The Way You Live Now.
PlatyComb is a portmanteau that combines platycosm and honeycomb. The former refers to the ways in which
spaces glue to themselves, and the latter to collectivities in construction and living. It consists of a
core module, a shell module and an addition. The core can permute within the shell, the shell can connect
to itself in a specific number of ways and orientations, and the addition can be added onto the shell also
in a specified number of ways and orientations. The modules can be deconstructed and put back up in
different combinations.
PlatyComb is based on the symmetry group of the cube. Working with the 24 proper (i.e. excluding
reflections) rotations in space that preserve congruency, an initial cubic form can be 'marked' to show how
the cube has changed. This 'marking' can also be used to physically reduce the number of congruent
rotations. We 'mark' our initial cube by taking out a pair of opposite corners. The resulting six
automorphic permutations form the working group for PlatyComb- all ways and means of topological operations
that are used to generate forms and connectivities are derived from this group. The forms deliberately leave
lacunae in their overall result, which is a way of instigating a genuine unplanned, local take over of parts
of the structure. From there the project begins by assuming that it can go anywhere.
As a self-positing capacity for 'dwelling', Architecture recapitulates an attempted synthesis of its
alienating effects and the situational excess of sites. Paralleling capitalism's deeper penetration into the
means of which matter, energy and people are organized on the planet, Architecture today 'dwells' in a more
fungible way than its immediate predecessors, and the polemical powers which formed an active concern for
Modernism function now like a suppressed gene. Though common to all forms of contemporary architectural
practice, the schema for which this 'fungibility' is actualized in modular construction is interesting in that
the order of design is reversed- the problem of the site is post-posed for a modular construction that comes
ready made as a solution for 'dwelling'. Often this comes with an organizational or production-based
imperative, which nevertheless presumes that architecture conserves its ability to conjugate with a class of
sites in general. Architecture today claims to not only dwell comfortably when designed for a site, it even
says so if the site comes after conception. It claims to work anywhere, and modular construction is the most
naked expression of this claim.
In light of all this we can say that PlatyComb consists of three qualia. The first is its fungibility, the
ability to go anywhere. The second is that of connection, it is an experiential and constructional derivation
of connection, both with itself and with its site. And third refers to PlatyComb's agapism, it loves others,
which refers to the desire of being mediated by architecture, or the mediation of desire by architecture, you choose.
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