J. Jih

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Crown House

  • Residential
2021

Crown House takes Basquiat’s crown as its diagram and motivating force, assembling and inserting excluded groups into the lineage of the American Dream through the crown as a symbolic motif that conjures a mutable and multiple definition of achievement.

Fig. 1

Dollhouse model, speculatively shown in Basquiat’s studio

Adapting the visual and geometric language of Basquiat’s crown, peaks are arranged in symmetrical or serial arrangements to oscillate between the sawtooth and the gable, between the iconic and the familiar, and between domestic and work typologies.

Fig. 2

Typological model

Domestic types of the triple decker and shotgun house each expanded access to home ownership by increasing density and reconceiving the physical and social envelope of the nuclear family, but fail to engage live/work needs of the present moment.

Fig. 3

Private bedroom entrances

Fig. 4

Sawtooth and gable silhouettes

In Crown House, rooms are domestic in plan but overscaled in section, allowing opportunities for repartitioning and adaptive transformation over time.

Fig. 5

Plan: single family residential configuration

Through its reconfigurable cellular plan and individual access to each bedroom, Crown House is mutably fluid between single family, multi-family, live/work, and non-traditional social structures, variably containing a diversity of domestic and work arrangements within an identical envelope, and updating the ‘missing middle’ of American domestic types.

Fig. 6–8

configuration 01: artist studio
configuration 02: three stacked live/work units
configuration 03: single family residence

Fig. 6

configuration 01: artist studio
configuration 02: three stacked live/work units
configuration 03: single family residence

Fig. 7

configuration 01: artist studio
configuration 02: three stacked live/work units
configuration 03: single family residence

Fig. 8

configuration 01: artist studio
configuration 02: three stacked live/work units
configuration 03: single family residence
  • Team: j.jih, sean canty
  • Renderings: OK Draw

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