Some notes, observations & remarks on drawings & texts
Dylan Markovski
The internal storage. A typical fixed temporary structure in which mundane objects occupy in a randomised composition. A contestation of the utility of the space. A kitchen, a laundry, a closet. The arrangement of things in the architecture becomes contested. Things are placed here or there, with no true desire for a set programme. However, there exists a compositional and proportional logic with how service and things are assembled within the steel storage unit. Varying shelf heights relate to the proportions of services and things; the washing machine perfectly fits at the bottom whilst the oven sits atop like it was always meant to be attached to the washing machine. These fleeting objects are contained by curtain, when drawn open, the space becomes in use, when closed, the curtain provides a soft form of enclosure to the room proper.
Appartements, Brussels, CENTRAL Architects & Maxime Delvaux
The mess. Mundane variants that welcomes rambling. Utilities and things exposed. A composed arrangement of objects overflowing. The architecture doesn’t act to resist the overflow. It just is.. Mass of the walls and joinery establish a clear and strong proportional logic to the assorted mess of things, yet presents as an awkward assemblage with the washing machine and dryer abutting the exhaust pipe and offset from the wall, allowing cleaning products to occupy the leftover spaces. The sink presents as a hidden service as messes of things overpower its presence. A cloth overhanging the sink, a tap and a soap dispenser the only things to delineate its occupancy within the room. PVC pipes are hidden behind the layering of boxes. A steel curtain rail hanging slightly off the ceiling, not only allows the introduction of a curtain, but also allows clothes to hang from and dry, contradicting the use of the dryer and clothes horse. The hanging clothes hold agency in territorializing the space.
Notes & Figures, Brussels, Interiors, Maxime Delvaux
Domestication and Domesticity occurs in a state of transparency. Daily life is put on display in plain sight to the neighbour in the background. Markers of domestication elicit vague boundaries within the home. A mirror stand layered with the mass of the stainless steel plinth sets an ambiguous separation between toilet and living space. Bathroom becomes living room, living room becomes bathroom. Little is done to delineate the two spaces as separate. This ambiguous living arrangement contests boundaries within the home, yet also questions the comfortability of domestication. Perhaps the toilet facing away from the glazing retains a sense of privacy and comfort. The toilet awkwardly floats above the floor, not sure why.....
Avala House, Belgrade, TEN Studio
A static view of transparency. Domestication is controlled by the curtain. Views differ to and from, within and beyond the home; controlling what is seen and unseen depending on occupation. The home is fleeting, no internal walls interrupt or demarcate spaces within. The curtain provides security and privacy from the neighbour, containing the home’s content(s). The floating toilet now appears to have a shared datum with where the curtain ends. Neither touch the floor. When the curtain is closed, the toilet is entirely invisible, containing the toilet and/or bedroom.
Avala House, Belgrade, TEN Studio
Swinging doors appear more as an intentional device to be able to obstruct, close off and compartmentalise spaces. The main living axis that utilises the swing doors can be linearly contained, whilst the remainder of the house is open and left in limbo. The axial arrangement of things on the south side suggests it is the main spaces of inhabitation. Kitchen is located centrally in one’ square’ area of the home, whilst toilet maintains a similar treatment. In doing so, it seems the architect has intentionally designed each ‘square’ of the house proper as its own individual mode of occupation relative to the swinging doors. In relation to the Kitchen proper itself, by being centrally placed, when the doors are open, its area of inhabitation expands to the opposite end of the home. When closed, the kitchen is only servicing the dining table in proximity to it.
Avala House, Belgrade, TEN Studio
The home’s occupation is solely reliant on its contents within, in partnership with the swing doors. However, the relationship between things and contents is non-hierarchial, they are just there, to occupy each ‘square’. If a toilet is next to the living room, it just has to happen. But, remember, there is a curtain to contain it....
Transparent domestic identity exists. Markers [downpipe] placed externally reveal a first threshold of domesticity that lies within. The contemporariness reveals the ordinary and mundane with such a service. It appears more so as an awkward intention being in proximity to the corner of the enclosure. The ground of the home is lifted. What exists beneath is not entirely disturbed. Ground retains its territory; curated grass patch is outlined by the perimeter of the raised ground. What exists beneath is left as dirt and soil. Raised floor territorializes site, whilst the agitated soil occupy the edges.
The staircase seeks to territorialise the internal space. Acting as a fleeting division between spaces. However, its presence is not overbearing...
