A/Partments
The etymological root of the word apartment — the building type most associated with collective inhabitation — means to be “apart from.”
Chicago, IL
1992-94
For an older population, personal objects take on a particular kind of importance, and yet, in many housing circumstances, there is minimum space to display or store these objects, these signs of memory and personality. The principal focus of this project was these places of display and storage, or, to state it another way, with the social, psychological, and physical configurations of counters, tables, seats, cabinets, closets, and thresholds. The etymological root of the word apartment — the building type most associated with collective inhabitation — means to be “apart from.” The directed interweaving of shelves, counters, tables, cabinets, and thresholds is thus developed is developed by reconfiguring “belongings” and “separations,” by drawing apart events that conventionally belong together (as “a-part-ofs”) and by drawing together events that are conventionally separated apart.
For an extended discussion of the project see “A/Partments,” Assemblage 35: 48-61.
