Public House

with Warren Haasnoot and Nathan Curran

The public-house is both a house and the city at the same time. A machine for living, made from the loveless junk of consumption. In a forgotten lane it begins to collect what lays about, or won’t be missed. Pilfered materials and appliances now network the bored, forgotten, generic and awful spaces of the city. Exposed service pipes in the lane not only connect the lane to the city, they also hold a barely audible secret…look like me and you’ll disappear. Made from the self-similar stuff of the city, the architecture of terrain vague begins its vigil to be endlessly forgotten.

The public-house is more cave than nest, beyond the reaches of city planning, it carries the idea of a house like a gene, a weedy vine willing itself into every crack it can find. It occupies through creep, the vague spaces of capitulation are the first to fall. Made to look like everything else, newness appears in camouflage. 

A few meters above ground, services are tapped into, just a little at a time. Water and electricity trickle in. A water pipe fingers itself out across a wall toward a found water heater, hardwood palettes lever themselves off the brick walls on either side. One supports a toilet, while another manages to hold a fridge. A floor above begins to shelter the first. Smaller appliances begin to clump in places where they make most sense. A toaster sits beside a cutting board, while a small shelf holds an electric toothbrush near a basin. A third floor finds itself above the wall to the north, craning out toward the sun. Appliances give way to an attic at the top, a place where people might sleep, the oneiric house only knows how to count to three or four.