Manifesto of Re-reading stories of houses 2

MANI FESTO

RE-READING

STORI ES OF HOUSES

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indice + immagine

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Index: Pag. 4 From the beginning to a continue evolution Pag.8 Mirror concentred system Pag.16 Re-reading stories of house: Villa Anbar Pag.22 The process until the transformation of that house Pag.26 The drawings Pag.32 Transformation of ideas in legal and concrete things Pag.36 Project and conclusion

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From the beginning to a continue evolution

The process to be able to convert a story of one selected house

We started our research in the study of one standard apartment where live our friends, and in that we tried to find two types of different but correlated component in a house: the intensity of the natural light from the outside, mediated by the windows, and the possibility to link separated rooms with mirrors.

Why we studied it?

Because what we needed was to understand until the light can arrive, and according to that we could be able to set the mirrors and alterate the perception of a separated house.

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We used mirrors for alterate the perception in the interior of the house. We thinked was the good way to follow and in that pictures are exposed the plains how can we do it, that are explain where we have set the mirrors, and the results of it.

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Mirror concentred system

A series of mirrors posicioned in a concentrated space After the first study about the alteration of the perception made by the use of mirrors, we thought a new concept to apply to an installation that could be able to concentrate our suggestion in it.

We invent a system made by mirrors that can be able to connect spaces everywhere.

It can project the image of the outside in a particulary table posicioned in the middle of that installation, and the people who are in the interior of it, can see what happens outside.

The table posicioned in the interior, can be moved up or down like the necessity.

If it’s lifted, the installation will be light up from outside, and if it’s down the light cannot pass in that.

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Mirror concentred system - Version 2 The evolution of shapes and first details

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Mirror concentred system - Models Every component of the group did a model for a further study about the same topic.

I proposed a model based on idea of the reflection of the images from the exterior to the interior of the installation for improve the condition of life in every place.

It is composed from 2 systems of mirrors: the first is joined to the roof of it, and had pyramidal shape, and it is responsable to reflect the images of the exterior in the interior. infact, the second system of mirrors, composed the walls in the interior of it. The roof is suspended in the air and lifted up with 6 steel cables.

In the figure at right, we can see how it can be used for improve the condition of life, like as in a work place where there’s continue risks to stay out or for live where the environment near not permite a good quality of life.

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The other components of the group decide to develope other study like: _ Moltiplication of the spaces but united by mirrors.

Sergio L. _ Table light controller.

Mariaelena C _Rotate the mirrors to create new views.

Alejandra M. _The passage of the light from the basement Maria G. _Constraints viewing Alberto G.

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Re-reading stories of house Villa Anbar Damman, Saudi Arabia

By Peter Barber

“Muslim sexuality is territorial. Its regulatory mechanisms consist primarily in a strict allocation of space to each sex.

Society does not form divisions purely for the pleasure of breaking the social universe into compartments.

The institutionalised boundaries dividing the parts of society express the recognition of power in one part at the expense of the other.

Any transgression of the boundaries is a danger to the social order because it is an attack on the acknowledged allocation of power.

Walls and veils are an anti-seductive device. Territoriality reflects a specific conception of society and power.�

Fatima Mernissi, Beyond the Veil (Al Saqi Books; London, 1975/85) pg 137

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At a cursory glance, Peter Barber’s Villa Anbar may appear as a piece of sophisticated modernism. The white walls, free external spaces, pure light, roof garden and stripped aesthetic all build to an image of a villa belonging to a known architectural quantity. But it does not take long to realise that there is something much stranger going on. A window, like an eye, surveys the main entrance court; a tilting block protrudes through the body of the house; a strip window slides past the face of a wall. These, and many other examples, indicate that a set of known rules are being manipulated to reveal a much deeper reading of the building. Where early modernism is grounded in a spirit of benign emancipation, the Villa Anbar takes a far more critical stance to the society and place in which it is conceived. Because of this, a discussion of the Villa Anbar at the level of aesthetic or pure form is fruitless. Instead one needs to understand its genesis, and a series of social factors that influenced the design.

