Abstract
The Afternoon House series is an ongoing research project leveraging belated or obsolete architectural techniques and ideas to explore the way that architecture makes world-order perceptible. It is a revision of Palladio's Villa for a world he could not imagine. It consists of a black shell of layered in-situ concrete, enclosed, partitioned, and furnished in light timber and fine steel joinery. The shell is formed by linear rhythms of solid and void. Complexity develops as simple rhythms slip in and out of phase with each other, converge and interfere. Although each pattern is rigorous and repetitive, no two of the resulting spaces are identical. Although the plan is not sensed directly in the way that heat, darkness, or solidity are sensed, it is nonetheless perceived. It is not a matter of the mind against the senses: it is incorrect to oppose cognitive order and sensory experience. Experience is also cognitive and order sensory. Rather than a centring machine like the Villa Rotonda, Afternoon House II is carved by orders that originate at a distance, and are only passing through on the way to somewhere else.
