Edward Ogosta Architecture

A projective archaeology of experiences for a house that does not exist.

Location:  WUHO Gallery, Hollywood, California
Date:  2015
Type:  solo exhibition
Photographer: Paul Redmond

Project Description:
Dwelling Without a Plan is the culmination of a yearlong research project by Edward Ogosta, AIA as Woodbury University’s Visiting Fellow in the Department of Architecture. The exhibition is a critique of the profession's growing readiness to regard building design as the mere creation of signature objects, rather than the creation of the experiences of objects. As a study in design process, the project privileges the development of experiences over objects by rejecting the use of architectural plans, sections, elevations, and models in the detailed design of a theoretical house set in rural California. Alternate media, such as film, descriptive text, diagrams, artifact arrangements, and material mock-ups are employed to foreground the real envisioned experiences of dwelling in the house, illuminating site contexts, episodic sequences, haptic sensations, and intensified atmospheres. 

The house is located on a four million-year-old site in the hills below Figueroa Mountain, thirteen miles from the small town of Los Olivos in Santa Barbara County. Sized at 4,000 square feet, the project is a weekend compound for a large extended family of three generations. The house is envisioned as a concrete box set into the terrain and containing three main courtyards, each with a unique atmosphere rooted in the raw conditions of the site. Its materiality of thick white walls and unfinished wood planks is informed by the local historical typologies of the hacienda and western homestead ranch, which are hybridized into a modern retreat for the 21st century. A variety of skylights, openings, platforms, excavations, and projections serve to reframe and intensify the experiences of living, eating, sleeping, and bathing.

Prior to plans and prior to objects, is the search for an architecture that evokes life.