Weekend House, Belgium, GAFPA
The house proper and its enclosure has no desire to define what is front or back. The house presents two patios with the same treatment (a door), suggesting two modes of entry into the home. However, the northern entry patio is disrupted with a curtain...when the curtain is drawn closed that entry to the home is rendered irrelevant. The curtain allows for a second skin of enclosure for the house. The home itself is non-hierarchial, rooms are relative to one another in proportion, yet the things, objects and content(s) that occupy all collapse and occur in response to the architecture proper, and vice versa. The length of the internal partition matches the length of kitchen bench, however, the kitchen bench appears impermanent with its offset from the external wall. The outermost elements of the wall enclosure are dense in their makeup, and this slowly dissolves as it reaches the centre of the house proper, where the enclosure is visually penetrable, and the division of internal volumes becomes known through glazing. An awkward and peculiar assemblage of stair and door exists in the everydayness of things just being there. The staircase occupies its space to delineate and contain the kitchen, yet the door is needed for access, however, how necessary is that door?
Weekend House, Belgium, GAFPA
Such a contemporary home here is non-hierarchial in its arrangement. The washing machine intentionally placed in the kitchen to ensure there is no distinction between the two modes of washing (one for clothes, one for dishes). These content(s) of the home paired together start to loosely define an area for washing and cleaning. The enclosure of the house proper itself is merely visible, taking on a background presence. We begin to become aware of the fridge’s presence in the space, with it slightly protruding out from the line of things against the wall. The fridge itself slightly interrupts the circulation space, you are forced to engage with it. Things, utilities and objects of the home define spaces of inhabitation [as well as defining space architecturally] just as much as a wall, door, floor or ceiling might. Rangehood begins to define a door threshold of sorts, hanging chandelier begins to define a space for sitting beneath it and wardrobe on the mezzanine begins to define a place of rest. The role of the window is distilled to its most banal form. Sheer curtains obscure views from the exterior to interior, and vice versa, it simply only allows light to penetrate the enclosed volume of house proper. In doing so, garden contained within is rendered as something that just exists, something that is contained and manicured, neither interior nor exterior. With things and objects blocking parts of the window, it further highlights the window’s role solely for the permittance of light, not visual access.
House for a Young Couple, Japan, Junya Ishigami
The loose concrete slab, dictated by ground, allows for the awkward, yet, intentional placement of island bench and dining table. The concrete slab is rendered rather irrelevant, its simply a way for the bench, table, chairs and other things to occupy.
The enclosure of the house proper, seeks to act as a form of containment from site proper [a fence] to define the block the house sits upon. Such a home appears intentional, yet accidental in the garden living space. There exists a freeform curved concrete slab which creates awkward and varying proximities to the wall enclosure and ground. In this, it seems garden begins to dictate floor configurations, instead of it being the other way around. The garden is an important figure of the house, house and garden are not seeking to be distinguished from one another through the architecture, walls allow for enclosure and containment of garden within the habitable volume. Garden not only exists with trees, bushes, and plants, but also in stones. Stepping stones become a natural architectural element to define spaces of inhabitation. The stone at the base of the staircase, acts as a door mat, the ground condition becomes floor, a signifier of an entry to the upper volume.
House for a Young Couple, Japan, Junya Ishigami
Amenities [shower, bath, toilet] are separate from the house and garden proper. This is just a part of the everyday of the home, these services aren’t at all interesting or ‘special’ but they are just there as they’re needed.
A downpipe, appears rather larger and more sculptural than usual, seemingly looks to hold up the eave.The downpipe is essentially just a mundane object. Its placement, awkardly, makes sense. If the downpipe were to end at the first landing of the stairs it would appear more unusual, than usual. Having the downpipe follow the line of a handrail allows it to mimic the role of a typical architectural element. The house proper itself is background, the house just exists, its assemblage however, has an effect on the downpipe to take on this other role as handrail. It’s banal, awkward and unpredictable, but it’s a neccessity. Perhaps intentional to have a downpipe at first, it is conceived more as an accident.
House in Maia, Portugal, Nuno Brandao Costa
Downpipe appears more intentional now, here, in this photograph. But it can still be conceived as accident, the propping to support the downpipe as handrail could of been an after thought...
House in Maia, Portugal, Nuno Brandao Costa
A non-conventional room that poses a strategic minimum within. There’s a styling of life that just occurs within the image of the everyday. The room here is fleeting of occupation with the inhabitation of things on the floor. Bed, desk, toys and ironing board. The everyday here is unpredictable with what it can be. Take away the toys, desk and ironing board and all you’re left with is a rectangle with a bed. Things and belongings hold more agency than just the rectangle of a room. The transparent door, as obvious as it may be, presents as a delineation of bed and desk. Unintentional or not, as light passes through, there exists a fleeting demarcation of the two spaces. Yet, the door being glazed can be as simple as just providing a source of light, since the enclosure of the room has no windows..
