‘rO:Om’

Abstract


 
 
 Architecture’s relation to landscape is often only recognised in its response to topography, views, access, orientation and apprehension of the built work’s own exterior. As an object placed in an environment architecture is an artefact externally enhanced by vegetation as well as a container adorned by an interior. Such architecture relies on the subservience of its surrounding physical landscape and its internal hollows to define what is ‘in’ and what is ‘out’, ‘here’ and ‘there’. Negotiation of these realms is determined by elements other than the dwelling body as a living, experiencing, cultural organism capable of navigating across formal spatial boundaries.
 This paper explores the architectural envelope as a porous medium informed by spatial and material transmissions between body and environment. This aqueous notion of inhabitation and material repositions architecture as the concurrence of interior and landscape whereby their localities are distinguishable within a continuum of particularised densities of matter accumulating and disintegrating over time. This theoretical and physical site is explored via the construction of a room.