This project—an eco-demonstration house—was produced for the SOUPERgreen exhibition at the Architecture + Design Museum in Los Angeles. The exhibition was focused on critiquing the problematically narrow approach of contemporary “green” architecture, and this project specifically targeted sustainability’s uncritical continuation of an inherently non-ecological conceptual division between the planetary environment (which is viewed as a resource for human exploitation) and humanity (which is viewed as the responsible steward of this resource). While so-called “green” technology is meant to be deployed as an agent of humanity’s increasingly responsible consumption of this planetary resource, it fails to address the underlying problem inherent in viewing humanity as distinct from and in control of the environment—a problem that, unless brought forth into public consciousness, will continue to jeopardize humanity’s otherwise well-intentioned efforts to undue its legacy of environmental negligence.

Since technology is the instrument of human control over the environment, and thus the frame through which the world is understood, it is used critically here in an inverse way to fundamentally transform one’s perceived relationship to the world.

Instead of acting as an agent of control over and resistance to environmental variation, it is instead enlisted as a magnifier of that variation—creating a constantly changing interior environment that is “out of control,” and within which its occupants must continually seek to re-establish a state of equilibrium.

Cantilevered off of the roof of an office tower on Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles, this demonstration house has the potential of 360° views of the city, the Hollywood Hills, and the ocean. However, the entire perimeter of the house is clad in a dynamic wind and solar energy-harvesting skin that constrains, limits, and constantly varies the daylighting and views available as it continually adjusts itself to varying environmental conditions. Accordingly, this constantly changing relationship between the occupants and the light and view is mined for its ability to sponsor internal spatial transformations—encouraging the occupants to continually adjust the location of interior furniture and activities in response to these changes caused by the constantly mutating exterior envelope. The constant adjustment to this amplified environmental variance increases the public’s consciousness of their relationship to the environment—a relationship that is recast as a co-equal one.