The billboardhouse is a cube made out of three billboards. Inside they are divided in a hard and a soft part. This division is not the traditional separation of the house in kitchen, bathroom, living room, bedroom, because—although we continue to use it during centuries—it is no longer appropriate for today’s life. A house in the end is not a container for domestic functions but a place where the body has a possibility to rest, soft and pleased and at the same time a protection against bleakness and aggressors.
The idea of the Billboardhouse was inspired by a working period in Tokyo where the house are so small that the domestic functions have been transported to the exterior of the house. Eating, washing clothes, receiving friends, watching television, using the bathroom are done in the city. The house itself has been reduced to a place to relax, and to store personal belongings. In Japan, woman was been liberated from her domestic tasks thanks to the fact that the house have decreased to the minimum living space and to the fact that many functions of the house have been transported to the city, to the exterior of the house. The woman is liberated of all functional hierarchy. In Ueno’s Park in Tokyo, the homeless use their house of blue plastic in the same way as the architect Isaka does. Their house is a place to return to, but not a place where the privacy is shared with others.
The Billbroadhouse is for free. Companies pay for the structure of the house with their advertisement on the billboards. It is not only for the poor, nut also for everyone who lives a modern life in which finally we have freed ourselves from the house as a machine of oppression family commitments. In which we transform the city into appropriated domesticated places. That is to say, no longer we need to have dinner with the family (family can be a friend), but rather we will be able to choose with who and where.
This house can be a possibility to make a free house for people who either want to live like this or need to live like this. Social issues are not anymore about poor or rich, but more about a way of living.
The BillbroadThailandhouse is specially designed for Thailand, therefore it is high up for the rainy season, and needs only some curtains instead of doors or windows. The house is part of a group of houses that are being made progressively for Land a project in Thailand organized by Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Estuary Biennale 2009, Nantes, France