Arvand Pourabbasi – Graduation project 1617
The Room of an Architect
Rethinking the reality of a young architect’s life-work situation
This project is a representation and proposal for the precarious life and work conditions of nomadic
architecture students and young architects. I bring up this issue about the uncertainty of today’s architectural
profession because it is frequently unnoticed and considered quite normal. Being in this position myself I
researched the related design questions by re-drawing one-to- one scale sketches, making models and doing
experiments in order to present firsthand takes on the issue. With these strategies I aim to provoke
affordable spaces of living/working for young practitioners through inhabiting unused spaces of existing
buildings.
Today the nomadic knowledge workers and young practitioners experience a blur of borders between places
where they live and where they work. Generally their tiny bedrooms are set up as workspaces to connect
them to the rest of the world, both through online and offline means. Ideally, working as a freelance architect
you can afford to pay for a separate working space but most of the time this is not the case. On the other
hand, to get a job at an architectural office requires a long preparation of gathering skills and making
portfolios.
In the contemporary history of architecture, especially in the sixties and seventies, the notion of
working/living units has been addressed in numerous projects. Many of these projects have either remained
on paper, or have never been realised because of their costly productions. Thus in my opinion it is still an
issue that, especially nowadays, need to get more attention. By experimenting with one to one scale build
projects within existing spaces and to research their potential for the buildings and the urban fabric of the
city, I hope to bring forward this tangible issue and to add an extra layer of veracity to my project.
All images @INSIDE & Arvand Pourabbasi
Find all images in the Graduation part of INSIDE Magazine 1617.