House for an Art Collector, Switzerland, Herzog & De Meuron
The house proper allows differing views and light access. One window on the roof, one window at eye level, and one just above your eye. These varied windows are intentional. The two relative to eye level seek to prioritise the landscape and garden externally yet in different forms. Garden is now understood in multiple ways depending where in the home is occupied. Below, a view of the tree trunk, above, the view of tree canopy. Skylight above, perfectly canons into the room proper below it, highlighting inhabitation within the home. The ratio of the windows to floor area appears to dictate the programme within. House proper is enclosed by external walls, however, room proper is contained by internal walls that don’t seek to do anymore than they need to do in relation to their height, they simply contain the content(s) within. Basement height and internal wall height are set at a datum, maintaining a likeness to each other. Two overhangs, an extension of the roof and an extension of the floor slab. Both seem slightly excessive in their protrusions, almost awkward in the assemblage, questions how much direct light is let in, perhaps it is just for vantage over the landscape or a source of ventilation...
House for an Art Collector, Switzerland, Herzog & De Meuron
The garden acts more as a living room with a desk than living room proper. Why is this? There is an extension of the curated domestic, from interior to exterior. Creating this unpredicted yet rather mundane inhabitation of space. An office desk paired with an office chair, with a potted plant sitting atop. These things begin to territorialise and domesticate the garden space [area]. A desk outside, rather just shows the house proper in operation. Containment of this external desk area is achieved through the extension of the shared wall with the neighbour. The tree, in a way, acts as a form of canopy to the desk itself, providing a mode of shade for comfort. Perhaps this is enough to suffice for inhabitation outside? Perhaps it is incidental...A room for a desk within the house maybe wasn’t feasibile....So, outside it is!
House in Hayama, Japan, SANAA
Content(s) within home all appear invisible when looking from the exterior. The bath, bed, plants and sink, all exist below the datum of the window. Internal wall [toilet] and curtain break the datum, however, both are modes of containing services. The room proper challenges the perceptions of bed, bath and toilet, creating an assemblage of the three. The partition walls of the toilet, the only mediation of bathroom and bedroom proper. These partition walls of the toilet act as a service anchor; the shower head is attached, TV and cabinet abut it [and assume there is a powerpoint on the partition itself]. Without the toilet walls, this room would be an awkward mess. The ceiling plane does not sit flush against the glazed wall, it allows for the sheer curtain to hang into the room from the level above....the sheer curtain cannot be controlled on this floor, its soft enclosure is dictated from above.
House in Hayama, Japan, SANAA
The house enclosure appears independent from the structure of the house proper. The house proper perhaps suggests enclosure is the bare minimum along with a cover to allow the curation of domestic acts within. The enclosure is continuous around the perimeter, confiding in a rather ambiguous occupation, there is no differentiation to draw a line between spaces as such - the house is just a container of things.... An awkward assemblage of doors is apparent within the home. The bathroom and stair core is assembled and placed in a rather banal way, the external doors opening inwards, barely touching the internal wall. Such an ordinary placement of these elements are conceived as intentional, the external doors just open in that way, and the internal walls are placed there just because it is needed to. As a result, this awkward assemblage allows for a flow on effect in regards to programme, how do things and objects occupy? Maybe they don’t? But this assemblage of door and wall elements define an unpredictable occupation within, around and in-between. Perhaps that’s why there’s two doors to enter the bathroom......
Maison Latapie, France, Lacaton and Vassal
The cover of the primary roof is a necessity into allowing inhabitation below, however, there exists a secondary cover that hangs more at a typical ceiling height. Porous in its nature, it appears more dense with its material makeup to provide more shaded cover. This seems to have impacted the distribution of things scattered in this extended living room. The open steel frame structure, in itself has allowed for an extension of the living room externally, not distinguishing an importance between internal and external. The secondary cover, is intentional, the things that occupy below it, have occurred due to the secondary cover. Dining table and cafe seating set occupy the shaded space below, whilst exercise bike, tallboy and wardrobe occupy the area without the secondary canopy. The content(s) adhere to the canopy based on their mode of occupation(s). The barrell, more inexplicably, appears to serve as a delineation between the two fleeting spaces as well. Yet, in this fleeting space, furniture appears to act as architectural elements. The dining table and things scattered along the periphery take on the role of a wall, rendering the operable doors as windows more so than a door. Further, a datum exists between the operable translucent doors and the doors to enter internally, heightening this extension of living from internal to external, rendering a non-hierarchical relationship between the two.
