Kasia Pilat
Terrace House
From the second-year graduate studio Three Houses in One, Fall 2020
Faculty: Penelope Dean, Grant Gibson
About the studio:
In this comprehensive housing studio, we reframed the concept of minimalism as a question of liveability: that is, a livable minimum over existenzminimum. We asked how a tiny home (less than 1,000 square feet) might offer dignified and comfortable modes of inhabitation in excess of providing for mere “existence.” Putting the rituals and possessions of inhabitants at the center, we explored minimum in all its multitudes: minimum possessions, minimum space, minimum materials, minimum structures, minimum gardens—an excess minimum. We then collectively reimagined the Chicago three-flat as “Three Houses in One” on vacant, city-owned Chicago lots.
About the project:
This project explores the house as an inhabited terraced landscape. It proposes living as an activity that occurs next to, underneath, and above a series of gardens spanning the entire width and length of a typical Chicago lot. In this way, it proposes minimalism as a function of compact interior spaces, and exuberance as a condition of spacious grand rooms and the abundantly vegetated and proliferated terracing.