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The House and its Double

Part 1 Project 2007
Rachel Harding
University of Cambridge | UK
What would happen if we could slice through the psychological fabric of the domestic as easily as we can peer under the bed? This design proposal for the house and its double critiques both the current dominant model of terraced housing in Kings Cross, London, and provides an alternative house mode which highlights the dominant socio-cultural rituals of everyday life and the more sinister social dimensions to domestic living. The house's double responds to existing family power structures and living patterns, choreographing events between hidden and exposed spaces, distorting the hierarchies, values and architectures of all family members.
Rachel Harding


The studio brief explored what it means to create urban living units within London's dense mesh of networks and forces, and what the core unit of contemporary British domestic life might be. The strength of Rachel’s scheme lies in its conceptual rigour when dealing with the complex power relationships in a singular family unit. The play and misuse of relationships exploits and subverts the internal geography of domestic rituals, creating a noir milieu that, to quote one of the external examiners, "makes the hairs rise on the back of the neck."

2007
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