about us.
A study of intimacy between a human body and a six-axis industrial robot — performed as a daily ritual of hair brushing.
fig. 01 / the act
- what
- Master's thesis project
- where
- Bartlett School of Architecture, London
- year
- 2019
- role
- Concept, fabrication, programming
About Us asks what happens when a machine is invited into the most ordinary corner of domestic life. Once a day, a six-axis industrial robot picks up a hand-carved wooden brush and runs it slowly through the participant's hair — a gesture borrowed from the rituals a parent or partner might perform without thinking.
The arm moves at a deliberate, almost meditative pace. What emerges is a strange and disarming sense of care — produced not by intelligence or empathy, but by patience and the unhurried scale of the machine itself. A co-inhabitant, not a tool.
We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital connection and sociable robots may offer the illusion of companionship without the demand of friendship. sherry turkle, alone together
fig. 02–04 / process, encounter, room