Dream House: a space of memory, reflections, and thresholds

Abstract

This house was, from the beginning, a structure built to represent and explore liminality. It is still that but it has become more. While being in the house, within the liminal space, I am surrounded by fragments. I am in a structure built of fragments. Those fragments are memories, my own and others, and the change that occurs in this liminal space is more than the transition from public to private space, but the change in my relationship to my own memories. In Benjamin's Passagen-Werk are two chapters named "dream city" (die Traumstadt) and "dream house" (das Traumhaus) where the analogy between dream and architecture establishes the "correspondence" between the world of dreams and that of things" (Teyssot 2005; 91). It was not until the end of my Senior Project that I realized my house was this kind of "dream house". As I have stated in past reflections, when I am within the walls of my house I am surrounded by fragments. I am in a structure built of fragments; those fragments being memories, both my own and others. Most of the objects in the house, that weren't created by me, were found at thrift stores, Facebook Marketplace, and flea markets. They are all previously owned objects; fragments -memories- of other people's lives. In this world of things, my house, I feel memories pour out of me. I used to say I was "remembering", but considering Benjamin it seems as though remembering is an act while memory is a state of being and in this way memory was happening to me in my dream house. The house was always meant to be a liminal space, a house made up purely of thresholds; a place where just physically being in the space meant you were in a liminal zone. Now I understand it as also a space where, once I enter, I move through the thresholds of memory and remembrance/dreams and awakening.

Attached is a series of written pieces and photographs that serve as my Senior Project. The project itself is a house, a creation of space, not completely accessible virtually. The written pieces that follow are, for the most part, my reflections on the project and relevant themes both before and after completion. After are a few photographs of the house and some objects in it. These words and photos work together to capture the essence of the house when not physically in the space. In addition to these works, here is a Youtube link of a house walk through: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5EaODfKdY1c&t=21s