The Floor Plan

The Floor Plan emerged from a living situation shaped by ME/CFS, in which moving between different rooms of the home became severely restricted or at times impossible. The room at the centre of the work is a living room, but the way it is used no longer corresponds to its architectural designation.

Typical living-room furniture is absent. Instead, a bed becomes the centre of the room. Around it, objects and functions normally belonging to the kitchen, bathroom and office are relocated so that they can be reached without moving through the rest of the home. The living room thereby takes on the functions of several different rooms.

Rather than describing this altered spatial reality, the work translates it into the language of architectural and technical drawing. A floor plan records the spatial organisation around the bed, while three elevations of the shelving show in detail the objects relocated there from the kitchen, bathroom and office. Together, the drawings make positions, distances, functions and changes in use precisely visible.

Within the work, the International Authority for Global Human Affairs assumes responsibility for documenting and registering this altered use of private space. The IAGHA appears in the architectural title block and through its official stamp, while the representational language of the work remains that of architectural drawing.

The technical precision of the drawings gives form to the discrepancy between designed and lived space. What appears on paper as a measurable arrangement of objects is also a record of how a home changes when its architectural organisation can no longer be used as intended.