The Incomplete Domestic Landscape

Our environments are failing us. Modernism’s relentless pursuit of efficiency, control, and purity has birthed a sterilization that has weakened our bodies bit by bit, little by little, to the point that they have almost been lost. We seek to unpack our relentless reality: its cold corners and its hard edges, its celebration of virtual futures and its endlessly scrolling present, its crumbling concrete and rusting re-bar, its fluorescent lighting and dying house plants, its unflinching march towards a singular Progress. We question the modernist notions of control and efficiency as tools for better living. We are Duo. We seek to squat, to occupy, to co-opt. We are subversive. We operate on and within. We are soft surfaces and unexpected jungles. We are talking about your house plants and your pillows, the faux fur you walk by in the fabric store and caress but never purchase, the fake Ficus in your mom’s entry way that she’s been watering for years, that carefully placed curtain that undulates between your back and your bed as your zoom call drones on, and the things that call for you to hold them and be held by them. But we are not tame nor subtle. We may love soft things, but this is not a soft touch. It is an explosion. We design, cultivate, and share supplements: shifts in viewing, entanglements, soft creations and strange installations. We work through examinations and operations within archives. Open to all, the resulting landscapes do not require heavy machinery and perhaps you should be impaired when you try them. We want to feel. We want you to feel. While you have been otherwise occupied, so have we. Here is that occupation.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Architecture

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Authors dc:creator

• Boes, Taylor
• Ma, Florence

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Miljacki, Ana
• Garcia, Deborah

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright retained by author(s)

Licence dc:rights.uri

• https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/147908

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/147908