Architects reimagine domestic space in the 2019 HOME Competition

How will the concept of home be redefined in the future? Arch out loud's yearly HOME Competition showcases some of the ideas brewing in the minds of today's architects and designers, who were invited to speculate the ways that new technological, political, environmental and cultural changes are reshaping the spaces we live in.

The results of the 2019 competition have been announced, with one project being crowned the overall winner as well as recipients for the Innovation Award, Adaptability Award, and Pragmatic Award.

Overall winner: "International Ceramics Friendship Park”
Participants: Alex Reed & Dutra Brown
Location: Los Angeles, USA

Project description: “As the boundary between work and life grows ever thinner, we propose a social housing model based on vocation. The slippage between work and hobby, the professional and the personal, is accelerating and International Ceramics Friendship Park speculates on the spatial implications of our longer lifespans where the ‘#hustle’ never stops. Aging millennials will bring ideals of self-realization with them as they grow older and will continue to prioritize experiences over ownership. Hobbies become work, work becomes life, and the urge to professionalize our creative interests allows everyone to keep ‘living the dream’ into collective retirement.

I.C.F.P is a city built to house retired potters; complete with a pension tower, Monumental Shard Pile, Tomb Of the Unknown Craftsperson, kiln-heated pool, and labyrinth walking path. In our proposal, organized labour again wields sizable power, this time in proportion to the cultural capital that their craft-work has engendered across media and advertising at large. This post-work craft utopia is funded through the sale of advertisements placed on the facade of The Potters’ Pension Tower and from royalties generated by leveraging the likeness of those who live and work in International Ceramics Friendship Park.”

Honorable Mention: Fabricated Landscapes
Participants: Blake Minster 

Honorable Mention: place of not much use
Participants: Dutra Brown 

Director’s Choice: The Age of Things
Participants: Yang Wenhao & Wang Yong & Wei Jianxue & Wu Wenqi 

Director’s Choice: Personal Place
Participants: Haozhou Zeng 

Director’s Choice: X-Ray House
Participants: Tommy Nam & Eujean Cheong & Juyong Park

Innovation Award winner: “Sphere House: Tectonics of Buoyancy”
Participant: Jin Young Song

Project description: “Home is to protect people from dynamic forces happening around the social, technical, and environmental challenges. Thus, the architecture of home can be defined by the performance and capacity of the protection in response to the corresponding challenges. The project focuses on one of the most emergent threats, the climate change: global warming and the rise of sea level. Sphere House is a floating structure with minimized embodied energy, maximizing the use of space by the mechanical rotation and buoyancy on the water. Dynamic control of air chambers in FLIP Research Vessel in 1968 presented the 90-degree rotation of the ship. Rotating wheel space station is designed by Wernher von Braun in 1952 and the centripetal motion is visualized in a film 2001 A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick in 1968. Learning from these works, Sphere house proposes the simple and efficient floating home in which programs are rotating along with the movement of the resident. The skin of the sphere allows dynamic view control and solar energy harvesting with necessary air intake and exhaust, water purification, and buoyant control. The external buoyant system supports the movement of the sphere with structural stability and connection to other vessels.”

Honorable Mention: No Longer Abandoned
Participants: Wirada Daengpiam & Aunnop Kaewphanna 

Honorable Mention: 4 X 4 House
Participants: Galo Canizares & Stephanie Sang (OFFICE CA) 

Director’s Choice: Taobao Domesticity
Participants: Samuel Esses & Jonathan Wong 

Director’s Choice: Domestic Fly Tower
Participants: Oscar Zamora & Alan Mayorga & Mauricio Valenzuela 

Director’s Choice: (ANAN/ANON) Systemⓒ
Participants: Benjamin Wilke

Adaptability Award: “To the Rest of the Land (ENSATERISHENTOHSA NE OHONTSIA)”
Participants: Benjamin Mayne & Abraham Francis

