Scattered House (2008)

Connecting environments across Budapest and London

Scattered House was a remotely connected version of the Reconfigurable House project, presented in a workshop with Adam Somlai-Fischer, Bengt Sjolen and Kitchen Budapest hosted by the Hungarian Cultural Centre, London as part of the London Festival of Architecture. See scattered.propositions.org.uk for more info.

Scattered House at the Hungarian Cultural Centre, London

The workshop invited people to join in the experience of connecting up the sensors and actuators of the 'house' with sensors and actuators installed and embedded in environments in other parts of the world. The purpose of the project was to demonstrate the implications of designing connected environments and buildings in the context of family diasporas and ubiquitous networked architecture and the structure responded in realtime to activity in Japan, Hungary, Tower Bridge, London and outer space.

Scattered House assembly
Connecting Scattered House actuators

For many of us, these days "home" is an idea constructed from several places, fluctuating over time, but nevertheless consisting of a strong cultural entity for the individual. By creating a space connected across two cities that seems just like the way we live and feel about real spaces, Scattered House is an example for an architecture which could become sensitive to our altered notion of 'home'.

The workshop was an exploration of the idea that there is no distinction between "virtual" and "real" or "local" and "remote" -- the distant half of the house, linked via the network was treated equivalently to the "local" half (in both directions), suggesting an understanding of architecture that is resolutely "human" (in the sense of being something that can be inhabited and designed and determined by its occupants) yet context-free (because it does not privilege geographical location).

Scattered House at the Hungarian Cultural Centre, London