House of Rooms

Rome, Italy
Rome Studio
November 2007

When presented with the brief for the HOUSE OF ROOMS (a small, parasitic dwelling for an artist) and the site (a long, dusty stretch of the Via del Mandrione outside of Rome), I was immediately drawn to a tiny, cramped, and dark space by a railway crossing, wedged in between a Roman aqueduct and an existing house.

The house lacks a true envelope; the floor, walls, and ceiling are not immediately apparent. Instead, the house is a distillation of the essential spaces of a house: spaces for working, sleeping, eating, and bathing. These are realized as curious, sculptural concrete boxes, strange interventions in an uninhabitable landscape that belie their domesticity.

For the resident, however, the rooms unfold and unlock to reveal intimate functional spaces. A wallpaper pattern, cast into a concrete wall, becomes a ladder to a capsule-like bedroom space above; a kitchen and sink are revealed as a concrete 'cupboard' is opened; behind a false door is a bathroom; and a concrete panel slides and unfolds to facilitate passage to a bright, open studio space.

The resident is the connective tissue that creates a unified dwelling. The rooms depend on his actions to exist as a house: hence, they are parasites.