in 2007 we were commissioned by an existing high-end condo building to make a proposal for the renovation of the common areas of their building. faced with an uncertain budget and conflicting desires among the members of the condo board, our proposal was for the implementation of strategy rather than a final design.

this strategy is two part:

1. the development of a system for the construction of a continuous, inhabitable wall surface throughout the common spaces of the building, based on the logic of pleating. - working with the logic of pleating, commonly used in textiles, and applying it at a larger scale with building materials, we see an opportunity to inhabit the fold.

2. the members of the board were then asked to re-define their individual visions into activities that they would like to have take place in the common areas of the building. these activities – reading, sitting, enjoying a glass of wine, people watching, conversing – were used to develop a taxonomy: a collective catalogue of the client/users desires.

returning to our pleating strategy, each activity was translated into a profile that defined an individual moment [an inhabitable fold] within the pleated wall surface.

this proposal seeks to activate the common spaces of the interior of the building and to forge a stronger connection between inside and outside. in this new condition, both these interior common spaces and the plaza serve as an inhabitable transition space and respite between the activity of the street and the calm of the private dwelling.

as the space of the lobby and plaza are combined, a new type of landscape emerges: a pleatscape. here, moments found in the plaza meet the continuous, folded surfaces of the lobby as defined by the individual activities of the user.