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

Masque

Masque (n): a form of amateur dramatic entertainment, popular among the nobility in 16th- and 17th-century England, which consisted of dancing and acting performed by masked players. Peter Smithson on the house of the future exhibition, 1956: “It was made like in the theater. It wasn't real. It was made of plywood. It was like an early airplane, where you make a series of forms, then you run the skin over them. The house was made in ten days. It was not a prototype. It was like the design for a masque, like theater. Which is extraordinary. Like all exhibitions, they live a life of say a week or four weeks in reality, but then they go on and on forever. Like the Barcelona Pavilion before it was reconstructed.”1 On the basis of Smithson’s description, the exhibition was a theoretical and architectural foray into how the house of the future could associate to its modernist roots rather than a true representation of a house in the future. It could be compared to Adolf Loos’ Villa Muller, 1930 for its theatrical quality and the voyeuristic tension between its rigid masculine exterior and organic feminine interior.2 This was further heightened by the presence of peeping holes that let the visitors observe the activities of the “unaware” domestic protagonists.

1 Beatriz Colomina, Peter Smithson, “Friends of the future: a conversation with Peter Smithson”, in October, N0.94 (Fall 2000), pp.3-30.
2 Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture and Mass Media, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998 “Interior”, pp. 233-281, “Window”, pp. 283-335.