The house vehicle and vehicle house
Interior of the vehicle house
Private Courtyard
| vehicle-house | <------> | house-vehicle |
| mobility | <------> | immobility |
| coming home | <------> | home |
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"The two units re-frame each other's visual appearance and spatial system
through their differences in structural, enclosure, furnishing and siting
language. Mobility is expressed in the vehicle-house through a "thick" wall
construction: the delaminated wall is made up of layers of Kal-wall panels
and wood surfaces of built-in domestic amenities. Immobility is addressed in
the house-vehicle through its "thin" wall construction: layers of panel,
frame, and Kal-wall are pulled apart to reveal their thinness. Signs of
inhabitation are exteriorized in the facade and site built elements of the
house-vehicle and interiorized in the delaminated wall of amenities of the
vehicle-house. The vehicle-house acts as the agent of change: it creates a new spatial
orientation by creating a private enclosed yard and dominating the street facade.
The house-vehicle transforms its interior layout and openings to adapt to the
vehicle-house: it is the agent of recording."
(Excerpt from Student's Project Description) |
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The hybrid dwelling designed by Mimi Hoang is unsettling. Like the migrating eye of a
flounder it disturbs assumptions of what should move and what should remain settled.
Hoang distributes the functions of house between a permanent element
and a mobile trailer in a manner that confounds semantic expectations. The wheeled
element, presumably the more transitory, constructs the dominant public facade.
Tectonically, the flimsy walls of a traditional mobile home
are assiged to the more permanent part, and and the trailer carries
thick programmed walls. Playing with the contradictions of dwelling
without trying to resolve them, Hoang's project suggests a way of reinvigorating
the mobile home.
Belkind
Matsushita