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I have been interested in architecture and the everyday... To put it broadly, I'd like to think that the built environment can challenge cultural patterns formed trough the inevitable routinary practices (sleep, eat, burp, defecate...). To me this constitutes a form of politics, a form of resistance if you like. This not only takes into account time, but what is contained in it. the nomadic subjects that inhabit it, their relationships, and their interactions with animated or/and inanimate objects or entities.
I believe there are two challenges in the idea of approaching architecture from this perspective. One is that one has to be clear about what constitutes the everyday, how it is captured and how it is portrayed. Second it has to do with the revealing of what constitutes cultural within the information, that if we are to propose, we can't take part in a practice of portraying, instead we have to propose in a critical manner, i.e. how do we challenge these habits or cultures? which are the implication of these? and perhaps on a different note, how do we engage in post-occupation, which is so ever unpresent in architectural photography, and its what to me, defines its success.

I have found some examples which I think are particularly effective in portraying the material framework involved in the everyday. Obviously they have their limitations...Some don't show the inhabitants or show no sign of their biological cycles or their environmental conditions. Most of them show spaces of familiarity or domesticity and look almost like set designs, very static. In any case they offer a glimpse to a piece or an edited reality. More or less artistic, depending on their author/process, the pictures reveal more or less abstractly, trough the looking glass of composition. Contingency is also present, as well a dirt and even a couple of moments of simultaneity are revealed... It is clear to me that this is only a fraction of what an exploration of the everyday could be. The intricacy or the methods of representation are key, and these are successful as they clear all the possible clutter (as much as they are concerned with comprehension) that the complexity of the everyday might spit in our faces.


Society for Community Organisation

Aneta Grzeszykowska and Jan Smaga

Menno Aden

Juerguen Chill

Gaspar Noe

Alain Paiement

I consider this whole compilation more as a cuantitative example than a qualitative. And they all show quite strongly some common features (i.e. acentuation of the flat surface, devaluation of partitions, freezing of action, accumulation of time, signs of stigmergy, clear relationships between objects which is not so apparent at an horizontal perception, portrayal of intimacy, domesticity, and in some cases a celebration of chaos or a socio-political statement).

I would also like to note that Gaspar Noe's images are from his movie Enter the Void, which I highly recommend. For now I will leave my remarks as superficial as mentioned, as I think of this more of a collection/archival exercise for initial thoughts/explorations.