Resources don’t stand still. They flow through industrial cycles, accumulate in surplus, vanish from one context to appear in another. Refunc treats this material mobility as a design premise rather than a problem to solve.
The Hybrid Catalogue House inverts the logic of nomadic dwelling: instead of moving the structure through space, the structure adapts its skin to place. Each location offers its own material vocabulary, beer tables, clipboards, moving blankets, scrap wood. The building listens to what’s available and responds accordingly.
This isn’t flexibility for its own sake. It’s a recognition that material availability is fundamentally unstable. What exists in surplus today becomes scarce tomorrow. Functions shift. A beer table becomes interior wall. A clipboard becomes cladding element. A moving blanket provides insulation. The transformation happens through assembly, not processing, maintaining the material’s recognizable form while enabling new use.
The catalogue isn’t a fixed inventory but a methodology: a systematic approach to working with whatever the immediate context provides. Each iteration of the house is therefore both specific to its location and part of a larger pattern of material negotiation.
This is dwelling in material time, where the building’s form follows not aesthetic preference but the rhythm of industrial discard and availability.
