Settling In

So here you are in your new home, with your colleagues, co-workers, flat-mates.
Yes, the space might look a bit small for all to fit in but there can be ways of
adapting it for fruitful coexistence. This will be our first goal and the first way
to tackle this thing we call co-operation. For the next few weeks your work will
coincide with the place where your work is supposed to happen – the unit space
itself and the Bedford Square at large. We will act together to find ways to adapt
or subvert the space that we have been given by the school for the year ahead.

The first step will be about looking. Look around you, observe the space in
its minute details, appreciate that which is ordinary. Many elements concur –
indeed, collaborate – to make the space what it is now, a blank canvas for new
cohabitation. But it is also a canvas on which others have written previously – you
can see the traces of past lives.

Observation is the primitive design act; by looking at what exists now, we can
suggest and give cues to what could exist in the future. Based on this assumption,
you will design your settling in the unit space, and you will do this both individually
and collectively. Each of you will initiate personal research starting from an
architectural element in the room and extending out of it into wider conceptual
or physical territories. Your individual study of the chosen element will rapidly
converge into discussion with your peers.

Select one element from the following list:

Floor Lighting
Fireplace Chair
Ceiling Table
Skirting Storage
Window Stair
Picture rail / cornice Wall
Door Radiator

Task: Survey the element through one single photograph

Output: One photo, portrait or landscape, printed A4

We will discuss your photographs as a group at the end of the day on Tues 4th
October. No. 38, Second Floor Back

Reference:
Rem Koolhaas et al. (eds.), Elements of Architecture. Koln: Taschen, 2018.

INTER 1 All Together Now Brief 1.1