Maison Héroine
by Tasos Giannakopoulos (MArch II ‘19).
A future has arrived. The year is 2048 and automation has resolved all of issues of labour on behalf of humans. Time is abundant. Spaces designated for work have become obsolete. Metropoles and their concomitant working opportunities have become irrelevant. A massive flee towards the countryside is evident. Housing is urgent. How does one live when there is no work to be done? How does architecture respond to such a crisis?
The time of the engineer is a faraway echo in 2048. The time of the poet has arrived. People do what they have always been doing when labour was being taken care of; they philosophize, they make art and have sex. Architecture is the medium though which the desire for free, unconstrained creation from every institution and authority is fulfilled. A superblock of nine housing units each arranged around a central garden is the prototype that is proposed. Public rooms with functions that constitute the everyday rituals of this new reality fill the ground floor in various arrangements. One occupies rooms instead of apartments scattered around the blocks in the way that fits their own personal lifestyle. An excessively stimulating urban environment is created. The linear narrative is no longer available. The spatial hyperlink has been fulfilled. Forms from the heroic Modernist age are appropriated shamelessly. La Tourette is mass produced and calls forth these new followers to match their spaces of dwelling with their way of living.