This thesis by Brandon Clifford posits that our conventional understanding of domesticity is in direct relation to a cultural assumption about property ownership – permanence, prosperity, growth – and, in turn, claims that this relationship is currently in a state of crisis (we move now more than ever and foreclosure rates are through the roof).  This assumption of permanence has served as the foundation for a variety of disciplines – architecture, urban planning, real-estate, the building industry – but our increasing condition of impermanence forces us to reexamine how these disciplines respond.  This project proposes a method of making that operates in direct correspondence with the ebb and flow of property fluctuations, and is demonstrated through multiple scales of architectural design.

The specific method of making is a customizable cnc hot-wire cut EPS foam block unit of construction that is rapidly post-tensioned to a pre-cast concrete foundation.  This foundation serves as the hub to sync the architecture to infrastructure services.  It houses all the irreducible elements of the architecture – water, electricity, structure.  The remaining foam enclosure is impermanent and responsive.  It is ever changing.  In shrinking cities, where vacancy is plenty and motivation to move in is little, this proposal provides an extremely inexpensive and rapid method of making that can accommodate events, or local rentals, or seasonal visitors.  By removing the burden of permanence, which architecture and these other disciplines have operated with, temporal tenancy hopes to accommodate alternative methods of architecture and occupation that have previously been subsumed under this reign of permanence.