project 3/

A ROOM TAKING OFF IN FLIGHT

Kh. Sabirov, Vitebsk

Our entire private life occurs in our apartment or in our room, if there is such a possibility. Even if our thoughts and fantasies are sometimes elevated, (whenever possible), even it we try to overcome the depressing everyday existence, all that surrounds us in this existence doesn't permit us to do this.

And a significant portion of blame here lies in the situation in our apartment or room, where we spend the greater part of the day. We are not talking about the people, the family with whom you live, but about those things which you bump into without noticing it - the couch, tables, closets - but primarily about the very box of the room, where all of this is located, about the constant "atmosphere" reigning in the space surrounding you, it makes no difference whether it is in a chaotic or organized form. This atmosphere, this "order," even if you have arranged it yourself in your own image and likenness, now it itself will start to affect you, with its daily presence it forces the very same thoughts to go round in your head, and with its weighty, material immobility the same thoughts and feel- ings press toward the "earth," remain within the confines of the low, "room" horizon. But there is a simple means for breaking away, for escaping from this horizon without changing anything in the arrangement of your room, to escape together with it upward. to evaporate into different, new space of being. You only have to to a little bit. In one on the parts of the room, best of all in the center, you should remove the parquet, uncover the beams which hold up the floor, and saw out some of them so that a deep hole downward opens up. You will see that everything around you has suddenly become transformed. In the presence of a bottomless pit, the roof which until now seemed to be sturdy, will acquire qualities of the inside of a balloon or a rocket rushing upward. Everything around you will become light and transparent and even heavy things which seem completely immobile will become your close and light friends in flight. Living in this room, this sensation of taking off, will not abandon you again.

Of course:, we are talking here about a house in the country.

In urban conditions, where underneath the parquet floors is solid cement., such a "break through" is not so easy to achieve. The solution consists in making a second, artificial floor up above. Despite the fact that this will reduce the height of the room, the result described above will repay this with

Interest.

A ROOM TAKING OFF IN FLIGHT

1. Make a model of the room out of plywood 65 x 55 x 45 cm.,

raise the floor of the room by 10 cm. Saw a hole in it and build cross-beams which hold up the "floor."

2. Paint: the floor dark brown; the wass inside the room should be light yellow (the color of ochre); the front wall of the floor and the external side of the model are dark gray.

3. Furnish the rooms: tables, chairs, closets - proportional to the scale of the room (it's best to buy these things as miniatures in a toy store, but they can also be made "by hand").