Another Primitive Hut
Another Primitive Hut is an indoor treehouse by Jimenez Lai of Bureau Spectacular.
It is a structure that considers Marc-Antoine Laugier's 18th century idea of The Primitive Hut, a house after nature that uses the trees for columns and the forest top as a canopy. It also considers its historical counterparts, “primitive huts” that followed similar structures, albeit with different materials: the Parthenon, for example, a triangle atop columns with a pediment describing the story arc of the gods, or more recently, Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye, a transparent ribbon window atop orientation-less pilotis allowing an observer to see the story of the people inside.
After visiting OMA’s Seattle Public Library, a floating stack of stories to accommodate the 21st Century human, Lai wondered if the social interaction of private lives has become the new pediment, and architecture the new canopy. What does Laugier’s old idea that architecture should be derived from nature even mean, when nature now consists of the materials and detritus of consumerism, rather than the perpendicular trunks of trees? What story does the pediment tell about the relationship between humans and nature, through the lens of modern technologies and economies?
Another Primitive Hut is a welcome chamber for friends and family to a domestic environment. It is a location of social gathering, whether or not anyone wants to gather anymore. It is a project that asks us to consider what it means to be a human at this stage in history, and how we imagine the next chapters ahead.
