Pickle House

For Migrating Landscapes: Canada at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture

Year: 2012

Team: Anca Matyiku and Chad Connery

Publications:
In Common Ground: 13th International Architectural Exhibition Catalogue
In “Venice Biennale 2012: ‘Migrating Landscapes’ Winners Announced” (archdaily.com)
In Network, 2012

Awards:
People’s Choice for Migrating Landscapes Quebec Exhibition
National winner - selected for Migrating Landscapes at the 2012 Venice Biennale in Architecture
Regional winner - selected for Migrating Landscapes Quebec Exhibition

The act of “dwelling” within a landscape is a relationship based on an accumulation of repeated necessities.  It is a kind of mundane ritual that accrues meaning over time and so it is both a repeated same-ness and a constantly evolving relationship to place.  Beginning with the basic necessity of obtaining and preserving nourishment, we playfully wonder how a “dwelling” might manifest as a “pickling” of the landscape; how the architecture engages the living landscape through a metabolical process of preserve-making.  An organism that is simultaneously the pickle and the process of pickling, the dwelling is composed of a series of metabolical vessels and armatures that facilitate the flows within.  Its “bricks” are repeated containers that grow, hold, and preserve food. They construct and re-construct the architecture according to the cycles and seasons of its landscape. Over time, the dwelling accumulates within it the subtle temperaments of its landscape and the shifting needs of its inhabitants.