Maison Latapie, France, Lacaton and Vassal
The grate on the ground placed as if it were a door mat, defining an entry to the home. A likeness is maintained through the curated garden...patches of green mimic that of the grate and door mat, but these door mats are strictly not to be used, as stakes territorialise and define the curated garden. Things and furniture hold agency on the occupation of spaces within the home. There is no hierarchy to the assemblage of this home. Nor does the home attempt to distinguish itself from its surrounds and site proper. The site itself is just as necessary as the home that sits atop. Utilising sliding doors as opposed to swing doors affects the volume of the house proper in a less obstructive manner, allowing this non-hierarchial arrangement of house floor [area] and site. Having the curated garden abutting the home proper is profound, especially since the sliding door opens onto the garden. Perhaps garden is allowed to grow into the home proper, but then the act of landscaping is introduced to tame and curate it....or maybe not.... Further, the site’s containment exists in a moveable door, which maintains a datum in its height with the height of the enclosure of house proper.
Maison Keremma, France, Lacaton and Vassal
2
House enclosure is independent of its structural columns, in some part the enclosure is non-existent, which renders the columns as the primary element to define spaces. The enclosure just happens...
3 1
The bathroom in the first container (1) maintains a peculiar likeness to the spiral staircase, both open, abutting a partition wall, rendering them both as similar elements, there is no preference over one or the other...The bathroom in (1) has a multitude of openings, which develops another non-hierarchical relationship, neither opening is more important than the other. Perhaps this bathroom serves as a space to hold plants, water them....a primary washing service area maybe? Through all three containers, they maintain a likeness to their proportions...dividing approximately in half whether by wall or furniture. However, through such likeness, there lies an ambiguity of where the formal entry into the home proper is...Containers (1) and (2) are alike in their enclosure, structure, window placement and arrangement. Perhaps this is what the home intends? A non-hierachical form of entry exists, things and content(s) simply exist within to dictate inhabitation with no true distinguishing factor.
Maison Keremma, France, Lacaton and Vassal
House proper emphasises the strong vertical arrangement, yet, in doing so, makes aware of the varying roof levels scattered along the house. Rooms within the enclosure are define by the varied roof heights as opposed to walls. The enclosure utilises an inconsistent arrangement of the ratios of windows. Perhaps this is a way to dictate the mode of inhabitation within the house, does this affect the content(s) within the home? Or has the content(s) affected the ratio and arrangement of windows? A window is peculiarly placed at the bottom of a wall, abutting the slab allows the volume of room to appear taller than it really is. The house maintains a seamless and uninterrupted floor plane, creating a corridor of sorts that connects each volume, developing a non-hierarchical relationship between them. Proportionally, the house can be divided into three, where the middle acts a garden for potted plants, mediating between the two outermost volumes.
House A, Japan, Ryue Nishizawa
The volume of the home proper is read as a corridor that is defined by the potted plants and their relatively wide proximities between one another and a side table, instead of the typical perception of wall elements to define a corridor space. Potted plants and things serve to dictate the mode of inhabitation within the enclosed volume. The potted plants act as if they are fragile and caution must be taken when navigating through and around...However, what is peculiar, is the chair that faces away from the garden, instead elects to overlook the day bed. This seems to communicate garden as something that is just there, occupying a space yet dictates inhabitation....Perhaps not all furniture in proximity to garden defines a clear relationship with each other... Within the volume, due to its fleeting nature, doors become irrelevant...Instead, the use of a chair in the background opperates as an obstructive device to prevent entry into the volume. The extra provision of a sheer curtain allows delineation of spaces, which perceptually maintains a likeness to a typical corridor. The roof appears quite mundane and ordinary, it simply exists to serve as a cover for the volume below. It’s not rendered particularly important as nothing hangs off of it or maintains a relationship with it. The rug appears more as a staked out garden as it does not appear to centre or house furniture or things. Perhaps the rug is a spatial device, a way to loosely demarcate areas of inhabitation.
House A, Japan, Ryue Nishizawa
The structural elements of the enclosure (rafters) serve as more than just typical structure, they act to hang light bulbs from. There is an intentional awareness of using such a rafter system in this specific volume of the home, to be able light certain areas on the ground for inhabitation. Domestication of the garden room is rendered obvious by having a light switch specifically located in this volume as well as it being next to the light switch that services the volume next to it. Further, it highlights there is no hierarchical delineation between the two spaces. Though the ground is bare and exposed dirt, there exists acts of gardening to keep the concrete floor free from ground conditions that abuts it. The curated garden maintains a peculiar yet intimate relationship with the washing area to the right of it, perhaps the hose that services the taps and bath/shower also service the garden? It appears there is only floor that services the washing area, other things (storage) that are peripheral are left to occupy the bare ground condition, which again, shows little is done to hierarchically distinguish spaces. Ground and Floor are treated the same, both tended to, just in different ways.
