First Place Winner of Opengap's A House For... ideas competition. Featured on Diseño y Arquitectura.

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A. Hitori was used to living alone. He was a writer and an agoraphobe, so solitude had come naturally since youth. Over years of solitary life, however, Hitori’s anxiety attacks had become more frequent and unpredictable, driving him further and further from society until he became a recluse in his tiny New York studio. His apartment was too small to allow visits even from close friends, but his condition kept him from venturing out of his immediate neighborhood.

Having made a small fortune from a recent novel, the writer set out to build a new home. His task to the architect at first seemed a paradox. He wanted to remain in New York to be close to his friends but also craved easy access to nature. In the end, the writer and the architect settled on the site of a parking lot in Chinatown – an open plot of land in a relatively inexpensive Manhattan neighborhood.

The writer’s house is designed around his desire to be mostly alone and to have control of his surroundings. A synthetic, dynamic “nature dome” is the core of his inside-out house, while he lives among the infrastructure. When he craves a forest, the beach, or a quiet rainy day, he enters the nature dome, adjusts a few settings, and waits for the environment to change. He is the master of his universe.

Although the technology isn’t perfect, it’s constantly improving. With time, the transformations within the dome will become so seamless that its difference from nature will be imperceptible.