Cooperative Dwelling at 835 Kings Road

835 Kings Road is a classic example of Californian modernist architecture. Constructed in 1922, the declared intention of the project was for four creative friends to live together in a “cooperative enterprise”. This intention failed dramatically: within two years one of the group had attempted suicide, and two others left the project. In this stop-motion animated film puppets of the original residents make repeated attempts to live together in a different, and this time mutually co-operative, way.

The film shows animations of conflictual exchanges at the house and highlights the social history of the design and original inhabitation of the house at Kings Road. It sets the four participants to this cooperative design onto an equal level, in an approach which reveals the range of powerful cultural and social forces that impinged on the original cooperative ambition.

The animation set consists of sections of the house at a scale of 1:6. The tool of stop-motion animation enables the playing out of repeating trajectories of conflict between the four inhabitants and their house, that shift in their implications with every iteration.