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Casa Zabriskie: a place for Daria and Mark 

Symmetrical Death Valley and Playa Verde 

 

 

How you get there depends on where you are at...

We are designing a house for Daria and Mark. They are unusual clients that like to blow stuff-up and live in the past. The house will be a solid cube, a radical symmetrical residence for self-described radical people. Once upon a time an architect told Daria and Mark that symmetry was the work of evil and a clear sign of an unimaginative mind. Looking over copies of old Architectural Record magazines, the architect said, "Symmetry turns architecture into a static object devoid of life and expression—symmetry is a thing of the past". Luckily Daria and Mark are very interested in objectification and they are not interested in the dynamic gestures and design intuitions that come with contemporary material maximalism. Even better, they don't care about square footage or resale value. Did we mention they like to blow stuff up... 

After a brief meeting with Daria and Mark they asked us to construct images to help them imagine the narrative around the conceptual edges of their house. We didn't know what conceptual edges meant, but we figured it required some imagination, which is always cool with us. It turns out that Daria and Mark are interested in imagining the circumstances and events that frame their home in relation to the strange terrain they want to inhabit. The place is literally like a symmetrical version of Death Valley meets Playa Verde. This is where they want to live...

We hope everything goes well, they seem to be very much in love, but have no interest in architecture —perfect clients.

 

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