Laura Ettedgui & Julianne Gola-Papa
M.Arch Thesis Spring 2013
Faculty Advisor: Hayley Eber & Axel Kilian
Project Title: “Miniature Architecture: Selling Out”
Our generation doesn’t write manifestos...instead, our manifestos manifest in miniaturized missives of 140 characters or less. This thesis seeks to test one fundamental question: is architecture economically scalable? Rather than serving the wealthiest portion of society, a tightening minority possessing disproportionate control of the American economy, Miniature Architecture reevaluates the economic status of its audience, ballooning its constituency and therefore its power.
The project consists of a series of architectural products designed for a new kind of client, a 'middle class' enabled by social exchange and digital methods of procurement.
The thesis is sited in the American suburb, in which exists a national generic in desperate need of reconsideration: the single-family home. Where low-density was once appropriate, where nuclear families once dominated, new patterns demand reconsideration of obsolete urban form. These tiny interventions adapt a catalog of single-family residences for a contemporary suburban demographic with diverse modes of occupancy. In doing so, the project seeks to multiply and complicate the suburban narrative, allowing for transgressive future development.
