Nuance and Intimacy in the Construction of Civic Space: Venice Biennale [Italian Pavilion] + Published by SKIRA, 2022

October 8th - November 22, 2021

HEALING OBJECTS: UNMASKING NOVEL DOMESTIC URBANISMS

Mersiha Veledar, The Cooper Union

 At the onset of the pandemic Coronavirus lockdown, our daily rituals became abruptly conflated to the intimacy of our domestic spaces. Having lived through another isolating parallel during my childhood in war torn Bosnia and Herzegovina [1993-1995], these domestic compressions became the inspiration for the forthcoming sequence of experimental objects by intentionally maximizing their design potentials through a multiplicity of functions and rituals that interlock with a sequence of elements such as stairs [exercise] and windows [ventilation/light] in parallel with furniture elements such as beds, tables and chairs. These “healthy” objects hold multiple domestic rituals and functions at a critically health-conscientious time, while intentionally blurring boundaries between public and private thresholds where a bed can also function as a nourishing dining table for the city of New York, creating an environment of play and healing. Central Park, a pre-existing urban scale object was chosen as their ideal site. Since 1857, it has been identified as a healthy object of New York that is visibly inclusive and accessible to all social and economic strata, becoming once again an escape rescue to New Yorkers at the peak of the pandemic influx. The atmospheric healing effects of nature such as the lush open fields and lakes are used to situate and atmospherically activate this new sequence of object domesticity within its 778 urban acres of the park in tandem with pre- existing smaller scale traces of Central Park desks, benches and chairs, providing a tapestry of healing domestic urbanisms.