This is not a [bed]room

Abstract

One of the commitments of modern architecture was to transform home living. Spaces were to be reviewed through new notions on use, fluidity, and transparency, often leading to formerly compartmentalized areas occupied by bulky furniture and pre-arranged compositions being opened up. In this way, some architects started experimenting with new arrangements, not only for single-family housing, but also in new apartment building configurations. This article, therefore, takes a perspective on two different but complementary home living experiments, by comparing Gio Ponti's Via Dezza apartment (Milan, Italy) and Paulo Mendes da Rocha's Butantã house (São Paulo, Brazil). Even though they come from different backgrounds and time periods, these works are similar in some of their fundamental principles, especially regarding the way they conceive the room. While designing their own home environments, these architects were able to freely express the essence of their ideas about home living. In both cases though, issues believed to be undeniable, such as privacy and intimacy, were treated in a very authorial way, sharing in common a particular way of interpreting the notion of the room.