both and
Nick Dean & Eric Gonzales
It is a perpetual human condition to not only create dwellings but reflect upon and reinvestigate the act of dwelling. We believe the sukkah archetype is acontextual to the physical desert experience their common construction alludes to memorialize. The emphasis of Sukkot on physical embrace is, conversely, a remembrance of a spiritual journey through a physical trial and thusly shows memorialization to be a bodily act intended for spiritual edification. Lasting embodied objects are needed in our intimate surroundings to remind us of our spirit and identity. In effect, the sukkah memorializes dwelling as a spiritual act and the dwelling’s reverse role of hosting memory as a bodily act, thus supporting a dual reality of BOTH dwelling through enclosure AND memory through object.
The confluence of these two dimensions comes from a layering of internal / external spatial ambiguity, allowing ethereal perceptions in a multi-sensory experience.
The nine foot cubic structure is proportioned to a domestic scale and organized into three equal three feet thick pre-constructed units simplifying site configuration for the transition out of Yom Kippur. Through a playful discovery in staging social and ritual contexts, the user configures at will each unit to utilize their identical array of body-sized spaces, which predict a variety of ergonomic postures without reference to a dominant orientation. The remaining forms of each unit are hollowed, then framed using repetitively jointed split cedar strips and spaced by the length of one’s hand. The final structure becomes both frame and surface, anticipating the intervention of sanctifying objects within its voids. Over time the BOTH | AND becomes a narrative of its users’ self-discovery of identity, spirit and fragility in the world.
The confluence of these two dimensions comes from a layering of internal / external spatial ambiguity, allowing ethereal perceptions in a multi-sensory experience.
The nine foot cubic structure is proportioned to a domestic scale and organized into three equal three feet thick pre-constructed units simplifying site configuration for the transition out of Yom Kippur. Through a playful discovery in staging social and ritual contexts, the user configures at will each unit to utilize their identical array of body-sized spaces, which predict a variety of ergonomic postures without reference to a dominant orientation. The remaining forms of each unit are hollowed, then framed using repetitively jointed split cedar strips and spaced by the length of one’s hand. The final structure becomes both frame and surface, anticipating the intervention of sanctifying objects within its voids. Over time the BOTH | AND becomes a narrative of its users’ self-discovery of identity, spirit and fragility in the world.