Project Description
FROM THE ARCHITECTS:
“Safety Not Guaranteed” is the fellowship exhibition of the Walter B. Sanders 2015-2016 Fellow in Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Michigan, Ashley Bigham in collaboration with Erik Herrmann
Architecture is inseparable from defense. From its most primitive and revered “origins,” architecture was rehearsed in environments of conflict. As an alternative to the term defense architecture, a category which typically refers to forms and types (fortresses, citadels, bastions, urban walls), this project proposes the idea of an architecture of defense. An architecture of defense sees all of architecture as a reaction to some measure of paranoia and studies the built environment to recognize measures and methods used to subdue these fears. Safety Not Guaranteed explores the architecture of paranoia through a series of design manipulations and exaggerations. Its setting is the network of suburbia and everyday domestic scenes—spaces most commonly associated with privacy, safety, and security and where fortification occurs on the scale of the front door, the home, the cul-de-sac, and the neighborhood.