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Melissa Gourley
First Year
'Instead of accepting life's peculiarities, it seems we have devised strict conventions by which the unfamiliar, the discomforting, and the eccentric are altogether avoided. There is a certain correctness to doing things now and we have called it the normal way. But normality has short-changed our experiences of any real challenge or new stimulation where the true complexities of life are allowed to flourish. Cedric Boulet, Disturbed ArchitectureA documentation of the adaptation undergone by a couple Mr and Mrs X who convert their one-storey one-bedroom bungalow into a three-storey two-bedroom house.Blocking thresholds and stairwells at Robin Hood Gardens to create new spaces for gathering.'Well I would say that what was inconvenient was the original plan where you came up and, partly because of the way we had asked them to do it with the kitchen-dining area separated there was no accommodation for people coming in the front door where they would put their shoes, their coats, their hats, their mitts. That was supposed to be solved by people using the back door, which they didn't. So this new arrangement with the side door and split level means that people come in and there's space to put boots and hats and coats.''Well, when we saw the plans we had made some changes and the changes are some things that probably were not a wise choice but when we went in and saw them we were really ecstatic, except that I thought there was going to be an additional third window up high and they had eliminated it, they thought there would be too much sun coming in.' 'Oh I really enjoyed that. It was kind of exciting to climb up and down and also it had a disadvantage too if we didn't want the dog to climb up on to the bed, it couldn't, or a cat, the cat could I'm sorry the cat could leap up and down I think, but no I enjoyed that actually. It felt very cozy up there away from the world, so to speak, but of course in time it had to, had to come down.''All buildings, once handed over by the builders to the client, have three possible fates, namely to remain unchanged, to be altered or to be demolished. The price for remaining unchanged is eventual loss of occupation, the threat of alteration is the entropic skid, the promise of demolition is of a new building ... In such a world, devoid as it would be of any taint of sentiment, what might be the qualities that would save a building from destruction?' Fred Scott, On Altering Architecture