One House Per Day
One House Per Day is a slow meditation on the place of the detached house in the architectural discipline and in broader culture. The basic proposition of the project is that a continued engagement with the detached house as a source of architectural innovation may enable the discipline to stay relevant in an American culture in which the detached house remains by far the most popular form of dwelling. As it stands now, the continued dominance of the detached house serves to maintain the continued dominance of the nuclear family structure. Even the default nomenclature of the detached house - “single family” - promulgates a situation in which the house solidifies dominant social arrangements and forecloses upon alternatives to the nuclear family. By engaging with the detached house as a typology, One House Per Day has tried to question this by imagining different ways of life that might take place within the detached house. Thus, each house in the series in some way embodies an idea about reorganizing domestic space within the paradigm of the detached house.One House Per Day started as a daily practice - draw a plan, section, and isometric of a house. The motivation was simple - my professional work was extremely technical and banal and so the daily drawing was a way of keeping my design skills sharp and continuing to think creatively about architecture.
OHPD no.11
OHPD no.017
OHPD no.19
OHPD no.25
It quickly became a forum for the exploration of architectural obsessions. Because there wasn’t a defined endpoint to the project, the same ideas could be explored through many different iterations.
A scroll through the Instagram page circa September 2020. We here at OHPD still mourn the loss of the square grid.
An obsession: Houses composed of matrices of interconnected rooms.
An obsession: Inhabitable architectural elements.
An obsession: Houses that define interior space without the use of walls.
OHPD has had a life as a curatorial project. From 2021-2022 a series of authors contributed “guest weeks” of seven houses each. The guests ranged from established practices to emerging designers. There were no restrictions other than the three-drawing format, and even that loosened up over time. Thus each guest was able to use their guest week as an opportunity to explore their own interests.
Each guest contributed seven drawings. Like these by Brooklyn-based practice Architensions.
Or these, by New York-based practice Mattaforma
OHPD no.403 by Brian Holland / The Openset
OHPD no.428 by Stephanie Jazmines
OHPD no. 457 by Jaewoo Chon
OHPD no.483 by Studio Fabula
OHPD no.485 by Andrew Kudless
OHPD no.492 by AFAB Studio
OHPD no.503 by Primary Projects
OHPD no.514 by Zachary Veach
OHPD no.574 by Clark Thenhaus / Endemic
OHPD no.590 by Studio APT
OHPD no.625 by Avi Odenheimer
OHPD no.696 by Ian Miley
My life has changed a lot since 2020, but I’ve tried to keep the project alive in various forms. Like these drawings, done quickly using my daughter’s crayons:
OHPD no.701
OHPD no.702 (with an assist from my daughter)
OHPD no.704
OHPD no.705
Or a recent series of OHPD Elevation drawings:
OHPD Elevation no.01
OHPD Elevation no.04
OHPD Elevation no.10
OHPD Elevation no.19
