House of Our Time

Intro

This project focuses on transferring the “dynamic cubism“ into architectural language and providing a new typology with multiple private layers that mimics the “hard, bright, and brittle“ aspects inspired by Jacob Lawrence’s masterpiece.

"Dynamic Cubism"

The “Migration Series“ introduced us from the migration under the dark periods to the next step of living of African Americans. By reorganizing the original drawing series that reflects the realities, we can categorize them into the rising of culture, visual forms, languages, and the new identity of African Americans. The style of Jacob is called “dynamic cubism”. This theory contains the dynamic change of ideology on spacial qualities, political concerns, and attitudes on living styles that can be translated into forms of living.

Jacob is known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. He brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors.

The "hard, bright, brittle" aspects of Harlem during the Great Depression inspired Lawrence as much as the colors, shapes, and patterns inside the residents' homes.

He miraculously escaped the imprint of academic ideas and current vogues in art. He has followed a course of development dictated by his own inner motivations.

PRIVATE

The private area is for the family’s own space. After the homeowner ensures that visitors cannot peek through from the public area, higher transparency is better for the family to keep safe with vision control and allowance of the skylight. This reversed process is special for the home project.

PUBLIC

Homeowner does not like visitors to be able to look through from the public area to the private area.The transparency level for public area is low