B13_#141 // The Cloud Parlour // Elif Öngüt

CONTEXT: Home

MICRO-TYPOLOGY: Cloud Parlour

This entry focuses on personal data storage and the ever growing need for more digital space. A lifetime of data created and stored by an individual begins to inherit memory, memoir and memorabilia qualities, which brings to mind a micro-typology that existed in the 17th century and later on became extinct. Cabinet of Curiosities, “the wunderkammer or kunstkammer was regarded as a microcosm and a memory theatre”^[1]. The term ‘cabinet’ originally described a room rather than a piece of furniture. “They provide a solace and retreat for contemplation”^[2]. In the near future External Drives, Google Drives or Dropboxes will cease to meet our personal data storage needs. Finite memory creates a spacial problem. In the form of a storage room or “cabinet” our homes will have to incorporate a new micro-typology “the cloud parlour”. To revisit a personal memory, for a moment of solace and nostalgia we would step inside our cloud cabinet.

^[1] Francesaco Fiorani, reviewing Bredecamp 1995 in Renaissance Quarterly 51.1 (Spring 1998:268-270) p 268

^[2] This is the secretive aspect emphasised by R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History (Oxford) 1973

Elif Öngüt is a Part 1 Architecture Graduate from the University of Edinburgh (ESALA)