Consumer Envelope
This term, brought up by Martin Pawley in "Garbage Housing"1 refers to how the dwelling becomes a container where consumption expands, and where private possessions are displayed and stored. The house is no longer only a shelter for people, but also a shelter for objects. Housing, in a sense, is an integral part of production and consumption, since it is also a product that can be mass-produced, consumed, and disposed of (an example of this would be shrinking cities). In "The Powers of the Hoard," this consumer envelope is taken to an extreme, since hoarders are consumers that flood their dwellings with possessions, to the point of living in houses that function better as containers than as dwellings.2 It is in these extreme cases that one can wonder to what extreme consumers become possessions, or subjects to the actant objects that compel them so much, a topic that both Pawley and Bennet explore in different ways.3 Lastly, there is another aspect that Pawley explores about the consumer envelope, and that is architecture's current role as an envelope that encloses and conceals internal processes, mechanical entrails, rather than imposing itself over everything. In that sense, a link can be established between this idea and Dross City, where the author talks about mechanical appendages hidden within a building, or, at a greater scale, waste that has completely infiltrated the city, attached to it like an outgrowth. In this scenario, architecture also functions as an envelope that rapidly sheds layers of defunct pieces.