House in Tsukimiyama, Japan, Tato Architects
An untended to garden exists below the staircase, however, it is not rejected, the ground left exposed to allow for growth. The staircase, porous, allowing a relationship to be maintained with the rogue garden that exists beneat, nothing elects to impeded this untended to garden. Entry to the home and staircase is demarcated through rock and pebbles that are loosely scattered; pot plants at the base of the stair indicate signs of domestication before entering the home. The potted plants signifying an entry point into the house proper. The staircase, as public as it may seem, is rendered belonging to the home through the ground treatment and potted plants. Anywhere before that, is contested territory..... A peculiar canopy hangs over the ground entry to demarcates the rather ambiguous door to enter, paired with a singular lightbulb.....Another bulb exists at the top of the staircase, signalling another entry point. The enclosure of the home does not maintain a material or proportional likeness to its surrounds... However, it appears like it has always been there due to its ordinariness. Its side access, takes on a likeness to an alley, minimal windows, used for ventilation purposes, nothing more, nothing less.
House in Tsukimiyama, Japan, Tato Architects
What things, objects, elements and/or garden(s) are needed to domesticate a space?....Or make a space “habitable”. The concrete surface is smothered with numerous things and contents, made visible by the complete absence of cover and enclosure. Concentrated on a singlular floor plane, the everyday is made obvious, but profundity is found in the ordinariness of the assemblage of the content(s). The floor is the base for a way to exclaim that things just happen here. Lay down the carpet and here you have a living room abutting a garden. There is subtle awareness of the content(s) and their proximity to each other, yet, there exists a fleetingness of such contemporary ordinariness. The gate like element acts as a handrail yet is also a towel rack, consequently due to its proximity to the tap.
The architecture, here, itself, is peripheral, almost invisible in the way it maintains a likeness to its surrounds but also in the way it is photographed. The garden is the main focus, yet that focus collapses around it, where other things occupy to generate inhabitation of spaces. There’s a pecularity to the casual placement of things, yet appear intentional and planned.
Sauna, Berlin, Sam Chermayeff
Mapping the Unmappable, Stan Allen
Mapping the Unmappable, Stan Allen
Mapping is not only about tracing reality, but to add and reveal selected values, ideas , relationships and experiences of a place creatively. The current use of mapping in the city shaping industry is unutilised even though the technology is advanced. Mapping is something that is never neutral, passive or without consequence. They are always somewhat biased in the hierarchy of information they possess. Using this code-like technique, to subtract, highlight and divide aspects. Corner states that a map is an “experimentation in contact with the real”. Highlighting this notion of depicting a sort of physical action that takes place - layering these actions & experiments atop of the existing tracing of inanimate objects. “Mapping as equal to what is and what is not yet” In a sense a map should be able to indicate what we think and presume what will happen in that specific area (i.e. site) using this series of codes and abstractions. We have this set of physical elements that exist to the obvious eye - now we must enhance this trace paper aspect with “eidetic” elements.
Mapping the Unmappable, Stan Allen
Maps Vs Reality: “Be abstract if they are to sustain meaning” Anecdote - people in the past attempting to make large life size maps which were unusable and impractical “just use the country itself… it does nearly as well”. Space only becomes territory through this idea of bounding and making visible and labeling - relating back to the idea of “site” It is impossible for a map to be static as information changes fast in the cyber world. We will need to find ways to explore the character of time and space creatively. Realised architecture is a messy negotiation between the real and the imagined, the built and the drawn.
The Temporary Contemporary, Sylvia Lavin
The Temporary Contemporary, Sylvia Lavin
The Temporary Contemporary, Sylvia Lavin
The Temporary Contemporary, Sylvia Lavin
To live a domestic lifestyle that encapsulates the necessity to provide spaces in which humans can detach themselves from the vertigo of modern life. We encounter an expected. The challenge to the contemporary home is to generate and invoke irrational feelings, or by introducing shocking juxtapositions to the everyday experience of domestic space. Within that, we receive a home full of domestic life, a life where the human and their things are the manifestation to evoking such a sequence of spaces. House with an Earthen Floor recalls an old sake brewery. The roles the structural elements plays here is that of reassuring their evocation of past spatial experiences. A diagram is more preferred in the field of architecture to explain a concept, intent or proposal. However, writing is just as important as reflections would have a two-fold nature....writing itself can show intent and even more theoretical value to the project proper.
