The proposal highlights architectural specificities around the city, and how homeless people interact with them. I found the notion of owning a patch of street, someone’s unused entrance or an alcove within building’s façade compelling. It re-evaluates what an ownership in the urban setting is, from a perspective of a person who doesn’t own much, but still occupies a part of the city street. The proposal re-thinks the place a homeless person might reclaim for his own needs – an outdoor abode that doubles as a resting point, sleeping and eating place, a piece of an urban tissue that is public, but can become private. The impossible living situations in which these people find themselves is highlighted by the shapes of the proposed urban furniture – a variation of an unpleasant design that strictly follows urban contours, not to disturb social and architectural flow of the city. The “bed” fits perfectly within the limits of what we think is acceptable for a human who lives on the streets, no matter how weirdly it’s shaped or impossible to use. Although the proposal insinuates an ownership over a section of a city’s urbanistic element, the execution of the proposal ironically questions what kind of living arrangement is appropriate in the public eye and what are the limits of public – private relationships. 

​

In theory, a new object has the same function. We can still use it as a resting place, sleeping mattress, or meditating air bed, but with a certain difficulty. Very well-known type of bed becomes an unpleasant product that is not offering us what we need from that object anymore. The object is now aggressively modelled by the shape of the object that is surrounding it, in this instance – an alcove on the street. The brutal reality of the hard walls is subduing an air mattress until it’s shaped the way it should be shaped – within new limits and blended in the streetscape. This metaphor, in the same way, applies to the people who are inhabiting these places, being cornered by the oppressing society. In this case, we don’t see a human with the same purpose, but a shell of what we usually think of a human, a version of a human that we don’t aspire to become, unusual or “unpleasant” variation of the humankind, much like the variation of a bed we are used to.

​

The peculiarity of the objects gets enhanced when put out of context, like in a white gallery space, a resting place of all art objects. Then, these objects are evaluated through a different set of eyes that apply different and new meanings to these objects, stripping away the connotation established in an urban setting.