The Villa Anbar is set in Saudi Arabia, a country in which a dynastic regime structures a society of segregated race, class and gender. The client is a woman who has spent much of her life outside the country-both aspects which clearly run against the grain of Saudi male nationalism. It is built by immigrant labour, with the architect acting as foreman, labourer and engineer. During construction, a nearby medieval settlement was razed to the ground by the government, because its spatial complexity made it impossible to monitor the subversive elements who had settled there. It is clear that the situation in which the villa is grounded is not neutral.

When faced with such a loaded set of conditions, the temptation would have been to retreat into an exercise in pure beauty, with the piercing sun and those blue, blue skies.

However, Barber’s response is to confront the issues through the means of architecture. This he does by quietly upsetting the domestic conventions which structure and control Saudi society.

The plan of a typical Saudi house is determined by the patterns of the society. Women and men are thus segregated and the male domain assumes a hierarchical superiority within the house. Servants are equally suppressed. Finally, the family is separated from the outside world by means of a walled compound within which a series of increasingly private spaces gravitate towards a central courtyard. In the Villa Anbar, these rules are reinterpreted to create a new order.

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The reinvention of the Saudi house starts at the entrance. A gate gives a partial view into the courtyard, but a wall to the right prevents the gaze penetrating any further. The threshold is defined by a lintel gateway which slips over the top of the occluding wall. The entrance is at once defined and the denied, as something else beyond is hinted at. The lintel serves a double function, taking water to the swimming pool on the other side of the wall. The sound of water brings the presence of the family at their most private and vulnerable (unclothed and at play) to the most public setting. Through the manipulation of simple elements, wall, water and lintel, a charged scene is established in which the family is neither completely shut off nor completely revealed.

Barragan may use these same elements with an exquisite formal skill, but the result does not have the same social resonance.

The entrance sequence anticipates the formal and social gestures employed in the rest of the Villa Anbar.

The architect continually alludes to something happening beyond, so that a tension is set up between spaces which should otherwise be separated. The window that surveys the swimming courtyard belongs not to the master but to the driver. Even if the window is blocked up (which by now it may well be), the presence of the servant is always felt in the wall of his room which obliquely breaks through the structure of the end block in an emancipatory gestures. The same inversion of mistress-servant relationship is seen in the positioning of the maid’s room. Whilst located away from the main body of the house and thereby acceptable within the prescribed structure, it sits in the roof garden, the spaces which in canonic modernism gives privileged and redemptive status. Furthermore, the window from the room ios connected by a series of cuts to the central courtyard. The gaze of the maid thus enters the heart of the house, promoting the control of previously suppressed female and servile aspects.

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The order and containment of the lower courtyard is contrasted with the freedom of the roof garden. From here, views to the outside world area allowed. The authority of the nearby mosque is put into context through the contrast of its minaret with the tilting block on the roof of the villa-the symbolic stability of the one juxtaposed with the playful strangeness of the other.

This reading is reinforced in the framing of the minaret through a curiously mocking opening, made by one of the labourers on site.

The interior spaces continue the interpretation of social practices, but here, the reinscription is less obvious. To a large extent this is because the traditional plan is so highly determine by cultural factors, with the separation of men and women an inviolate rule.

The architect can therefore only deal in tiny shifts which begin to question the status of these rules.

The women’s room is raised up a few steps from the men’s room, with a tiny opening cut in the dividing wall. The client’s family immediately objected to this window and remanded a shutter to be placed over it. Ironically, the shutter charges the boundary to an even greater extent; because it is located on the women’s side, it is they who have control over the view. Elsewhere the wall that separates the dining room from the men’s room stops just short of a high level window which slides across its face.

The two rooms are thus connected by implication, even if no actual views are allowed to pass between.

The drawings set the general structure, but the fine tuning and precise control was achieved by Barber’s continual presence on site during construction when he was able to manipulate relationships which are impossible to accurately predict (or now read) from the drawings alone.

