specific and generic domestic space : a design approach to enhance the ritual in daily activities

Abstract: Scale of time William Empson writes that the length of a human life and the conscious moment are the two main scales by which the human mind measures time. With one too large to sense and the other too difficult to identify, my project instead uses the length of individual daily activities as units - eating breakfast is a time unit, cooking a lunch is another time unit – to help make time perceptible, to be aware of the present, and to experience the ritual in daily life. Not every daily activity possesses its own specific time span and therefore I chose basic everyday activities that do (eating, cooking, sleeping, etc.) and defined them as specific activities.   Activity modules Based on informal surveys and my own everyday routine at home, I have defined 7 specific activities. Each specific activity has been given a customized moveable activity module to provide a place for that activity. The negative space created between activity modules within the project's spatial framework I called generic space and is used for interstitial unintentional activities.   Spatialframework Sarah Wigglesworth’s Straw Bale House and Go Hasegawa’s House in Sakuradairepresent two approaches to organizing space based on activities – combining and breaking down. My project takes a third approach by providing a spatial framework within which functional layouts can be rearranged.Each activity module can easily change location inside the spatial framework based on which activity is taking place.