6 Comments »

Existentially Scary Freeway Home for a Meltdown Economy

• Tweet

• Tweet

Architectural works are often described as stunning.

Taking that one very giant step further, here is a very surreal work by Ensamble Studio (engineered by Inorganic Matter Company) that is frankly designed to not merely stun — but to alarm.

Almost every angle, material and juxtaposition in this home is designed to make you frighteningly uncomfortable. Unstable. Uneasy.  The sense is enhanced by balancing these huge heavy unstable structures.

Yet there is something exhilarating about this feeling of alarm, especially for a swimmer, swimming out into some existential nowhere in this lap pool to eternity:

The surreal pool extending out into the distant horizon would give you pause.  The uneasy feeling would be  topped off by this enormous Stone-Henge like lump of unworked concrete on top of the concrete beam that welcomes you as you make your return lap back “home”.

Perhaps it is an appropriate feeling to engender in those wealthy enough to afford to build what really amounts to a small freeway to live under, as the second gilded age comes crashing down around all of us globally.

This gratuitous chunk of concrete is just waiting to crash down on you as you swim in your lap pool towards eternity…

Perhaps this Spanish architect has tapped into a kind of existential terror of our times – that a freeway overpass is being subconsciously considered as a place to call home.

Even those still rich enough to build that freeway now –are somehow tapping into the ultimate terror, the zeitgeist of our times. Homelessness.

Project: House Hemeroscopium
Location: Las Rozas, Madrid

Related stories:
This Dome Home Can Resist Category 5 Hurricanes
Berkeley Bums Remind Us We Used to Build for Free