Operating House
Sterile Space and a Contaminated Mind
The concept of architecture and health has always been closely linked. Vitruvius, in his Ten Books on Architecture, detailed how to plan the Healthiness of a proposed site. In modernism, architects used white cubes, dry rooms, light, and circulating air as antidotes to urban diseases. After 1960s, architecture evolved beyond merely preventing disease as a medical device and began to offer psychological comfort. Various mobile vehicles, bubbles, and tents were invented, partly to escape toxic cities and anxiety disorders. The development of medicine and industry introduced an increasing array of new technologies and theories, such as rational circulation, operation manuals, negative pressure passageways, filtered air systems, seamless aseptic facade, and automatically triggered devices, while human knowledge and fear of uncleanliness also grew.
This project stems from the tension between human knowledge of cleanliness and uncleanliness. I attempt to place this tension in an extreme situation to observe changes in behavior patterns, spatial preference and mental states under such conditions. Thus, I created this fictional story about a surgeon who developed severe mysophobia - a fear of contamination - after a surgery. Refusing to return to his original home, he transformed an operating room into his living space, repurposing medical devices originally used for surgeries to serve daily functions like cooking, bathing, and sleeping. The story ends with a slightly absurd and humorous twist, hinting at the madness and irrationality that can lie behind extreme science and knowledge.
18 x 13cm
26 pages
Offset printed
Vacuum packed with eyelet bound
English