My client is a young-adult woman with an academic fine arts background, from Serbia and an actual MFA Interior design student. Through our conversations, I could see that for her, safety and love were the main factors affecting her decision on where and with whom she wanted to live in Manhattan. She was not looking for a regular roommate situation, she was looking for a family environment. After several conversations I also understood that the idea of becoming more disciplined, structured, and having a routine in her life was something that really interested her.

For the final project, we had to transform each other’s apartments through different exercises. After engaging in different processes of communication, we would discover the true and real necessities our clients had. One of the main requirements of this project, was choosing our hypothetical future roommate. We could pick between a refugee, a republican or regular roommate.

In this case, my client Marija, after being so touched with what was happening in Syrian war, wanted to help one of the many children that were living those terrible experiences. This is why she decided to choose a Syrian boy as her roommate. Her desire was to help this boy to overcome the problems that the political and social war had instilled in him. 

She wanted to provide him with a loving home and a safe place to live. Having language as their main and principal barrier, their relationship had to be completely interactive, where play and creating new spaces would strengthen and help develop their relationship.

Throughout different activities and daily routines, both characters would get to know each other and teach each other.Furniture would adapt to their daily necessities. Each time, new techniques and materials would evolve and fulfill new needs, from ropes, to textiles, to panels, to actual furniture.

The apartments layout is inspired from the theater, and its transitions from public to private: front house, stage and backstage. In order to work as a residence, it was necessary to define some spaces as fixed and other as flexible. The fixed spaces were  the dressing room, the storage, bathroom, workshop, laundry and kitchen. 

As flexible spaces, thre were activities like studying, sleeping, eating, playing and sharing. These spaces were suitable for their daily performance as occupants of their new home. 

With the help of the transformation and design of the apartment, the child would have a better and safer lifestyle. The idea was to make the apartment adapt to the boy’s and Marija’s needs. 

Through the use of different materials and objects, the child would be smoothly introduced to his new life in New York.  The furniture in the apartment would change as time passed by, providing an easier way to digest the change. The space, through time, would develop slowly, similarly to the process  of understanding a new language, each time becoming  more complex. This is why at the beginning of their new cohabitation, the apartment would be composed of simple materials like rope, then textile, then the technique develops until they could have a stable and solid home.