BIENNIAL PROJECT
Proposal for Collective Living II (Homage to Sir John Soane)
Andrew Kovacs rethinks the iconic section and the subsequent interior of Sir John Soane’s home, museum, and collection as a proposal for collective living. Bringing together programs of private and public display and domesticity, Soane’s universe and assemblage becomes the impetus to make architecture from architecture. If architecture organizes the world around us then making architecture from architecture is about reorganizing what exists in the world for new purposes; presented here is a new contemporary collection of architectural matter to do just that. This new collection turns Soane’s House inside out to fully cover and encase the provided plinth in the room of plinths. The new sum is the result of collecting and composing pieces, parts, and fragments that form a horizontal composite to speculate on a new possibility for human habitation. In the cityscape of this proposal there is a single digital billboard broadcasting Life of a Model. This film documents the generation of the model, covering major developments in the production of the proposal for collective living: search, selection, scanner, assessment, demolition, archive of affinities, assembly, layering, people, and photographs. Soane’s interior is reimagined as exterior; the home is reimagined as a city. Soane’s museum is repositioned as not strictly devoted to an individual, but rather to a collective; objects that are meant to be viewed are considered as objects that are meant to be inhabited.
BIO
Andrew Kovacs is a lecturer at UCLA Architecture & Urban Design. Kovacs studied architecture at Syracuse University, the Architecture Association in London, and Princeton University. From 2012 to 2013, Kovacs was the inaugural UCLA Teaching Fellow for which he produced GOODS USED: AN ARCHITECTURAL YARD SALE at Jai and Jai Gallery in Los Angeles. Kovacs’ work on architecture and urbanism has been published widely in publications such as Pidgin, Project, Perspecta, Manifest, Metropolis, Clog, Domus, and Fulcrum. Kovacs is the creator and curator of Archive of Affinities, a website devoted to the collection and display of architectural b sides. His recent design work includes a proposal for a dog park in downtown Los Angeles and the renovation of an Airstream trailer into a mobile retail store that travels the Pacific Coast Highway.
