The living room / Miami 2001

"The Living Room" is an example of our understanding of architecture as public art. The project reclaims the classical role of architecture as the most public of the arts. The dual objectives of architecture for us are to create a better quality of life and to perform as a tool for the pursuit of happiness. "The Living Room" is a built metaphor of the construction of city in progress, a model of possibilities to give back ownership of the city to all and an "imaginary solution" for Miami as the City of Tomorrow. "The Living Room" rejects the privatization of the public realm and disrupts the urban fabric through an act of visual resistance that frames the void of the contemporary city. Rather than providing definitive answers, it generates questions and fosters engagement, encouraging active participation and the collective appropriation of the city. The project stretches and blurs the boundaries between architecture and the arts, using the tools of one discipline to question the limits of the other. We see "The Living Room" as a social sculpture for the neighborhood—a domestic square and an open home for the community. "The Living Room" stages encounters between stories and spaces, alternating between public and private, the intimate and the monumental, the everyday and the fantastical. Within it, two opposing spaces collide, giving rise to a liminal zone that defies conventional definitions of either public or private. It becomes an alternative space where different times, scales, and experiences coexist. As a poetic event, "The Living Room" bridges dreams, memories, and desires—becoming a stage for everyday life. It is simultaneously indoors and outdoors, a ruin and a beginning, one and many. In it, we are both actors and spectators of a shared play that unfolds with others, casting the city itself as the theater of everyday life.