Project description: “TO REST THE LAND - Our ancestors told us the world would end. We watch our mother suffer; she needs to rest and renew herself. Original Instructions tell us to acknowledge Creation, as we are kin; At the intersection of place, community, and knowledge is our identity. Warrior Woman said, “form is a temporary expression of energy... pulsing oscillations cycle through birth, life, renewal, and, again, life.” Survival hinges on reclaiming our reciprocal relationships with Iethinisten:ha. — Teharonhiathe Francis

This is not the world left to us. It is a place of poisoned soils, dying forests, and fouled streams. For centuries, colonialists have burned, extracted, and stolen what they please, feeding an infinite hunger with finite resources. This project reconceptualizes sustainability through the Haudenosaunee semi-nomadic tradition, envisioning a home designed to be deliberately abandoned and re-consumed by its environment, feeding and recognizing the perpetual cycle of life and death. The structure is both a home and a cultural device, each successive generation passing crucial knowledge to the next through the act of rebuilding. The swaddling star quilt is the only permanent object, a cherished gift to be maintained over innumerable years and sites, linking each generation to those that came before.”

Honorable Mention: + House
Participants: Dominique Cheng 

Honorable Mention: Amazonian Watchtower
Participants: Navid Simanian 

Director’s Choice: NeoNomad
Participants: Dylan Roth & Estefania Barajas 

Director’s Choice: Reformation Loft
Participants: Sumi Li 

Director’s Choice: TWO HOUSES (or several) OR ONE (for many more)
Participants: Kimball Kaiser

Pragmatic Award: “Alpha Boom Co-Housing” 
Participants: Jeff Jordan & Frank DeBlasio & Jiuye Yan

Project description: “The housing proposal aims to accommodate significant shifts in suburban landscapes. First, the shift from traditional “big box” retail to online retail leaves behind large abandoned structures and oversized parking lots. The project proposes a reuse and adaptation of these defunct structures to accommodate the second shift, an aging population. As a large portion of the populace enters their golden years and balks at the idea of traditional senior living typologies, the aging retail fabric could be appropriated to accommodate seniors who would otherwise have to leave their communities.

The project proposes a hybrid senior housing community (baby boomers) and daycare for young children (generation alpha) in place of an abandoned department store in New Jersey. The hybrid strategy aims to create diverse energy levels and activities throughout the complex in order to benefit both populations. Activities in and around the housing complex could mix the two communities together in both planned and chance encounters. 

The combined senior housing and daycare community is largely enclosed by the existing structure, however, the design carves out and pushes through portions of the original building to create a porous series of indoor-outdoor spaces and courtyards. Modest housing units are located on the first level and supplemented with cooperative amenities like a kitchen, lounges and gardens. The second level incorporates the daycare and stretches across the length of the structure. Double height zones merge the amenity spaces of the older residents below with the classroom spaces of the young children above, creating truly shared, inter-generational links.”

Honorable Mention: Inevitable House
Participants: Miroslava Brooks & Daniel Markiewicz & Aaron Payne
Office: FORMA 

Honorable Mention: Home Essentials
Participants: Nero Chenxuan He & Haocheng Dai & Yue Di & Laure Michelon 

Director’s Choice: Suburban Horror Story
Participants: Matthew Hayes 

Director’s Choice: HOUSE of Cores
Participants: Kristy Balliet & Kelly Bair (BAIRBALLIET) 

Director’s Choice: Plex(c)ity
Participants: Charles Laurence Proulx & Gil Hardy & Pascale Julien & Maxime Deom

You can check out the winning results in further detail here.

The 2019 jury featured:

Erin Besler - Besler & Sons, LLC; Preston Scott Cohen - Preston Scott Cohen Inc.; Peter Cook - CRAB STUDIO; Anne Fougeron - FOUGERON ARCHITECTURE; Elena Manferdini - Atelier Manferdini; James Ramsey - RAAD; Nader Tehrani - NADAAA; Tom Wiscombe - Tom Wiscombe Architecture; and Stefano Boeri - Stefano Boeri Architetti