EXPLICATING
PRIVACT
Supervisors:
Hüsnü H. Yegenoglu
Sjef J.J.P.M. van Hoof
Technical Unversity of Eindhoven (TU/e)
2020-2021
Boundaries, walls, and doors can no longer safeguard our privacy since new technologies have advanced privacy invasions into the world of virtual.
Project, Explicating Privacy, takes a critical approach toward the role of architecture in creating privacy and illustrates the ability of architecture in reviving the lost privacy of our time, if not through its bounds to the physical reality, then as a theoretical and didactic tool.
In a theoretical framework, an investigation through four works of literature demonstrates the concept of transparency and its role in abolishing privacy. We by Yevgeny Zamyatin, Mortelle by Christopher Frank, Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell, and The Trial by Franz Kafka are examples that each illustrate a peculiar absence of privacy worth contemplating.
Each illustration, respectively, explores the transparency and privacy themes in each novel.
Privacy Matters!
After a thorough investigation of privacy through various pieces of literature, it is imperative to claim that the lack of privacy is not a desirable outcome.
Accordingly, what are the ways to have privacy?
While fighting different battles, one on the ground and the other in ones and zeros, the inability of architecture in resurrecting the lost privacy of our time to its full essence is palpable.
However, defeat is yet to be declared.
Although architecture finds its ultimate manifestation when built, it can use its theoretical power to accommodate designs that push the boundaries of convention to investigate topics that are not communicated properly with words.
Designs that illustrate ideas, theories, and concepts.
The Frankenstein's House
From the Privacy Category, Frankenstein's House is assembled.
It exhibits all the items that either create privacy as the result of physically existing or by representing different levels of meaning that could bring awareness at the moment of encounter.
It creates a superstructure of privacy, through storytelling, illustrations, and instrumentalizing the Encyclopedia of Privacy.
The Liquid House
with a reference to Zygmunt Bauman’s notion of "liquidity", this design addresses the liquid nature of privacy, ever-changing and evolving.
With the help of movable walls, moveable floors, and transparent and solid walls, the Liquid House could offer privacy and publication at any time.
Living in such a house is the embodiment of ways new technologies can evaporate privacy, even with the hand of our family members.
Private
Semi-private
Public
Transparent Wall
Opaque Wall
Moveable Floor
Fixed Floor
Movable Walls
20% Transparency
Movable Walls
35% Transparency
Movable Walls
50% Transparency
Transparency level
0%
50%
Location
The Liquid House in
Urban Area vs. Suburban Area
While architecture may succeed in creating privacy in the physical realm albeit failing on a virtual scale, it could use its theoretical power to open up debates to address the topic of privacy. Architecture, therefore, can explicate privacy, demonstrating its value, and hopefully take a step in preventing its decay.
