cuckoo and the divorcees
the parallels between architecture and memory
There was once a story of a cold and indifferent house that juxtaposed the deranged personalities of those within it. They were crazy, borderline evil... personalities so ugly they deteriorated like decomposing corpses. Cuckoo was collateral damage; wherever the divorcees went, a radius of death followed. As cuckoo and the divorcees lived in the place, columns melted and twisted, some turned to dust. The furniture started turning into physical manifestations of their personality traits, and the cold and static setting became a patchwork of decomposition and unwavering structure. A mirror of their internal lunacy, this was the home of Cuckoo and the divorcees. The home was a seemingly endless colonnade, one that melted into nothingness - a disorienting maze of harsh concrete. Within the forest of columns, decomposing furniture that carried the odd essence of the divorcees weaved and lodged itself like a fungus, exponentially affecting its surroundings. The columns tried to remain sound, but as they struggled some buckled, creating singular moments of decomposition within the otherwise static grid. With nowhere to hide, bushes started growing around the patchwork, influencing privacy within the otherwise exhibitionist home. The sand from the surrounding beach was blown in by the never-ending storm that seemed to follow the divorcees, covering the ground in ever-changing dunes that, in their spiritual freedom, carved their own holes and crevices that became part of the home. The home of Cuckoo and the divorcees was only a simple colonnade; but with their repulsive selves came repulsive freedom in the forms of fungi furniture, carnivorous bushes, and snaking sand. This was an over- imposing static structure; cuckoo and the divorcees turned it into a static structure that contrasts the fluidity brought on by elements influenced by their repugnant souls.
In this way, this project rethinks the common idea of a house by playing with standardized elements of a home and turning them into fluid expressions of extreme insanity. The home is part of an endless, roof-less colonnade that has been built on a beach, somewhere where the winds are unbearable and the rain seems to never stop. Thus, the floors are always covered by moving sand dunes that invade it and move out as the wind blows. To contrast this sound structure and compliment the fluidity of the nature that invades it, the furniture of the home is fluid and behaves like fungi instead of furniture. In the dining room, the table has branch-like legs, and weaves itself through the columns, while the chairs are melting, distorting memories of something that resembles furniture. In the living room, the sitting areas weave through the columns like living insects and surround a pile of sand that lodges three small wooden planks that function as a coffee table. Columns melt into this pile of sand, and some turn into foamy mounds that function as adjacent seating on the ground. The bathroom is a pile of sand-turned-to-concrete that houses a set of holes; a toilet at its peak, a shower at its lowest point, and a fountain where the rain eroded ways for a small waterfall. In the abhorrent openness of the home, bushes started growing in areas where it needed privacy, specifically surrounding its most sensitive area: the bathroom. The sand also eroded the ground into a pathway leading to an unexplored underground; the stairs are an agonizing set of melting piles of sand and columns, descending into a dead end. The two bedrooms of the home are where cuckoo and the divorcees spend most of their time. The divorcees made the decision to co-parent cuckoo, but they despise each other. Thus, their bed weaves around a column, permanently separating the ratchet individuals from one another. Cuckoo’s bedroom represents his insanity: he hears voices in his head, thus his bed has room for him and each of his voices, in the form of a multidirectional mattress. As one weaves in between the different areas of the home, some of the buckling columns and arches become the only reminder of the insanity that resides just a few steps away.