Kazuo Shinohara, Beyond Styles, Beyond Domesticity
“Instead of just tearing it all down at once, they tear it down partially so you’re not deprived of the complete wreckage of the situation. It’s not often that you see buildings being both ripped down and built up at the same time”. “You get this kind of really sensuous sense of something extending both in and out of time, something that doesn’t belong to the earth and really something that is rooted very much in the earth”. Primarily a one-room house with a few subsidiary rooms adjoining the main room. A simple way of arrangement. However, it is not an openplan house. It is a house of rooms that have an open spatial connection between them. “A plan of rooms without corridors”. Maintaining open and fluid spatial connections between rooms and at the same time giving each room a clearly defined sense of enclosure and spatial presence. Atelierhaus Weissacher: The Atelierhaus Weissacher contains a large main living and atelier space that is open-ended and full of ease functionally, spatially and materially. The large doors that connect the atelier room with the car loggia at the entrance could allow a large farm vehicle to be driven directly into the house. The ceiling, much like the interior hall of a farmhouse near Parma that Aldo Rossi references in ‘A Scientific Autobiography’, is high, and the irregular-shaped room is flooded with light from one side.
Room Non-Room, Florian Beigel & Phillip Christou
“A loose montage of a number of readily available building materials: fair-faced, in-situ cast concrete painted white in some places; terracotta blocks normally used for internal partition walls painted white above a datum line approximately one meter from the floor and unpainted below” “It feels like the house could easily be altered tomorrow without any loss of character” “One has the impression that this house is either still under construction or partially in the process of demolition”.
This highlights the bare necessities that are used in domestication, and things can be added as they are required.
From a distance, the timber-framed windows between the concrete piers look like a temporary formwork, unpainted and provisional “Wonderfully sophisticated roughness” “Dialectical Landscape”
How might buildings adapt over time? Questioning what is fixed, mobile, perishable It is possible to give spatial definition to a site without being overly prescriptive about the realisation of future development. A clear distinction is always made between an initial laying down of landscape infrastructure and its later occupation by individual buildings. “Designing the rug, not the picnic” Steer clear of a solution in which each of the rooms was given a prescribed function. The principle of respecting the integrity of the existing architecture while ensuring that new interventions free up the way spaces might be used. The existing sequence of rooms has been thought of as a form of infrastructure - as the rug. The picnic should be seen as comprising the ephemera of inhabitation - paintings, furniture, books, utensils. Removing wall mounted radiators, further clarifying the rooms. Made possible by the introduction of a new floor on top of the existing floorboards, incorporating an OSMA underfloor heating system. Offers a range of contrasting surfaces that serve to further differentiate the rooms. Enhances the senses under foot, a kind of Haptic pleasure.
Small Wonder, Florian Beigel & Phillip Christou with Aru
Floors made of Hanji paper - material made from mulberry bush-pulp soaked in a natural resin.
Soap-like in appearance. Sufficiently delicate that upon entering the room, you need to remove shoes.
The removal of radiators allows furniture to be arranged with much greater freedom.
A strategy that manifests itself in many ways - the bed with wheels, the storage in modular boxes. But also underpins the design of the larger two installations, one for cooking and one for washing. Although substantial, these elements are designed to be mobile
The kitchen was made in a workshop in elements small enough to come through the door and then be bolted together on site. This principle has been developed into a distinctive tectonic. Martin Heidegger’s kitchen - has a whole range of uses - a bench, firewood store and worktop.
Encourages communal use. Becomes a social activity, with the cook no longer consigned to face the wall.
Mobile furniture (washing facilities and showe), further upturns the expectations of how the rooms might be used. The plan of the house is never seemingly fixed, with things having the ability to be relocated to other areas of the house.
A constant, cultivation, process
3rd Nature (Garden):
Suzuki House:
A constant relationship
Domestic program relationship with the visible and the invisible aspects of the site.
Groupings of vegetation create complex relationships of ecologies.
Embodiment of Stability:
Garden - Experimentation, Pleasure, Delight and Control.
Idealised Space Undestructed views of Nature
The Highline:
Clement harvesting natural energies of site. Creating framework for emerging ecology to break through.
4th Nature (Emergent Ecology):
Garden and their States of Nature:
Abstracted
1st Nature (Natura Naturans): Self-causing Nature: (primary and untouched)
Nature being natured. Passive produce of infinite causal chain. Planting of trees to demarcate rural lot. Moment a project is drawn landscape is thought of distinction between first and second nature.
