Our first experience with architecture begins at home. Home not only provides shelter, but also encourages us to think about ways of living and looking at the world, both physically and philosophically. Matthew Zaluska, an architect and founder of {tag:pracownie} during the pandemic, decided to explore the topic of "home" and its meaning with his friends Riccardo Amarri and Mathew Bailey, creating the website whatisahousefor. There he talks to architects and architectural theorists about the concept of home, what it means to live and why a house can be more than just a roof over one's head.
The idea for the whatisahousefor site was born over a year ago, when Matthew was working as an assistant at Martino Pedrozzi's Atelier at the Accademia di Architettura in Mendrisio, Switzerland.
Classes during the pandemic were taught online, on zoom or teams, as was the case in most places around the world at the time. Locked in the spaces of our homes, we saw fragments of the apartments of students, critics, professors in the windows of the computer programs on our screens. The situation, however difficult, strange, unusual, strongly emphasized the theme of being at home, being in a specific place, with all its consequences, stripped us of direct contact with public space," says Mateusz Załuska.
project manifesto
© whatisahousefor
house, that is?
Together with his second assistant, Italian Riccardo Amarri, he asked himself how to turn this situation into something positive, something they could remember not only as a restriction of freedom, or a fussy way of communicating and conducting activities. This led to the idea of creating a website, featuring conversations with architects and theorists of architecture and art, whose theme became the home - an element of our reality that could not be forgotten during the pandemic.
Spending almost all of our time at home, we wanted to consider what makes houses places worth living in? Where would we like to live and in what way? What qualities of the houses we know from history have sunk deeply into our memories? What in the architecture of houses makes us think of them? Maybe something causes us to be inspired to think about something completely different - our place in the universe, in nature, in society? What role does the form of the space in which we spend most of our lives play in shaping these reflections? - pondered Mateusz Załuska
each talk is available in three languages and illustrated with one graphic
© whatisahousefor
small lectures on architecture
Each of the invited architects was asked to choose one example from the entire history of architecture: a house, a shelter, a masterpiece of residential architecture, or an inhabitable structure. The choice was arbitrary, the only thing was that it should be a house that inspired the interviewees, or played an important role in their lives. The result was a series of conversations about homes, some more famous, others less so.
Angelo Bucci talks about Travertine House
© whatisahousefor
The authors of the project did not stop at describing the buildings, each time they tried to touch on topics related to space, philosophy, or put architecture in a personal, emotional, social context. Their goal is for the project to become a collection of small architecture lessons, as the issues raised go much further than a simple report on composition and function. They want to arouse curiosity about the topic of habitation and draw attention to the qualities and pleasures that the architecture of a house can bring to everyday life.
We decided to publish texts in three languages, wanting to give the site as universal a shorthand as possible. English is the dominant language of the West, Chinese the dominant language of the East. Japanese, on the other hand, is the language of a country that we believe has done so much for the culture of the home that we would like to pay tribute to it in this way. We've framed each text with a single graphic - a plan, cross-section or elevation drawn in color - that we think best illustrates the main topics covered in the interview. The team behind the site currently consists of eight people. Matthew Bailey is overseeing the English version and editing the texts with the rest of the team. Jie Zhang from Shanghai translates the texts into Chinese and Kou Matsumura from Tokyo translates them into Japanese. Keigo Mori, my brother Adam Załuska and my wife Kasia Załuska proofread the texts and provide editorial assistance," Mateusz Załuska says about the project.
each of the invited architects talks about one house
© whatisahousefor
architects from around the world
The website premiered online in early June this year. For good measure, the creators of the project published the first six texts. They invited renowned and award-winning architects from Switzerland, Norway, Finland, France, Brazil and Portugal to join the conversation. You can find stories about:
- Casa a Costa by Livio Vacchini, narrated by Giacomo Guidotti,
- Sea Stairway House designed by Kazuo Shinohara, narrated by Neven Fuchs,
- Travertine House by Gordon Bunschaft, is described by Angelo Bucci,
- Rintamamiestal prefabricated houses, built just after the war in Finland, is described by Sami Rintala,
- Casa Gerber by Paulo Mendes da Rocha is cited by Alexandre Theriot of Bruther,
- House in Ofir by Fernando Tavora is described by Sergio Fernandez.
The site's authors hope that it will sucsesively grow with more stories and inspiring examples from around the world. They plan to publish eight more texts in the second half of 2021 and conduct more interviews, which will appear in 2022.
All texts are available on the website and downloadable as a pdf file. We also encourage you to follow the instagram account what.is.a.house.for, where you will find information about new publications and events.
