Abstract IV

Kyle McMindes

More and more commonly  dwellers take less pride in, know less about, and interact less meaningfully with their homes. This expanding detachment between Dwelling and Dweller is generative of issues regarding one’s personal identity and growth, as well as their understanding of and caretaking for our physical environment.

The aim of this study is to explore the subtle yet ever present relationship between Dwelling and Dweller, so as to magnify this condition and procure a more acute sense of how are physical surroundings impact our individual identity and daily rituals. The work will utilize myself as both the investigator and the investigated, with my current residence (59 Englewood Ave.) acting as the site and instigator of the research. Broader subjects expected to be confronted through this experiment will be topics such as Routines/Habits, Familiarity/Nostalgia, Self-Reflection, Comfort, and Utility/Functionality. Investigations into this relationship will be conducted via extensive reading, writing, documentation, and many forms of making.

The media produced and discussed will piece together the fragments of everyday life and their physical relation to home, so as to generate responses/events that engage these newly realized threads. As of now the proposed product of the research is a series of imagined interventions within the home itself that will engage both Dwelling and Dweller in curiously fantastic and pattern altering ways. It should be made clear that the proposals are not intended to enhance the quality of life for the resident or improve the buildings performance in any particular way. The purpose of the interventions are to manipulate habits, instill fascination, and generate self-awareness relative to the home.

The implications of this work should be  a more experiential and holistic understanding of our homes and the endless everyday relations that occur within them. How they shelter, provide, engage, respond, and in trance us; and how we maintain, interact, furbish, and sustain them.

Q1: Can a dwelling go beyond the orchestration of routine and act as a genuine catalyst for habit making?

Q2: Can the interactions between dwelling and dweller  promote critical self awareness that fosters a genuine change or self realization within the user?
Q3: How can the study of existing events within the home inform interventions to it?