I Dwell Therefore I Am

"Today's houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, open to air, light and sun, but do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in them?"
- Heidegger, 1951.

Domestic architecture is increasingly traded as well-ordered cubic spaces that feel dead before they have begun to be lived in. Too often architects seem to get lost in the "look", promoting a universal lifestyle which results in an alienation between architecture and its context and inhabitant. This attitude becomes apparent when looking at the current style of renders. These visual seductions of spectacular architecture not only advertise but also manufacture collective desires of a universal lifestyle. This is an indication of the prevailing architectural practice: it is no longer conceived as a relation to our way of living but rather to the constructed aspirations. And this brings us to the main contradiction, namely that there is hardly any relation left between building and dwelling. I dwell therefore I am evolves around the awareness that a devaluation of human inhabitation arises when building and dwelling are understood separately. It is a brief and personal analysis of the ontology of what architecture is, reducing it to its very essence.