Raze the Roof

The traditional image of the American home depends heavily on the pitched roof. Christopher Alexander spoke about the primacy of image in A Pattern Language, when he wrote of a study in which children, when asked to draw a picture of home—even those who had never lived in a single family house—always drew a typical elevation of a house with a pitched roof. This project works algorithmically to refuse the image of an American home by rejecting the pitched roof in two ways: by refusing the roof's image, and also recasting how it contains space.

Model photo credit: Mitch McEwen

STATUS: Academic
DATE: Winter 2017
LOCATION: Fitzgerald, Detroit, MI