Wrap It Up

“People should modify, and will modify,” Rachaporn ChoochueyRACHAPORN CHOOCHUEY said of life in the airy, adaptable structures her firm (all(zone)) seems to specialize in. Kicking off Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s summer Argument series, the alum encouraged current students to build fluidly for an ever-changing world, as with her work on fabric roofs, built to distribute the perfect amount of shade, or with “lighthouses,” which resemble decorated cages able to be housed in empty buildings. (In between, there were concrete dwellings.) And while Choochuey wistfully noted during the Q&A that “I would wrap everything in fabric if I could,” the philosophy of the structures proved more pressing to the audience than the physicality of it all. Where, one person asked, does the agency of the architect end and the agency of the person inside their work begin? While enthralled by the idea of building for every aspect of a stranger’s life, she said it doesn’t work out well: “If you plan for everything, people will feel like an observer.”