Human Nature - Self-causing
Shifting Agents, new and emergent ecologies.
Domestic Ecology Lecture, George Willmott
Most Authentic
Physical explorations of non-human impacts.
2nd Nature (Natura Natura):
Place for representing nature
Ruin of Culture...Ruin of Nature.... When a road is paved, it destroys ecology and nature and then eventually punches back up and we have a ruin of culture.
The Sublime:
Deconstructed Architecture:
Anonymous beauty
Destructive Beauty (nature)
Re-establishment of force (nature)
The Picturesque:
Leftover garden to define and assign a lot
Heritage house being unbuilt by varying agents at times removal of walls, floors etc...You leave layers of ecological moments
Need for architecture to be shown as its most ‘picturesque’
Graffiti Culture: “How much value does it have domestically?”
Markings on pavements
Movements of phone lines
What processes do they represent?
Unpacking processes of site
Simultaneous actions
Site is most interesting as a constant
Things as is, that happen in abandoned houses Other Space:
You engage, but doesn’t exist
Garden as early space, space of experimentation
Domestic Ecology Lecture, George Willmott
Domestic Ecology Lecture Screenshot, George Willmotte. 2021.
House with a Guest Room: A house being consumed by its garden Have a direction to the house with it being symmetrical in its arrangement, implied with incoporation of fence and assymetrical verandah A house that dissipates at it edges To be able to read proportions, one must look from the inside, to out. Context of suburb has disappeared, relationship is between one room to next Three discreet and separated pavilions (in plan and section) made of modules of two different sizes. Eaves have been extended, yet, still retains a relationship with the beam beneath it. Overhang by 400mm Architectural elements of the home proper read more as furniture. For example, the stair, handrail, curtain and downpipe Downpipe was more after thought, but rigorous in its consideration. A unique artistic expression, not a typical downpipe yet still functions as one You need to go outside before going back inside, forced interation with the landscape and garden
A House and its Ideal Neighbour, Andrew Power
Nothing is priviledged There exists a conciousness of everything Reduce the hierarchy within the architecture on
People are responsible for dictation of what goes
Look closely at things that projects are actually made up out of, nothing else. Thinking those through, what they bring to a project and how they can be re perceived and re-evaluated Style Life:
Distribution of things able of dictating circulation and programme (not only walls)
Strategic Reduction/Exclusion
Not relying on things as symbols
Without filling rooms with things, furnishings and what not, the room should still read as whatever its intention is.
Littering Rooms Empty Rooms equals absence of generic use An anxiety to freely include all Programmatic Tantrums (things, furniture).
A Soft Focus Lecture, Colby Vexler
Funny Chairs: Inhabiting and occupying, move beyond architectural typicality of form follows function.
Architecture is background/peripheral in images…looking through and around it like something we inhabit by its surrounds and what occupies its interior proper. The Contemporary looks, it thinks, it examines, it does and it reconsiders. The project then doesn’t try and solve problems but point out observations and remark on the way we live today. Something unexpected of structure, program, concept and strategy. To doubt. A doubt that oscillates between rigour and freedom, specificity and the generic. Then, is it a doubt? Or a comfort? An ease? A malleability.
Framing the composition of the image where the borders just diminish naturally.. Borders and Perspectives:
Where things lie and define the site
Depending on the bounds itself, whether physical (hard) or a soft implied border
Curation of the past, present and future Temporality in site A vagueness without clear boundaries The line is never drawn Walk away and see what is really there (Architecture of the Background) Subtle and banal conditions to define as opposed to hard geometries Proportions - How they feel literally Allows for a cohesive environment “Mirror Image” Do objects frame the views? “Loosely defined space of scenery” Step back and re-outline the vague area to make the project the background and peripheral Highlighting the blend between the architecture and site (integration)
Documenting Real Life Guest Lecture, Rory Gardiner
Though gardens are public spaces, they always retain a domestic character.... Gardens act as a way to provide stability and an orientation to life and as intruments to mark the land of a property. (This is very evident in typical suburban homes, but also in Japanese Urban homes) The garden allows displays of ownership. Claiming a certain part of the plot, lot, block as garden shows that a certain area is now domesticated by the owner. The garden is a tool used to radically oppose the surrounding realities it was encompassed within. Typically, gardens are idle, and almost useless in a contemporary city, however, how can this be changed? How can my project proper elicit a garden that useful, or perhaps maybe it never will be? The garden can claim territories, yet, also be a blueprint of things to come, and an alternate to the surrounding reality. While it can have a pragmatic purpose, such as the provision of foodstuffs, it is never purely a pragmatic device, but, rather, an attempt to construct a model, a form of life that is not (yet) possible outside its walls. Terraces and steps underline the garden’s essential nature as theatrical device, where every gesture is augmented and amplified as a collective praxis. The subject’s act of walking, passing through, stopping, turning, ascending, descending, exposing, hiding is registered on the ground through paths, steps, terraces, thresholds, walls, fountains and pavilions. Garden as a way to envision new rituals and institutions of collective life
Gardening at Night, Pier Vittorio Aureli & Maria Sheherazade Giudici
Decorating with plants has become so commonplace that we barely register the presence of plants in our interiors today. Rather than being a detriment, this ambiguity allows indoor plants to operate in ways that are not subject to the functions, expectations, and disciplinary boundaries that constrain other objects in the interior. As plants filled decorative roles within the interior, designs began to blur the distinction between ornamentation—the representation of plants—and actual plants. Plants inside try to create ambiguity and to create varying readings of the distinction between inside and outside. The indoor plants create situations that defy our expectations of the roles of the interior and the exterior and, in doing so, encourage us to rethink the distinction between these two spatial categories. Indoor plants can exist simultaneously as a decorative object and as a living part of nature. Potted plants inhabit a miniature landscape, create spatial divisions, and set moods. Ishigami uses indoor plants in the same ways that landscape designers use plants outside.
A Few Notes on Indoor Plants, Carrie Smith
An Urban Garden Social Memory - Social memory is a concept used by historians and others to explore the connection between social identity and historical memory. It asks how and why diverse peoples come to think of themselves as members of a group with a shared view. Historic Urban Landscapes (HUL’s) - The historic urban landscape is the result of the layering and intertwining of cultural and natural values over time. Beyond the notion of ‘historic centre,’ it includes the broader urban context and its geographical setting. Precedents: Park, Baracco and Wright Convergence, Baracco and Wright Grasslands, Linda Tregg Gilles Clement: “The Third Landscape” The Third Landscape; A fragment of the garden that designates the sum of the space left over by man to landscape evolution – to nature alone.
An interesting idea of radical localism, a rewilding of landscape/garden. An ecosystem of sorts that embraces a movement, native qualities of rustling in the wind, making sounds, opposing the urban-scape. Initiation of a symbiotic relationship with the native urban garden and its immediate surroundings. A Gardner has 3 Jobs: Organisation of space Production Maintenance over time “But who is the gardener of such a garden?” “Does not interfere with natural interactions, but enhances them with the help of an appropriate scenography; a base, a boundary, a height difference or a limit – perhaps as thick as a forest border… whose form fits the proposed project as much as it respects life. They wait for the convenient time, the right moment. Gardener of future; rely on laws of natures genius by trying to understand and foster them. Gardener doesn’t confront time but goes along with it.”
The Third Landscape develops this privileged area/zone of receptivity to biological diversity There’s an opportunity to then tie this idea of a third landscape to that of the ideas behind “Park” and “Repair”. Cultivating the remnants of what was once there. “Advocating a role for architecture that catalyses or actively engages with the repair of the places it is part of: the soil, hydrology, habitat, connections, microorganisms, vegetation and so on”.
Notes on an Urban Garden and Gardens, Landscape and Nature’s Genius, Dylan Markovski and Gilles Clement
A Garden on an Urban Plot A Contemporary Urban Garden
Garden within the urban plot is split into front, centre and back; distinguished by their relationship to the site’s enclosure and adjacent lanes of thoroughfare. The gardens oscillate between an acceptance of found remnants and an acknowledgement of past ecologies. They intended to differentiate themselves by rejecting the artificial and superficial imposition of greenning that has come to be expected of civic gardens. An Urban garden can be simultaneously cultivated and incidental. By tearing up a portion of the old slab, control of the ground below is relinquished. With minimal intervention, it may now cultivate its own planting. Similarly, an existing patch of nutgrass, clover and ivy at the plots centre instills a remnant of its past ecology. Prior to its containment, this distinct object amongst hardscaped planes alluded to the plot’s future domestication. A new, cultivated garden to the front looks to extend this found condition. Through acknowledging and re-establishing indigenous species, it forms an island amongst the urban volume. It is at once static and forever evolving. The front garden looks to be distinguished by its pace and dynamism, not its greenery. Slow, but never static, domestic moments are facilitated in areas around, behind and within the garden. Garden both marks the beginnings of the plot’s domestication, and characterizes its continuation.