Lexicon

Abject
Accretion
Actant
Aeration
Aerobic
Algae-boosted
Animal
Anthropomorphism
Anti-Continuous Construction
Apocalypse
Aquaculture
Aquanaut
Ark
Artificial Intelligence
Autopoiesis
Assemblages
Asymmetry
Atrophy
Attraction
Autarchy
Automata
Automation
Autosymbiosis
Bambassador
Bathyscaphe
Bioconurbation
Biomedia
Bionics
Biosphere
Biotechnique
By-product
Capacity
Actant
Coisolation
Composting
Conservative Surgery
Consumer Envelope
Consumption
Continuous Construction
Conurbation
Correalism
Cultural_Memory
Cybernetics
Cybertecture
Cyborg
Dispositif
Diving Saucer
Dross
Earthship
Ecocatastrophe
Effluvium
Egosphere
End-use
Entanglement
Eutopia
Feedback
Foam
Folk
Gadget
Garbage House
Green Cyborg
Heuristic
Hoard
Holism
Homogenization of Desire
Hostile
Human Affect
Hybridized Folk
Hydroponic
Hyper-Materialism
Information Economy
Inner Space
Interama
Intra-Uterine
Maque
Megalopolis
Min-use
Mobility
Monorail
Multi-Hinge
Non-Design
Oceanaut
Oppositional Consciousness
Organic
Ouroboros
Panarchy
Parasite
Perceived Continuation
Permanence
Place
Prototype
Post-Animal
Reclamation
RI: Data Farms
RI: Garbage and Animals
RI:Shipbreaking
RI: Toxic Sublime
Sampling
Scale
Sensing Structure
Simulacrum
Simulation
Soft Energy
Spaceship Earth
Submersible
Superwindow
Symbiosis
Synthetic Environment
Technocratic
Technological Heredity
Technological Sublime
Telechirics
The Sublime
Thermal Panel
Actant
Thing-Power
Thinking Machines
Tool
Toxic Withdrawal
Turbulence
UV-Transparent Film
Vibrant Matter
Waste
Work

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.

1 "A dwelling today is not so much a collection of consumer durables ( in which case it would be susceptible to saturation production in the same manner as cars or refrigerators) as a container for them. It is, in effect a consumer envelope." Pawley, p.47
2 "Keep returning the focus to the nonhuman bodies of the hoard, considered as actants. The human practice of hoarding, as a psychological phenomenon, is fascinating, but aim to put the things in the foreground and the people in the background." Bennet, p.244
3 "As a consequence, room occupancies decrease, demand for discrete units increases, and average floor areas for new dwellings increase as well. With growing force in the last quarter century the big space consumers have become possessions, not people." Pawley, p. 50
Citations
Martin Pawley, Garbage Housing (London: The Architectural press), 47-114.
Jane Bennett, "Powers of The Hoard: Further Notes on Material Agency," in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral Ethics and Objects, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books), 237-269.
Witold Rybezynski, "From Pollution To housing," Architectural Design, vol. 12 (1973): 785-789.
Lydia Kallipoliti, "Dross City," Architectural Design, vol. 80 (2010): 102-109.