This final project of the semester builds upon the previous two. In Assignment 1 - Balloon Animals students performed a series of operations that led to the creation of form, spaces and material studies related to the body. Assignment 2 - Thick Skinned was a project that sought the design and representation of an proto-architectural "skin".

In this third and final assignment, students design a house - a house that emerges from a manifesto that suggests the house, as an architectural typology, while having its origins in many different environments, also has its origins in humankind's understanding of a particular plant or animal. Through an understanding of a chimerical translation of a selected animal, students make design proposals that defend the thesis of a manifesto by proposing the skin, material and structure (endo/exo skeleton), as well as the form, space and ordering system that comprises the house. Each such "animal house" occupies a particular ecology that is hot, cold or humid, and responds to this context as well as to light and the absence of light. The house, as would an animal, also has some relationship to air, land, or water, which should inform the siting of a house.

As a precedent, we build upon the methodology of the reclusive 20th century architect Douglas Darden, who would create, then translate, ideograms (chimeras created by the overlay and juxtaposition of several images), to evoke architectural form imbued with meaning.