Endemic Architecture



During the late 1800's Francis Galton famously layered negatives of photographs of faces one atop another in an effort to reveal an 'average' face. In nearly all cases, Galton used specific categorizations - military officers, family portraits, and so on - as a means to identifying key traits among these categories. The resulting photographic compositions, which Galton called Composites, reveal differences in facial features to be simultaneously the qualities which produce sameness, or a facial average, through layering.

Recently, Endemic designed or completed work on four different private residential projects in Palo Alto and Menlo Park California. These projects range in scope and budget, but all share common features such as a their location on a single family residential site, proportionately similar rectangular sites, approximately same scales, and some condition of non-conforming use per updated zoning codes. Borrowing from Galton, the Average Plan of these projects is shown here through techniques of superimpostion of one over another to both blur their specific qualities yet reveal some common domestic traits. The Average Plans drawing is something of an analytique that includes elevation drawings hinged to the horizontal plane at the point of their plan alignment, interior wall demolition, iterations on possible door locations, and a series of centralizing (central object) and dispersed (field) figures.
Copyright, Endemic Architecture 2024