A Living Archive

Inhabiting idiosyncratic exhibitions of memory in a new geography of curiosity

This project proposes the design of a new architectural type – a living archive. The design recognizes the cultural compulsion to collect in the U.S., and investigates how this practice should transform the existing typologies of the home and the archive within an emergent American landscape of storage.  This new architectural intervention experiments with the home as the activated site for engagement with a collection by reintegrating object curation with the idiosyncratic habits of living to create a dynamic archive.  This new type proposes the return of the classification of objects, as a tool for the structuring of knowledge, to its roots in the interactive lab of the home while also offering a space for the exhibition and encoding of personal memory. The goal of this project is to better spatially capture and project the dynamism, emotion, and discursive potentials intrinsic to the process of personal collecting.

Harvard GSD MArch I Thesis, spring 2010, Mariana Ibañez, advisor

Harvard GSD James Templeton Kelley Thesis Prize, 2010; published in Wallpaper* Magazine and Harvard GSD Platform 3; honored as one of Architectural Review’s “Worlds Best Representations”