lake_tahoe_house

Inspirations for the House_of_the_Dirty_Bastard.
A collection of excellent photographs and scans by Igor and Clarice Bogdanov. October 2000.





We long for a simple and elegant house with nice surroundings.

We want it to feel simple, so simple that it barely exists as a house, always on the verge of disappearing, looking and feeling empty from the outside as well as the inside. Because we want its content to change often. We know emptiness is a difficult goal. We don't want to feel oppressed by our belongings, to have them thrown at our sight and later, once we'll be used to them, thrown at the sight of our visitors all day long with us not realizing that this is happening.

We don't want it to be a blockhaus although we like the idea of being safe from outside aggression in this house. There should be a good balance of disturbing, unsettling and comforting details. We want it to be under-designed. We only like Jean-Pierre Raynaud's house when he puts hay in it.

We want it to be able to evolve but we don't want it to be modular. It should be easily reconfigurable. We want to have habits in this space and the main habit should be to change habits. This is not possible without rules but we don't really want rules in there. From the little we know of Andy Warhol's factory we like the fact that it was a multipurpose space in which people, even first time guests, were encouraged to change the purpose and the configuration at will. Entertainment is our goal at least as much as it was his.

Chain reaction is something we would like to see happen en masse in this space.

We certainly don't want this house to be an art gallery although there's going to be a lot of art happening, being eaten and sacrificed in that house. It is not an art exhibition space maybe just an exhibition space. Exhibitionism will be encouraged. We want to present objects there, some of which might become art but art will not be regarded very highly in this house. We like to create things and events that people could view as art even though it was not intended to have this status. Also we want this house to be outrageously spacious. We don't want to fake space or try to trick the user into believing that there is more space than there actually is. We want the space to be so bold that it is thrown at the user's mind. And we want her to feel the agora. And to be comfortable in this agora. A cosy agora if you will. We liked the space of Ace gallery in NYC.

And we want it to be very comfortable. This is why we want to use straight lines, parallelepipeds and sharp angles. We cannot stand blobjects any longer. We don't believe that amorphic elements interact better with human beings than simple geometric shapes do. On the contrary we believe a flat and shiny surface can provide the kind of comfort we are looking for right now. The problem with blobjects is that they fit too well. They make us claustrophobic. It feels good to hold them in your hand or to recline on them for about 30 seconds but soon you start missing the physical and psychological negative space that is necessary for you to breathe. How much of the object is in contact with the body?

Yes, we want a lot of nothing.





Here are some inspiring places (files up to 178K).

Mountain [1][2]
Country [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7]
Desert [1]
Urban [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]





Credits:
- All pictures are copyleft Bogdanov and Bogdanov unless differently specified.
- Andy Warhol in his glittery Factory, 1965. Photograph by Jon Naar.