal for Collective Living:

1) The Search
2) The Selection
3) The Scanner
4) The Assessment
5) The Demolition
6) Archive of Affinities
7) The Assembly
8) The Layering
9) The People  
10) The Photographs

Proposal for Collective Living rethinks Soane’s interior as exterior. Proposal for Collective Living reconceptualizes Soane’s home as a city. Proposal for Collective Living repositions Soane’s museum as not strictly devoted to an individual but rather to a new collective. Proposal for Collective Living reimagines Soane’s collection of objects that are meant to be viewed as objects that are meant to be inhabited.

Reconstruction in Japan, 2022

In 2022, the model from the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial was reconstructed at the Sekisui House–Kuma Lab at the University of Tokyo and exhibited at Shodoshima House on Shodoshima Island as part of the Setouchi Triennale. It had arrived in Tokyo in pieces after shipping, and the planned reconstruction was postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic.