Moving through delight into activity.

I decided to look at a house as a cause for delight next. This seemed to follow on. I did a few sketches but was still ending up with a pile of cubes that resembled some form of bent staircase (see the sketches posted on tuesday). I think this idea was ok, but I wanted something a bit more... delightful!

I decided to use the same process as for environmental filter. I went through my notes and my brainstorming and finally settled on a small thought-chain. ALSV (Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira) saying he had had influences from Esher as a child (see 'A house is a...' posted tuesday). I have always loved Esher's work, and I immediately began thinking about another of Esher's stair artworks:

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972): Relativity 1953 Lithograph

http://www.mcescher.com/

From here I started sketching. I had the image above in view and was still trying to leave the essence of Casa Tolo in my work, as well as trying to sketch like ALSV. (I know! multitasking!).

After sketching, re-sketching, showing to my housemates (and trying to explain with just the images), then re-sketching again i have come up with the following:

This first image was the first of my sketches that I felt resembled ALSV's style. It was the first, and so far is the best, but I needed to revert to a more geometrical lines view to try and explain the design to my housemate. (I was working on the principle that if someone studying Exercise science or Occupational therapy can understand my sketches then they should be easily deconstructed by my peers and tutor).

This next sketch was my effort at this. still a little drafty and having a few issues on the front wall, but certainly more readable.

The idea is that the studio is underneath. You leave the studio by the door shown in the middle bottom. You then follow around and up onto the next floor. This takes you underneath a reversed staircase and out onto a small platform, from there your only choice is into the door shown on the right. this leads to a staircase. There is nothing else on this floor. the staircase leads out on top of that 'block' from which point you enter the living/kitchen/bedroom space (as to be defined when I work on a house as a container of human activity next). Inside there is the staircase which is the revers side of the one above the first level. This leads down to a window. Leads to no where.

Hopefully I would like this design to finish up as a space from and for ALSV's inspiration.

This last image is of my VERY rough drafts of plans for the house. I have pretty much got down the exterior plans, and now just have to start focusing on a house as a container of human activity.

LIGHTNING BOLT MOMENT!!! +environmental filter.

If I had one of those light bulbs floating above my head like in a cartoon it would have just have blown a fuse from excitement!

I have an idea! What's more, I have an design which I actually feel like ALSV (Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira) would actually like to live in.

(WARNING... long narrative awaits!)

Walking to the bus stop with fellow Dab310er April, we were discussing this project and how we were planning to interpret our exemplar projects into a cabin for the architect. I have been playing with the idea of specifically choosing a site that is very different to that of Casa Tolo (see more below), and our conversation sparked an idea.

April has studied the High-gate hill house, and as such is another steep-site-designer in this instant. She was explaining her idea of a house half off a cliff.

(which sounds very good - see her blog: http://aprilsarchitecturalapprentice.blogspot.com/)

As a result of this conversation I spent my bus trip home thinking about levels and the site I needed desperately to hurry up and decide on. April's idea sparked the first thought:

How would ALSV's cabin interact with a cliff?

Casa tolo is on a steep site, and is sloped down over the whole site, it is of plain concrete, and other than the stairs, the feeling of an industrialized nature was what drew me to this exemplar. When I got home I started sketching (trying to use the same style of ALSV). At first I had the cabin perched on top of next to and half-way up a cliff, but when I drew my little pile of boxes at the base o the cliff I liked this the most. It looked (because I was drawing very small in the corner of a page), as if the house was just a pile of stones that had tumbled down and off the cliff. This was the first Idea.

Taking a step back I looked through my research and notes and tried to understand what ALSV's key elements were.

I think that just because ALSV built one house which staircases down an intense incline, this does not mean he would wish to live in a mirror image of this house (but in a Brisbane-ish context).

I think he would have an interesting site, and build the form of the cabin from the site.

Still playing with indoor/outdoor.

Still working with light.

Still leveled 3D shapes

Still separate components.

From studying Casa Tolo I believe his cabin should be a geometrical abnormality OF the site.

This was (for the moment) sort of looking at the house as an environmental filter, and having realized this i decided I'd stick with this ideal and try and figure out the next bits of my house by looking at the other two!

Southern Elevation and Site plan (of Casa Tolo)

Right, I think this is the final drawings from Casa Tolo! How exciting, after this I am developing the cabin for my architect.

Firstly I have a section and plan together, the section isn't a conventional one (so I may yet be told tomorrow that I do indeed have one drawing left), but Casa Tolo isn't exactly a conventional house.

I found these and re-drew them. I chose to use these two images together as they explain a little how the spaces within the house are organized the numbers correlate to the list below the image. I felt that this would do a better job of explaining the house than a detailed cut (through any part of the house) could. Hopefully you share my views. :)

1. Office

2. Kitchen

3. Living

4. Dinning

5. Bedroom

6. Dressing room

7. Laundry

8. Mechanical

9. Swimming pool

10. Parking

11. Entrance

[When to full size it is drawn at 1:100]

This second image is of the southern elevation:

The last image is of my site plan (any other DAB310ers out there feel free to copy and insert as your neighbors... you know what I mean *shifty eyes*). You may need to note it is at the scale 1:500. If I dropped to 1:200 it wouldn't fit on an A4 page (I know... painful!).

P.S.

References:

The first image is from this web site:

100 PROJECTOS. (2005) Blogue Da Turme E. Retrieved March 19,2010, from http://100projectos.blogspot.com/2008/01/casa-tlo.html

But also with a little help from google translator... ok a lot of help, the web site was in Portuguese and the image text was in italian. I don't think this is the original source of the image, but it correlates with the plans from the other sources I have found.

The 2nd and 3rd images were drafted off images from this text:

Yoshida, N. (Ed.) (2006). Living with nature.Architecture and

Urbanism, 426, 18.

The big picture.

Back to the plans again. This is the whole house ( the top of the hill is at the top of the page, and every thing drops down from there!)

Sketched ideas.

Finally got around to uploading some stuff last night, so now I felt I could upload these too. These are a few sketched basic ideas:

Rock Pile.
Level Two.

Corner of the verandah.

Around the Top of the Hill.

Geometry of a Cliff.

I'm not really 100% sure which option I will go with yet (yes yes, i know it is ONE WEEK till the due date). So far the Around the Hill and Corner of the verandah are my winners.

I like Around the Hill because it takes the site as the basis for it's form. I probably should show the plan view as well, but in the mean time you'll just have to stay guessing. Like Casa Tolo it works with indoors/outdoors, and sits as if it is part of the site.

(or it will when I'm finished with it *shakes fist*)

Corner of the verandah was an idea I had basing more on the indoor/outdoor working with designing to suit a climate. In a brisbane-ish climate the queenslander was built like it is for a reason... so how could I implement this into a design that i think would suit the Alvaro Liete Siza Vieira cabin.

I'm still not really sure, but I do have one more idea up my sleeve, which I think I like... I'm ust not exactly sure how to put it together... stay posted!

Also, still working on sketching like my Architect... his seemingly messy style is much harder to replicate than a hand drawn CAD plan.

Stairs.

Also, in the previous post there was reference to Esher and Piranesi - these images are (stair related) examples of their artworks:

Esher:

Piranesi:
Referencing:

Both of these images were collected off the internet from the following sites, however they are artworks by the artists mentioned(Esher and Piranesi). Both these materials are commonly available, however I got them from the links below.

Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972):

http://www.mcescher.com/Biography/lw435f2.jpg

Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720 - 1778):

http://dl.lib.brown.edu/melancholy/spaces.html

A HOUSE is a...

For this design project we had to look at our exemplar house in terms of:

A house is an environmental filter.

A house is a container of human activity.

A house is a cause for delight.

As we did so in class, I again decided to take the approach of brainstorming. From recently looking in detail at section, site and plan, as well as from ideas in the resources below I came up with the following points/ideas:

A house as an environmental filter:

~ Frames views - decides what we can and can't see.

~ Partially buried = thermal advantage.

~ From the street you can only see the concrete platform - it is withdrawing itself from the neighborhood - creates own little world.

A house is a container of human activity:

~ The house as 'a pedestrian link between the paths of the upper and lower levels that border this lot'(Yoshida(Ed.), 2006, 12)

~ Modules - the whole house is separate from itself, being broken by levels or stairs. It would be very easy to find an alone space.

~ Personal space - ie bedrooms are quite small, where as the shared living is quite large - promotes family activity (contradictory to the broken spaces).

~ Inside/Outside living - When portugal is in it's wet season this must dictate the activity contained in it (probably more so than a regular house due to being linear).

A house is a cause of delight:

~ Different experience - eg. occupation of the roof.

~ Suspense - it reveals itself a bit at a time.

~ "the choice of exposed concrete creates an idea like that of massive stones appearing naturally on the site"(Yoshida(Ed.), 2006, 12). (I also had this feeling - one of the reasons I chose Casa Tolo. I felt like it was an industrialized nature.

~ Small number of materials = unity.

~ Influence from Esher + Piranesi as a child(Pearson, 2006, p. 2). - like living in an artwork

Here I have also included a image of my mind map thinking:

References:

Yoshida, N. (Ed.) (2006). Living with nature. Architecture and

Urbanism, 426, 16.

Pearson, C. A. (2006)In northern Portugal, Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira cascades CASA TOLO down a steep slope through terraced gardens[Abstract]. Architectural Record, 194(4), 2.

The much awaited floor plans of Casa Tolo!

Ok, here are the much awaited floor plans of Casa Tolo. As I expected they didn't come out exactly to scale, I didn't expect them all to come out different sizes to each other as well, but thankfully each level has it's own scale :).

NB: These plans are based of the floor plans from:

Architecture and Urbanism. 2006. Living with Nature. (3), 23

You may notice the question mark in my reference - it is the issue from march 2006, but until i am back at uni tomorrow I can't find out what volume that is... basically i have a looooooooong list of questions for qut help desk, so watch out!

luv El.

Plans in draft...

Ok, so the plans took me until almost 5 pm to sort out, as in sort out so I could START drawing! :( but I'm all done the basic outline. None of them have much detail yet, and I have an early class tomorrow, so i am heading off to bed, but here is a photo of them 'in progress'.

I also needed a break from figuring out the complexity of someone else's building and did a rough begining sketch of my cabin for an architect. I tried also to follow the same sketching style as Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira. I don't know how well I achieved this... apart from anything else (particularly in this photo) it looks like my house is positioned on top of a volcano. It's not, just so as you know... That is a tree.

I thought about what was said in the lecture, that the students studying Casa Tolo will probably want to pick a steep site. At the moment I'm experimenting with the idea that Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira was more looking at how the house and site interacted, and how the layers of the house are effected by this, so I'm tending towards a small uneven site around the peak of a hill.

I'm haveing issues at the moment, being unsure if I have to count the roof space as floor space, which will make the 75 square meters awfully hard to fit into. I'll see how we go.

I also think that my bedroom may be too big as all the Casa Tolo bedrooms were 3x3. This may suggest that Alvaro Leite Siza Vieira doesn't believe in big personal space areas,so I may need to focus on moving the space to the 'living' area. That being said the kitchen in Casa tolo was almost not in existance. My space planning may need a little reconsidering.

In any point, enjoy a quick pic of work in progress:

El.

Oh Dear...

Just thought I should post a note to say why I haven't been posting:

MY PLANS ARE CRAZY.

I picked this house because I am particularly interested in layered architecture and I am also not so good at drawing/ planning stairs...

WORST idea ever!

There are so many inter-related levels and so many tiny little lines, so this is why I haven't uploaded my drawings yet... probably around 1.58 tonight my blog will go into overload from so many pictures being uploaded... so be warned!

El.