Pempki.

Thinking about residential design is an attempt to write the word forever. One knows its limitations, yet for some, the achievement of a lifetime is a house they can call home. And in that sense, residential design begins to mean forever, and forever begins to mean as long as we are here.

If you think about it, a book is a strange object. By the time you publish it, it’s already an adult. A book cannot change; it can age gracefully, but regardless of what happens in the world, it will remain the same. You can renovate everything outside, but it will still be the same book. You can renovate everything inside, but then it becomes another book. A book cannot decide what to talk about, yet regardless of the topic, it remains a book. Is a book just a shape we understand as a book? If I take a newspaper and wrap it between two linen covers, does it then become a book—or simply an elegant newspaper?

Not long ago, I was traveling through a city with buildings unlike those found in Bali—public structures with communal spaces where advanced engineering translates designers’ ideas. I walked in and out of the building with my camera in hand. Large-scale buildings are so powerful that they distort the individuality of the self. Ten people fit on the scale of a single tile; a doorknob carries everyone’s fingerprints, someone takes a picture, and another person comes closer to see what is drawing so much attention. And the “I” turns into “we.” When the light no longer invited photographs, I sat in the shade on a wide stone railing and leaned my back against a square column. After a while, as I reviewed the photos, I saw people passing by, people eating, people playing, people in open spaces, people leaning against narrow corners that fit only one person, and I thought: a building is, in fact, a strange object.

I look at the newspaper wrapped in linen. Then I close my eyes and start imagining changes in the building. I put linen doors at the entrances, place a chair on the railing where I sit, add a kitchen, a bathroom, a living room, a bed — and I think: Can I now call this building a home?

In the essence of residential design lies the reason why a book is a book, and why a home is a home — because both hold an identity that attempts to last as long as we are here.