NINE HOUSES
NINE (SENTIENT) HOUSES is a study of sentient houses in the haunted house subgenre of horror, an interrogation of the relationship between architecture and the stories we tell about it, and an insistence on narrative as a worthwhile design practice.
Horror is fascinating in that architecture is often a direct actor in the story–usually to the detriment of the story’s protagonists–and it rarely, if ever, explains why or how that is. Walls shift and rearrange themselves spontaneously; doors never lead where you think they will, stairways appear and disappear; residents, both permanent and temporary, find themselves thinking or behaving in ways they ordinarily would not. Science fiction might chalk these things up to technology, and fantasy might credit magic. But when it comes to horror, we are left in the dark–literally and figuratively.
Essentially, horror deploys architecture in unique ways, and NINE HOUSES argues that these incidents are worthy of serious architectural study. The fear inherent to horror is not the point; rather, I’m curious about these architectural conditions in a vacuum. They pose no threat here. This ethos borrows from Bernard Tschumi’s idea of movement notation, which “attempts to eliminate the preconceived meanings given to particular actions in order to concentrate on their spatial effects.” In other words, we must not ask whether the wall should move. The wall is moving. What are the consequences?
METHODOLOGY : Literary analysis, writing, model making, diagramming
STATUS : Ongoing; majority undertaken Fall 2023-Spring 2024
DESIGN TEAM : Hollie Sikes, under the guidance of Mark Stanley
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