The success of the Villa Anbar is that it acts as a critique of the place in which it is conceived, without resorting to rhetorical or symbolic gestures-it works subliminally rather than obviously. At this level it is highly architectural, affecting the perception and inhabitation of the building through the deployment of space, light, and views so that one is made constantly aware of things that might otherwise be taken for granted. But it is also highly political, immersing itself in a series of difficult social relationships and subtly inscribing them. It is not normal for architects to take a political stance in their work because it demands making judgements. Architecture is usually seen in a rational framework, where the burden of the decision making is placed within the logic of the system.

Clients’ demands, cost constraints, contractual procedures, technical problems-all these aspects compound to allow architects to avoid confronting the political and social dimensions in which their buildings will be situated. Architecture is thus reduced to pure form (aesthetics) or pure technique.

The triumph of the Villa Anbar is that it transcends such considerations. It points to a direction in which modernism is not seen as a style but in terms of its unfulfilled social and political potential.

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After reading the story of that hou convert that building in a new con people can be separated, like as t but united at the same time.

I thought: why should it be so difficult f there to see the outside?

That’s for that because I set my install Allow to see the exterior in the interior.

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The process until the trasformation of that house.

Re-thinking. Re-reading.

use, what we thought was to ncept of house, where the the Islamic religion want,

In the beginning we studied every part of that house like a single component of a big system.

The improvement of the courtyard happened by the setting of the installation that can reflext the exterior in the interior.

The presence of courtyard in the centre of development of that house, is only a place that can bring the natural light in all rooms.

for the people who live

lation in it: r.

The glass wall of the installation allow the people who see from the inside of the house to see the projected images, because at the exterior of it aren’t reflective, and the observator can see through it, and in the interior are reflective and is possible to see the images.

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The driver-room was transformated by a mirror system that could be able to change direction of the views from the interior of the room, than join or separate views, allowing who is in to see what he need, like a place of control.

The politic context is responsable of the setting in the house, the division between man and woman is a constant inhere.

In man’s living room we applied a new idea of control, made by manipulating of lights, used by the owner against the hosts for change them sensations of spaces and perception when they arrive.

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Another important point in our analisis to improvement it was how we can see all places like the courtyard, where we need to position ourself in the house to see it.

The exterior of the house had a pool where the water is responsable of reflection of images and it was a good point to found a relacion between the exterior and the interior.

“See without being seen”.

This is the concept of the improvement of women’s living room. A series of mirror set inhere allowing to see at who is in there to see out, but without being seen. That’s important for the owner of that house because she can stay in her room and control everything.

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The drawings.

Re-thinking. Re-reading.

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This drawing explain the idea proposed for the courtyard.

That is how a person can see it from the interior of the house. The Conic mirror system relfect the landscape from the outside.

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These drawings explain the concepts grown during the study and the application of the new improvement in the house who were explicated in the pages 23-24-25.

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These are the architectural drawings where are disposed the different installation to allowing at the inhabitants of the house to exploit of the improvement proposed.

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The process until the trasformation of that house.

Transformation of ideas in legal and concrete things.

For realize our ideas, we need that can be realized, and in according to that, we decided to reinforce it in culturals and laws points.

The door will be composed by mirrors with a double function: The first is to create a backlight effect with reflections of the lights, for the privacy in the bedrooms of the inhabitants.

The second is to permite at the people who are in the bedroom to see the people outside.

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Following the idea of the reflections made by water posicioned in the pool, we incline the horizontal plan of it for better reflection of the images. Also, the water when goes down make a noise that is typical element of arabian gardens.

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What we set in the interior of the courtyard is a installation that can improve the life of the inhabitants of the house. But we know the preservation and re-use of the water in a country like Saudi Arabia is very important for the mainteinance of the house at the same level during all year.

How can we do it?

Collecting it and storing it.

