Architecture of the Persona vs. Architecture of the Project (Term 1 Jury Argument)

Introduction:

"The 'Cult of Celebrity' became a popular social phenomenon in the late 20th Century. Driven by constant publicity and exposure in tabloid magazines, reality TV shows, twitter and the like, the cult is based around a widespread fascination with the lives of famous individuals. It started with the glamorous world of acting and fashion but in recent years has infiltrated the profession of architecture with the creation of the starchitect. The evolution of a celebrity architect was inevitable due to the delayed gratification of the product associated with the profession. Situated within an impatient contemporary culture that craves instant results, the architect began to create products, stage sets, publications, logotypes and clothing to satisfy the public's needs and to remain relevant whilst their buildings were erected...

Context:

Two of the founding celebrities in the realm of design, were Charles and Ray Eames. Masters of self-promotion and adept in an astonishing number of disciplines, the designer couple who lived and worked in California from the early 1940s, constructed a persona that embedded them within the public's collective memory. Their house in the Pacific Palisades, was commissioned by Arts and Architecture magazine in 1945 as Case Study House #8 - built for a couple working in design and the graphic arts. Appropriating pre-fabrication techniques and industrial materials, the Eames' created a modern container for everyday living. By designing, building and inhabiting this house, the Eames became role models for society, exemplifying how life should be lived in the post-war years. Documenting their lifestyle within their architectural project through a plethora of images, books and films, the Eames were able to disseminate their design philosophy of 'work in life' to a vast audience.

The house was seen as an extension of the Eameses' persona and yet at the same time in all their staged images, the couple were equivalent to objects, placed carefully within the house to symbolize the perfection of their domestic environment. They used the architecture of the project as a vehicle to construct their persona. It became a stage-set for them to display products they had designed and show how Modernist homes should be inhabited to create a beautifully designed environment. The domestic notion of the home became a place of overlap between the Persona and the Project. The house, being an inherently individual and private domain, serves as an architectural opportunity for the Persona to manifest itself.

The overwhelming amount of imagery, literature and films that the Eames produced within or about the house made this project very accessible as an architectural object for the public to experience both visually and physically. The physicality of the home was important - it transformed the ideal into a reality and encouraged others to try to live like the Eames did. Yet the existence of the Eameses was crucial for house to be understood. Since Ray's death in 1988 (10 years after Charles died) the House has lain empty of life yet full of objects. It now sits as a sealed monument on its meadow site in California; the sole Case Study House that limits entry let alone inhabitation.

Competition:

In October 2010, the Eames Foundation decided to allow the Library of Congress access to the objects within the house so they could be catalogued within their existing archive. With the prospect of the house being left vacant for a year, the foundation saw it as an opportunity to hold an invited competition - The Eames Inhabitation Project - to create much needed publicity and funding for the upkeep of the House - the aim being to underline the continued relevance of the Eames House in contemporary society.

The competition invited couples working within the design profession to submit proposals of how they would inhabit this iconic architectural project over the course of a year and how this inhabitation would be reflective of their personality and lifestyle. Any interventions should be limited to the exterior envelope of the home and studio and should be easily dismantled to restore the house to its original conditions. All projects would be published by Taschen in a special issue of Arts & Architecture magazine and the winning couple would actually inhabit the house starting January 2011. Each entry was to contain a single image of the proposal accompanied by an explanation in the form of an A4 book, a short statement to summarize the couples' intention and a cheque for 50,000 dollars as an entry fee to be used for the maintenance and upkeep of the house.

The invitation of an eclectic selection of public personas to inhabit the same iconic project led to a variety of proposals that either emphasized or challenged the Eamesian interpretation of the House.

The Beckhams:

David and Victoria Beckham interpreted the house as a stage set for the performance of their everyday activities. - ranging from posing for photoshoots, parenting their three young sons and relaxing at home. Their idea of home exists at a much larger scale, creating the context for a multitude of press images which are viewed by a global audience. 

SANAA:
By contrast, SANAA chose to create an architectural manifestation of the Eamesian tradition of documenting inhabitation - an architecture of manifold possibilities. By creating a framework in which the same space can be experienced in a multitude of ways, they wanted to create a unique experience for each individual within the space. They explored different options of floating curved enclosures versus floating cubes culminating in the creation of thin spatial dividers with square openings, that could frame the inhabitation of the space beyond - thereby, capturing images through architecture rather than with a camera.

Lawson/ Saatchi:

Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi, a renowned homemaker living with an art collector and ad man,  can both personally relate to the characters of Charles and Ray.  They were inspired by the Eameses as a role model for society, thereby making their philosophy of living through designing or 'work in life' accessible to all. In response to this, Nigella crafts a didactic collection of recipes for living explaining how one can recreate her pleasing domestic environment.

Venturi/ Scott Brown:

Venturi and Scott Brown challenge the very idea of the house as it exists today - devoid of inhabitation and the persona upon which it was based. Searching for inspiration, they uncovered an early sketch by Charles for a multi-screen installation and also saw potential in the cabinet of curiosities that is the collection of over 350,000 slides within the Eames archive. With the history of the house and its inhabitation being communicated solely through the media portal of images and films, Venturi and Scott Brown propose to invert the interior so that the facade, the sole remaining point of contact for visitors to the site, should become an interactive membrane, communicating the legacy of the house and Eames persona as a manifestation of the archive.

Conclusion:

Through conceiving of these multiple inhabitations of a single project, I began to question the different ways in which the persona could be manifested within the project and whether the architecture of the project should be the spatial construct of the persona.

However, it seems counterintuitive to build in the obsolescence of the architecture of the project by embedding the truncated lifespan of the architecture of the persona within it. The permanence of the project is juxtaposed against the impermanence of the persona yet this gap could be bridged through the notion of legacy or those aspects of the persona which remain and continue to influence current events.

In my further work I would like to explore how the legacy of the Persona could be manifested within the architecture of the project so that it can outlast the lifetime of the persona - a trait that was missing in the case of the Eames House. Charles and Ray Eames did not pursue architecture as avidly as they did furniture or product design because of the lack of control over the architectural object when mass produced. I would like to explore whether this lack of control could be solved through deeper integration with the persona so that the architecture itself becomes prescriptive of a certain way of inhabitation that evolves specifically over time.