AMID.cero9

Minna-no-Ié / Home for All

AMID.cero9

Home-for-All is a white space symbolically protected by a Shimenawa and materially protected by thick layers of polyurethane foam sprayed in-situ.

Home-for-All is not an architecture of emergency but an architecture of restoration and healing through the way the people can use it and through its own construction process. A material, psychological and communal healing.
The construction is based on a process of simple and ordinary tasks as sewing, stitching, needle working… that psychologically reconstructs the personal loss and help recovering the sense of community.
The white uniformity of the interior, the smell of the tatami, the wish papers or the glass bell that sounds with the wind try to reproduce the familiarity, to relieve the pain and also to help constructing a new future based on a shared understanding of the small communities.
Home-for-All is a white central space based on a tatami organization that serves as the semiprivate space where people can read the newspaper or just meet other people to talk.
This big living-room is closed in both extremes by a transparent cladding that can be rolled so that in summer this space can be completely open to the exterior.
Around the central space there are 8 smaller spaces for one, two or three persons. These spaces have a higher level of privacy and the floors are covered with a big cotton mattresses of different sizes. A soft space, comfortable and spongy that enlarges the central space.
Towards the exterior this Home-for-All is a soft rock of monstrous aspect. A nice monster where the locals will place their wishes written in papers covering the exterior following their own tradition. Step by step moss and lichens will grow in this crust and it will acquire a natural aspect, likea real rock, until its disappears when pain is already relieved.

Then, the local Inhabitants stitch together a very simple arrangement of White cotton fabrics. The main room that the inhabitants fabricate in fabric is an elongated white common space with eight smaller semiprivate spaces connected to it, where the locals can stay and relax.
The fabric is reinforced with rice straw ropes directly stitched to it. This Shimenawa symbolically protect the house against any potential event. All the people in the community help to stitch, trying to psychologically remediate the pain of their personal lost sharing simple manual tasks.
The tatami mats are arranged in traditional patterns in the central space, and the cotton mattresses are place in the lateral spaces, holding them to the ground.
Two bamboo and metal frames are fixed to the ground placing stones in the lower boxes in order to fix the House-for-all while is erected.
The House-for-all is inflated and raised with hot air using a simple compressor.
Soft polyurethane foam is sprayed against the white fabric, and just after that, the whole structure is stabilized with a higher density and rigid polyurethane. In this moment the house can be de-inflated.
It is only necessary to open up the lateral opening rolling the transparent pvc foils to make the house ventilate, and to cut out the necessary openings in the foam for the people to enter and to enjoy the house constructed by and for all.
In the exterior surface the inhabitants will place the desire paper, symbolically starting with the involuntary constructors of the house for all. Then, the house will be covered with every single community member’s desires. A glass bell, fun rin, that sounds with the wind will be placed in both thresholds announcing to the local inhabitants that the house is open to all, a small remedy that a group of local people has constructed.
A normal place for a normal life where people can rest for a while.

Minna-no-Ié / Home-for-All (2010)
Cristina Diaz Moreno + Efrén Garcia Grinda (AMID.cero9)
Team: Kadri Tamre, José Quintanar, Maria Chiou, Dimitra Koroni and Sayaka Namba