The shapes of that installation is the image of a fountain and had notable dimension that everyone can understand is one of the most important parts of that house. The structure is created in that mode because if it will be different, the light cannot pass to the courtyard and reach the rooms who surround it. The water is stored in a tank in the basement and re-used what they need it. Also is covered by reflectant material that maintains the precedent idea of reflection of the landscape outside in the interior.

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Planta Baja

Planta Piso

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Re-reading stories.

Project and conclusion.

1992. Fatima Mernissi commissions to the english Architect Peter Barber the proyect of her house in Damman. Both want to apply the typical ideas of Islamic religion to that house, with the strict hierarchy estabilished in that culture.

2013. When was realized the house, the woman was widow and lived with her sons and service people, such as driver and cleaning lady. It pass 11 years and her sons lives out of that home and she has a new man, and they want to live together now. He is a portuguese constructor, passionate about photography.

Now she works at home and live there.

She thought about a new modernization of the interior of her house, because the spaces become big and empty, and now is the moment that can be do that changes.

For its modernization arrive differents proposals, but at the end she choose an idea based with the using of perception and a visual (and not physical) connection of spaces. For sure that project will change the way to live it. Other important elements such as the waterfall in the courtyard, and the vision of that home like the important owner of it, determinate her decision to accept it.

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Project description.

The modernization is based on perspective changes and on visual connection, the spaces take a new significate and perfectionaments modify the way of live inthere and his perception.

The limits are ambiguous and the hierarchy made by the walls it will be shunned.

1_ Visual connection between the rooms where the lady spend her time. From that rooms, by the system doors-mirrors she can see the reflected images of the Exposition room. We want to do it because she like to see it and it will be inspired to write from it.

She controls everytime the movements of her guests in the house. To avoid that the privacy of the lady will be disrupted by the door-mirror of her bedroom, we move the furniture under the window, and the people who pass near it, cannot see her in the interior of it because suffer for a short moment a backlight who cannot permite to see inthere.

Changes in the outside entrace y driver-room for visual connection between driver-room/woman room and driver-room/

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Will be incorporate into the interior of the housing a water installation, and this one takes part in the house both in the visual perception and in the sonorous one. The water runs constant from a waterfall where it falls the water inside the courtyard until the tube that surround the room of exhibitions. This slow flow of water illuminates the walls where the works of the man are placed, doing function of reflectant plan of light (we will realize this in the wall that one finds close to the court, since the natural light proceeding from this zone is minimal due to the dimension of the hollow perimetral) and in addition it incorporates into these zones the agreeable sonority of to flow of the water. The office of the woman takes advantage of this sound to entertain the hours of writing.

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In addition, the waterfall placed in the central court, provides a reflectant wall as if is a mirror. With it, and by means of the doors we will manage to reflect the exhibitions in the different rooms where there is the woman (office, room of the women, bedroom and kitchen).

For its efficiency, we have decided to place a window traversed by the whole court, as it is indicated in the plan and with the height determined to obtain the reflection of the photographies, as it is indicated in the sections.

Also we will place a waterfall that will come from the top part of the housing and will fall down in the exterior swimming pool. We will use it also as reflectant plan and it will support the chauffeur with his function of vigilance.

The whole system of waters will consist of two closed circuits, in which the waters will be gathered and will be stimulated to the top part by means of a pump.

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The project was presenting as requirement the incorporation of a room of exhibitions.

The original room of the men will happen to turn into wished room of exhibitions, due to its suitable location, as entry to the house.

This new stay will rely on a new vertical hanging for the exhibition of the works, besides a small tank linked to the interior court, that it will provide besides a typical sound a point of diffuse light. The light possesses great importance in the room. There will be placed a new point of central light, which will create an effect of cross-light in the dividing wall between the showroom and that of the women.

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The project presents details that will suppose subtle limits between rooms, since it is the incorporation of a panel of “ paper washi “, in the hanging of the new adjacent showroom to the room of the women. From the room of the women this one will provide a vision of the movement of the adjacent stay across the projected shades. The lady of the house and her guests will be able to enjoy in that room a subtle vision of the room of exhibitions emphasized in addition with its corresponding door mirrors rotables.

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