Finding Flexibility Within Systems. Prototype housing by Mutuo. Photograph by Ironside, Image courtesy of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.
Project description by Mutuo
Mutuo’s design, Finding Flexibility Within Systems, is not a typical housing solution. Instead, the fragmented structure raises critical questions surrounding the issues of housing equity, inclusivity, and available resources in Northwest Arkansas and across the United States. Visitors approach the pavilion through a rigid grid of incomplete concrete and steel columns that represent stumbling blocks to home ownership. The “house” is divided into four equal parts representing the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and living area. This traditional home model is then turned inside out, omitting parts of the roof, walls and floors. The “missing” parts of the home encourage the viewer to explore the expectations and assumptions about the foundational housing system in the United States.
“Design is just one part of a complex housing process that includes land acquisition, financing, permitting, and construction, a process that is unnavigable for most Americans. By creating an intentionally incomplete prototype, we’re asking what is missing? Who is in and who is out? How would the current system need to be redesigned for inclusion?”
Jose Herrasti
The prototype structure is made of standardized building materials including structural insulated panels, steel columns and beams, poured-in-place concrete, and paint. These are part of a flexible building system demonstrating how widely available, inexpensive materials can be used to create extraordinary design variations.
In contrast to the ready-made feel of the standardized materials, wooden and clay columns within the structure were handcrafted by Mexican artists from the state of Michoacan. The two carved wood columns were fashioned in the village of Cuanajo combining an Indigenous technique of the Purepecha people, and the mudejar techniques brought by Spanish colonizers. The center pottery column inside the structure is built out of stacked, hand-molded cocuchas, a precolonial handcraft from Cocucho. The inclusion of these unique columns symbolically rejects the idea that the housing system must be a rigid set of rules and can celebrate the diversity, flexibility, and resilience of immigrant communities.
“The exhibition shows that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution for housing. In the prototype and our practice we work hand-in-hand with residents, builders, fabricators, engineers and artists to design flexible building systems that can be adapted for different sites and programs.”
Fernanda Oppermann.
As an extension of the exhibition, Mutuo created an online platform Stories About Housing to collect personal narratives from in-person and virtual visitors. Participants are invited to record their own stories about housing that will be assembled and rebroadcast during the exhibition.
