Marcelo Muro
Sleeping Together
From fourth-year undergraduate studio A Settlement on Turtle Island.
Faculty: Grant Gibson
About the studio:
This studio was rooted in the idea that at most moments in the more than two hundred thousand years of human existence, the dwelling and home life were not the reciprocal of the city and urbanity. Rather, home life or the specifics of human cohabitation were the originators of all notions of public life. Initiated by studies of Pre-Columbian North America, this studio sought to understand how and to what degree private life is private. Organized as three equal exercises—a study of Native North American dwelling types, a separate study of outdated domestic spaces, and a final design proposition—the course aimed to challenge the distinctions between notions of the private unique dwelling within a larger community. Presented through orthographic drawings and simple models, the work of the studio is singular buildings that suggest alternative cultural norms and possible urbanities.
About the project:
The center component of the project is the “Sleepingroom”, taking up 4096 sqft. A ring of bathrooms, dressing rooms, and linen closets surround it, and must be crossed to get to one’s personal dwelling. With no bedrooms or bathrooms dictating delinations of privacy, the individual home can be absent of interior walls and take on more fluid spaces. Its overall form expresses a civic gesture, but its scale is domestic with the roof being only 7 ft above the ground level. The living spaces are sunken 3 ft below grade, being visible to exterior viewing. The bathrooms are sunken another step, making the most intimate space the most viewed. The Sleepingroom is then past two layers of curtains and two steps up, announcing the final, collective point. The Sleepingroom can accomodate to any arrangement, providing privacy to those on mattresses stacked high, or security to those under makeshift tents out of twin-sized mattresses.
Winner of the 2022 Louis Sullivan Award-Director's Prize