"Patterns of Life", a new installation with SITU Research & journalist Mona Chalabi, debuts at Cooper Hewitt

A newly commissioned installation unpacks the material and intangible dimensions of domicide through the stories of three individual families whose homes were destroyed by munitions manufactured in the United States

Throughout the last year, SITU collaborated with artist and data journalist Mona Chalabi to develop “Patterns of Life,” a project commissioned by the curatorial team of this year’s Smithsonian Design Triennial, “Making Home.” The exhibition will be on view from November 2 to August 10, 2025 at Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Tuesday, November 5–Visual investigations practice SITU Research and artist and data journalist Mona Chalabi debuted a newly commissioned installation as one of 25 site-specific projects in “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial,” a group exhibition that takes the theme of “home” and “housing” as a critical point of departure. The exhibition opened to the public this Saturday, November 2, 2024.

Entitled “Patterns of Life,” the work presents three homes destroyed in airstrikes by weapons manufactured in the United States. The reconstruction of the three homes in the exhibition, one from Iraq (2015), one from Syria (2016), and one from Palestine (2023) reflects on both the material and intangible dimensions of domicide: the widespread and systematic destruction of housing. Domicide is currently under consideration by the United Nations for potential recognition as a crime under international law; and as both the largest financial contributor to UN peacekeeping initiatives and the world’s largest arms dealer, the United States has yet to reckon with its ongoing legacy and involute relationship to domicide.

Developed in collaboration with the affected residents, the large-scale architectural reconstructions show the homes of Basim’s family in Mosul, Iraq; Osman and his wife in Manbij, Syria; and X and her son in Gaza, Palestine. For each home, the exterior facades have been constructed as dimensionally precise architecture models. Instead of a fourth facade, a section cut reveals a view into the interior of the homes. Suspended within the rooms are vibrant illustrations printed on translucent silk providing a view into the intimacy of a home, the fragility of memory, and the patterns of life that existed before the rubble. Through detailed representations of heirlooms, books, toys, and sensorial memories, these models celebrate the quotidian and intimate lives within these homes.

Accompanied by floor to ceiling panoramic landscape illustrations, the images reveal the scale of destruction domicide begets on both cities and individuals–highlighting not only the broader effects of losing shelter and community, but the personal experiences of those displaced and lives lost.

Gauri Bahuguna, Deputy Director at SITU Research says, “We mostly bear witness to domicide through visuals like aerial footage and before and after satellite imagery. But, it is these very technologies that enable the callous remote warfare destroying all these homes. The exhibition format and collaboration challenged us to address domicide through aesthetic modes that did not inadvertently reproduce the detached gaze of the perpetrators.”

Mona Chalabi, artist and data journalist says, “It was tough to interview these families and hear about all that they had lost but it was even more challenging to honor those profound losses. Domicide might feel like an academic concept but when you look at it up close, when you engage with a family’s economic, cultural and psychological consequences after losing their home, it is anything but abstract.”

The Triennial is curated by Alexandra Cunningham Cameron, curator of contemporary design and Hintz Secretarial Scholar at Cooper Hewitt; Christina L. De León, associate curator of Latino design at Cooper Hewitt; and Michelle Joan Wilkinson, curator of architecture and design at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Accompanying the exhibition is a publication that includes an interview between Mona Chalabi, Brad Samuels, Director at SITU Research and Balakrishnan Rajagopal, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing. The publication Making Home: Belonging, Memory, and Utopia in the 21st Century, co-published with MIT Press, will be available in February 2025.

To learn more about “Making Home—Smithsonian Design Triennial” at Cooper Hewitt, please click here.

For press inquiries about “Patterns of Life,” contact Candice Strongwater, Manager of Research and Curatorial Initiatives at cstrongwater@situ.nyc and Ashley Tickle, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, ticklea@si.edu.