Prototype for Living in the Space of Difference
MICROHOME – Architecture Competition, 10th Edition, 2025
“I was born and raised in a tiny, low-ceilinged ground-floor apartment. My parents slept on a sofa bed that, when unfolded each evening, nearly filled the room from wall to wall. Every morning, they would clear away the bedding, roll it into a chest beneath the bed, flip the mattress, fold it carefully, and cover everything with a light gray sheet. Then they would scatter a few embroidered oriental cushions, so that all traces of sleep disappeared. In this way, their bedroom also served as a study, library, dining room, and living room.”
— Amos Oz, A Tale of Love and Darkness, 2002
Threshold Context
The project is situated within a divided territory — a narrow, controlled corridor where two spatial and political systems meet and collide. This contested strip, deprived of stable status and permanent belonging — neither fully accessible nor truly inhabitable — becomes the ground of habitation: a place where architecture must operate at the limits of its own capacity.
Within this liminal condition, the micro-house does not function as an object, but as a spatial mediator, transforming the boundary from a line of exclusion into a field of negotiation. The threshold is no longer understood as division, but as an extended condition — a possibility of coexistence within conflict. Architecture does not resolve difference, but sustains it as an operative condition.
Material Ecology
The house is assembled from what the territory leaves behind. Steel fragments, reclaimed reinforcement bars, and broken concrete slabs are collected, cut, and recomposed into a new structural syntax. Bolted connections allow for disassembly, relocation, and replacement, keeping the construction reversible, temporary, and adaptable.
Walls are layered — clad in found metal sheets and perforated mesh that filter light and air while retaining traces of prior use: scratches, rust, soot. Each surface carries memory — of construction, destruction, and adaptation. Reassembly transforms material scarcity into architectural expression: a tectonics of survival rather than perfection.
Users
The house is conceived for two individuals from opposite sides of the divided territory. Separated by history, culture, and belief, they meet within a neutral architecture — a shared void suspended between their worlds. One enters from the east, the other from the west; their routines initially unfold in parallel, without contact, observing one another through air, light, and distance.
Over time, these parallel lives begin to intersect. The house becomes a pedagogical instrument of coexistence: cooking becomes a shared act, shadow a shared resource, silence a form of dialogue. The structure mediates difference, translating division into communication. Inhabitants learn to coordinate movement, adapt to one another, and share water and sky.
Architecture thus becomes a small prototype of peace — a domestic experiment in reconciliation where space replaces ideology as the language of encounter. To inhabit this house is to accept proximity without possession and difference without conflict. It is not a house of comfort, but of understanding — a fragile dwelling that teaches how to live together within separation.
Elemental Reduction
The House of Peace appears as a composite of layers rather than a singular object. This stratification reduces architecture to its elemental syntax — columns, walls, roof, and volume — while resisting their disintegration. Familiar forms are abstracted and recomposed; each element operates beyond its original function, forming a self-supporting ecology of parts.
This layering produces both visual and environmental depth, transforming the micro-house into a condensed landscape: a precise yet open structure linking past typologies with future meanings.
Architectural Meaning
The House of Peace questions the role of architecture in conditions where stability, ownership, and identity are suspended. It proposes a house without territory, built from fragments, situated between shelter and exposure. It is not a monument to permanence, but a machine for dwelling — a precise, minimal, reassembled structure that frames survival itself.
Between walls and worlds, architecture becomes both witness and shelter, instrument and memory. It does not offer resolution, but enables presence; it does not erase difference, but makes it inhabitable.
Environmental System
The house operates as a fully off-grid system, independent of public infrastructure. Essential resources are provided through passive and low-tech strategies, minimizing energy dependence and environmental impact.
Rainwater is collected through a pneumatic roof balloon, which also functions as shading and a misting device. Acting as a large collection surface and initial filter, water is then directed by gravity into a ground-level reservoir for basic uses such as washing and cooking.
Ventilation is entirely natural. Two parallel structural frames enable cross-ventilation through the central space, ensuring constant air exchange without mechanical systems and maintaining a stable microclimate.
Textile shading membranes are stretched between the steel rods of the façade frames, reducing heat gain, filtering dust, and allowing diffused daylight. The outer envelope remains porous and partially transparent, made of copelit panels, enabling controlled exchange of air and light rather than complete separation from the environment.
Structural and Spatial System
The load-bearing structure consists of four steel frames forming a spatial “cube,” made of hollow profiles (30 × 30 mm), arranged in parallel and perpendicular directions. These define the central enclosed volume while also supporting the façade elements.
Within this structure lies a compact 5 × 5 m inhabitable space, slightly elevated above ground on a steel-supported platform, minimizing ground contact and allowing airflow beneath.
The interior is not divided into conventional rooms. Instead, it is organized linearly as a continuous sequence of functions — entrance, work, living, rest, and hygiene — maintaining a unified spatial condition.
The floor is a lightweight timber platform, establishing a clear and continuous horizontal plane of habitation.
A roof garden is integrated above the living space, contributing to microclimate and rainwater retention. Access is provided by a steel ladder leading to a flat roof deck for outdoor use and observation.
All elements are designed for assembly and disassembly, allowing rapid construction, relocation, and adaptation to varying spatial and climatic conditions.