Together Whenever
SPRING 2017 / MASTERCRIT / Jürgen Meyer H. & Jasmine Benyamin
MASTERCrit is an initiative for a group of ten students to work on a weekend-long charrette under the direction of world-renowned architects. MASTERcrit 2017, entitled “Together Whenever”, was directed by Jürgen Meyer H., founder and principal, J. Mayer H. and Partner in Berlin, Germany and MASTERCrit Coordinator, assistant professor, Jasmine Benyamin.
The “Together Whenever” charrette questions and rethinks innovative concepts of sharing for new housing project strategies such as transformations of ownership, time-based usage, common use of services, and the organization of social activities, all which transform traditional understandings of housing and home. Furthermore, the charrette explores the balance between intimacy and privacy, between individual and communal, between retreat and involvement, between personal touch and our shared aesthetic, between mine, yours, and ours.
All programmatic elemetns of housing were on display for rethinking what is shared and what is separate. Using Mies van der Rohe’s 860/880 Lakeshore Drive as a framework, the buildings were then “unmade” and reassembled as a new architectural proposal for a future housing strategy. Integration of applications and technology into the new strategies was also undertaken to explore logistics of sharing.
The programmatic elements taken on by the MASTERcrit group were: fitness [Jordan Nelson], knowledge/libraries [Jackson Leverenz], mixed-living arrangements [Mary Vander Steeg], gardens [Bridgette Binczak], live-work arrangements [Jack Grover], leisure/recreational [Adam Oknin], comprehensive sharing/total communal living [Tia Milkova], laundry [Hrishikesh Pandit], kitchens [Sarah Traver], and bathrooms [me]. Photographer [Eli Liebenow].
The bathroom strategy proposes that all in-unit bathrooms be removed and replaced with a single, shared bathroom per floor. Sacrificing the bathroom within each unit allows square footage to be utilized for other functions such as kitchens or living rooms. The shared bathroom encourages community building and challenges notions of privacy.
Furthermore, the bathroom proposal suggests that residents be placed at the same eye-level when using the bathroom fixtures [showers, toilets, sinks]; however, residents not using a fixture are unable to make eye contact with those using the bathroom. The floor slab thickens and thins to ensure that an eye-level datum is consistent regardless of what fixture is being used. Although users are able to make eye contact across the room, making the space extremely social and shared, privacy/separation is achieved by partition walls strategically placed throughout the room. The strategy constantly balances ideas of public and private, shared and separate.
Finally, the bathroom strategy attempts to rethink and challenge the social constructs/stigmas around bathrooms (i.e. gender neutrality, socialization within bathrooms, eye contact/typical bathroom behaviors). Exploring how technology and apps could be implemented into bathrooms, the app proposal, “Shit Happens”, permits users to view wait times for each fixture and see which are in use, see when friends are using the bathroom and what they’re doing, and monitor floor water usage to name a few.
