Ami Ogawa: The Form of Drifting Dwellings

2023/02/17

I recall a conversation with students one day. When asked, "Who is your favorite artist?" surprisingly, everyone there replied, "No one in particular." They said they just listen to streaming services randomly. In today's world, where being able to choose anything is taken for granted, some say they don't know what to pick because there are too many options. This increase in choice overload is being sublimated into a choice of "not choosing"—not deciding on one thing, not staying in one place, and always accepting and letting go of encounters with new things and experiences.

In these times where respect for diversity is emphasized, people are constantly searching for their own unique sense of "comfort" that stems from being themselves. Even if they encounter a comfortable environment, they do not cling to it, but rather let it go gracefully and seek the next encounter. By continuing to search for optimal solutions—not just one—from among the countless, endlessly flowing options, perhaps they are encountering discoveries they never knew before and truly feeling the act of living.

Lifestyles and ideologies are closely related to the form of housing. The ultimate example of the fluidization of housing is the "address hopper" lifestyle. There are various forms, such as living while moving between hotels or moving the house itself in a mobile home. This also overlaps with the emergence of minimalists. By keeping the possession of things to a minimum, they enable a light-footed way of living, while also having an ethical aspect of sharing things.

Triggered by the pandemic, previous standards are being ousted from their positions. To begin with, a house, defined as the "range of the environment where daily life is conducted," encompasses roles not only for eating and sleeping but also as a place to work. Our previous perceptions were merely something intentionally created through spatial design based on the division of places by use and operational rationality. Now, after the pandemic, those divisions are becoming increasingly blurred. The normalization of remote work has encouraged the outflow of behaviors that were fixed to specific locations like workplaces or homes. Workations are blurring not only the temporal boundaries between work and vacation but also the spatial boundaries that link place and behavior.

Where is the form of housing headed? Hints can be seen flickering within people's ideologies.