The Time House: between cybernetics and phenomenology

Martin Pawley’s ‘The Time House’ (1968) is a study on how to use multimedia technologies to provide a continuous record of individual experience within the domestic interior. The project’s underlying argument is that there is no authentic experience to be had in the public realm. As an antidote, Pawley proposes a retreat into a private world, where individuals, with the use of technology, can retain a continuous and repayable record of time. Thus, The Time House would enable its inhabitants to relive – phenomenologically, with all the senses – past experiences. Pawley believed that this repeated, unembellished re-creation of the past would reveal to its inhabitants a truer version of both the past and themselves, thus offering opportunities for introspection and self-knowledge. The Time House tries to bring together all the key concerns of architecture in the late 1960s: cybernetics, phenomenology, environmental behaviour studies, the use of cutting-edge technology, Cold War politics and fears, and the countercultural aim to expand human consciousness. Yet, Pawley’s proposition to use technology to simulate lived experiences with the aim of altering human behaviour still stimulates heated arguments today. These arguments stem from current fears about the effects of digital technologies on individuals and society: the disconnection with the here-and-now, the prioritisation of the individual over the collective, the disintegration of reality and the neglect of social public space. The Time House, which could be dismissed as a project of its time and place, is embedded in a web of ideas still resonant in our present.