Vaughn Avenue
2020
See the unsettling sameness.
As Winston observed the neighborhood, he found it eerily intriguing. There was no one on the sidewalks, and every house had its curtains drawn tight. The local culture seemed to value isolation and uniformity above all else. The scene reminded him of the detached aesthetic found in Jon Rafman’s "Nine Eyes of Google Street View," where a voyeuristic drama unfolds through the lens of an automated camera, capturing both intimacy and detachment in ordinary settings.
Suburbia, detached.
In 2019, Winston was brought in to redesign a four-bedroom Spanish-style house in a Phoenix, Arizona suburb. The catch? He visited the site only once. Driving through the parched desert landscape on the highway, Winston approached the housing development, where a sprinkler immediately sprayed his windshield. As water dripped down the glass, a different world appeared: rows of identical stucco houses with green lawns lining an artificial canal. It was suburbia’s copy-and-paste dream made real.
Jon Rafman
Existing Conditions
Bring disconnection into focus.
Inspired by Rafman’s approach to dramatizing the banality of urban life, Winston aimed to incorporate this aesthetic of disconnection into the renovation. His vision was to create a monastic, bone-colored mass through sparse furnishings that would reflect the starkness and isolation inherent in the surroundings. By embracing the minimal and detached, Winston transformed the house into a bold statement against the conventional ideals of suburban living.