USA

Houses and Barracks evolved over nearly a year. Over the years I have often returned to a house theme, partly because home and shelter are universal themes. Everyone has a narrative to project onto those structures. Specifically, I had been introduced to the work of the Bauhaus architect Bruno Taut, who prior to leaving Germany had made colourful buildings, including housing for ordinary working men in Berlin. Within the same year I had also seen American woodworker Wendy Maruyama’s Tag Project, about the Japanese detention camps in the US during the same war. I was struck by the similarity in structures used to house prisoners at the camps. Taut’s houses, while modest in scale, were full of life; buildings used to warehouse people are the opposite.