Gabrielle Grace Knauf & Max Walewski
2026
2nd Prize: Britton Memorial Awards 2026
After Rooms reimagines domestic architecture by exposing and activating the hidden mechanical systems that shape everyday life. Rather than treating plumbing, electrical, and HVAC infrastructure as concealed utilities, the project positions them as spatial and social drivers. Using the Chicago 6-flat as a test case, existing partitions are removed while plumbing cores are retained, allowing mechanical systems to reorganize domestic space through gradients of heat, airflow, and infrastructure. Raised floors, reconfigured ducts, and mobile utilities produce flexible environments where comfort, gathering, and daily routines emerge from negotiated relationships with the building's systems instead of fixed rooms. By dissolving the divide between occupant and machine, After Rooms proposes a new model of domesticity defined by adaptability, environmental control, and evolving patterns of habitation.