HMWRK is a research project started in March 2020 by Rachael Tsai, Jack Rusk, Diana Smiljkovic, and Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen while they were graduate students at the Yale School of Architecture. The project uses a range of media and practices to examine uncanny conjunctions of home and work. Through these activities, HMWRK investigates the motifs, experiences, and conditions such a conjunction engenders, as well as its social, economic, and political implications.
Home work became a widespread reality when Covid-19 emerged in the early days of Spring 2020. From this starting point, the working home is explored simultaneously as an emerging undesigned product of the pandemic’s urgency, and as an aspirational project with a long critical and architectural lineage.
An open call for students and young professionals in architecture and design to document their home office kickstarted the first part of the project in March 2020. Intended as a collective meditation on what it means to work from home, we asked participants to produce a plan drawing of their home work arrangement. Some drawings precipitated conversations that sought to tease out specific stories and experiences in medias res, while the drawings provide an indexical non-comprehensive survey on the home office of the present.
The second part of the project grapples with the past and future of the home as a place of work.
Through writing, conversations and design we will address issues pertaining to the bodily experience of the home office as well as its narratives; How does working from home today differ from historical attempts to revolutionize the home and the office in design? What is the social and cultural signifance of working from home? Can home work be a driver for greater social and economic equity, or will it exacerbate the opposite? Who works from home and who gets to design home working?
HMWRK will be exhibited in the Yale Architecture North Gallery in Spring 2021. A subsequent publication will serve as a physical and digital archive of the project’s activities.
Home work became a widespread reality when Covid-19 emerged in the early days of Spring 2020. From this starting point, the working home is explored simultaneously as an emerging undesigned product of the pandemic’s urgency, and as an aspirational project with a long critical and architectural lineage.
An open call for students and young professionals in architecture and design to document their home office kickstarted the first part of the project in March 2020. Intended as a collective meditation on what it means to work from home, we asked participants to produce a plan drawing of their home work arrangement. Some drawings precipitated conversations that sought to tease out specific stories and experiences in medias res, while the drawings provide an indexical non-comprehensive survey on the home office of the present.
The second part of the project grapples with the past and future of the home as a place of work.
Through writing, conversations and design we will address issues pertaining to the bodily experience of the home office as well as its narratives; How does working from home today differ from historical attempts to revolutionize the home and the office in design? What is the social and cultural signifance of working from home? Can home work be a driver for greater social and economic equity, or will it exacerbate the opposite? Who works from home and who gets to design home working?
HMWRK will be exhibited in the Yale Architecture North Gallery in Spring 2021. A subsequent publication will serve as a physical and digital archive of the project’s activities.
WORKING GROUP
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Rachael Tsai, Jack Rusk, Diana Smiljkovic and Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Luiza Dale, Nick Massarelli
COLLABORATORS
Montgomery Balding, Abby Sandler, Abhishek Ambekar, Anishwar Tirupathur, Anthony Iovino, Konstantinos Ballis, Benjamin Tan, Katharine Blackman, David Bruce, Michelle Bunch, Chase Ireland, Katie Colford, Olivia Epstein, Ethan Lethander, Dhruv, Giada Puccinelli, Nathan Garcia, Christina Zhang, Christina Anastase, Elias Carrion Verra, Sofia Alfaro, Drew Doyle, Tarranum Akhter, Alondra Correa, Miguel Astete, Yanara Formandoy, Rachel Ghindea, Aaron Payne, Sofia Guzman, Edgar Papazian, Athiba Balasubramanian, Deirdre Plaus, Helen Farley, Kaitlin Baker, Hoby Horak, Itaparica, Jessica Zhou, Tyler Krebs, Andrew Miller, Katie Lau, Leidy Karina Gomez Montoya, A. Lopez, Matthew Liu, Michelle Nguyen, Mari Kroin, Morgan Anna Kerber, Pete Pham, Martina Potlach, Rachel Skof, Sangji Han, Shahla Alharthi, Jonathan Bolch
The project has received an Honorary Grant from Are.na and financial support from the Yale School of Architecture.
Rachael Tsai, Jack Rusk, Diana Smiljkovic and Gustav Kjær Vad Nielsen
GRAPHIC DESIGNERS
Luiza Dale, Nick Massarelli
COLLABORATORS
Montgomery Balding, Abby Sandler, Abhishek Ambekar, Anishwar Tirupathur, Anthony Iovino, Konstantinos Ballis, Benjamin Tan, Katharine Blackman, David Bruce, Michelle Bunch, Chase Ireland, Katie Colford, Olivia Epstein, Ethan Lethander, Dhruv, Giada Puccinelli, Nathan Garcia, Christina Zhang, Christina Anastase, Elias Carrion Verra, Sofia Alfaro, Drew Doyle, Tarranum Akhter, Alondra Correa, Miguel Astete, Yanara Formandoy, Rachel Ghindea, Aaron Payne, Sofia Guzman, Edgar Papazian, Athiba Balasubramanian, Deirdre Plaus, Helen Farley, Kaitlin Baker, Hoby Horak, Itaparica, Jessica Zhou, Tyler Krebs, Andrew Miller, Katie Lau, Leidy Karina Gomez Montoya, A. Lopez, Matthew Liu, Michelle Nguyen, Mari Kroin, Morgan Anna Kerber, Pete Pham, Martina Potlach, Rachel Skof, Sangji Han, Shahla Alharthi, Jonathan Bolch
The project has received an Honorary Grant from Are.na and financial support from the Yale School of Architecture.