This house is not for sale explores the transformation of spatial intentionality, the value of unearthed potential, allowing for its “being nothing”, liberating the perception and everyday use of the space and allowing it to stay as an informal architectural gesture.
At a certain point, the space was a defined, functional structure which transformed over time into being a place of relief, as people perceive it now. It has become open-ended with a spatial direction. I was certain that the key to opening a space was to unlock its potential, but I realized that the beauty of the structure layin the struggle between being something and being nothing. Therefore, its value was grounded in the non-utilization of its obvious potential, instead serving as a juxtaposition of multiple intentions.
Through witnessing and hanging out with the guys at the shed, it became clear to me that the project was about elaborating and amplifying the value of that particular space. The project cannot avoid being an overlay, an intervention within the space, but can also be understood as part of the juxtaposition, as long as the project also remains an underlay. This was expressed by exhibiting the space on behalf of the space, through photography and text; the space was explored in the same way that it was exhibited. Five photos and two texts were printed on aluminum and scattered around the space, freestanding. The exhibition itself dissolved during the night, and has now been dispersed further out.
Unfortunately, we live in a time in which we are dependent on answers. The beauty of this space lies in the absence – neither providing nor demanding answers.
Intention is the beginning, which dissolves itself through the beginning of the next. When choices limit themselves in opposition, intentions move freely, creating juxtapositions, absorbing a variety of tangents, transcending into a vector with direction. The traces of past intentions are perceived alongside present and future ones, amplifying the ambiguity that lies in the space. Intention inhabits multiple focuses, and has the ability to redirect itself in the occurring action, preserving the tension that forms out of overlapping intentions.
The building is materialised intention, where intention has dissolved but left its spatial specificity. An architectural gesture with direction, a once programmed structure, has become a wanderer. The past intention acts as a present spatial outline, a backdrop framing possibility for non-use. The non-utility of the structure, its “nothingness”, provides a liberty for the perception of the space and therefore its everyday usage. In this being nothing lies a constant urge to become something, an unfolded potential that in it-self upholds value, keeping the space in constant friction between potential and decay.
