Harbour The Culture of Inside-Out General Brief
Within the Harbour project, I propose I, as the designer, take on the role of a new International Bathing Company. This company operates across the world, with the sole intention of attempting to design new proposals for bathing, that not only provide facilities that are derrived from the natural landscape of the area, but re-introduce a cultural space for socialising and envigorating local community wihin the modern world’s mindset. These social and cultural ‘experiments’ act as prototypes within cultures that have a history of social bathing, so that in the future of 2013 onwards, these site specific social interventions could be rolled out across countries that maybe do not have a history of baths, or whose social acceptability of communal bathing in modern times has diminished with the advent of expensive personal bathrooms and luxury spas, where privacy and seclusion have become the choice. The design of these bath houses will vary due to the four sites I have chosen. The ecology and landscape of the area will become a massive driving force behind design, with experience, inside environments and creation of social spaces some of the most important factors. Education also will become a factor of the bathing experience, of the surrounding landscape, as well as of history and culture, with the design incorporating these subliminally, rather than as an obvious lesson. The design should become a ‘users manual’ for those who use it, with the knowledge of what to do next being designed into the building, so a flow of activity and bathing ritual is provided fo, as well as the building actively slowing people at the site of social interractions. As the title of the project suggests, ‘inside out’ is a rule I will be keeping in mind when designing. I have proposed four sites, each with very specific geographical and ecological conditions, from plant and tree species, to nesting or migratory bird habits, to weather. Each of these particular conditions I want to use as architecture on each site, inverting the usual idea of enclosure and landscpae, to create a new culture of inside out architecture. Today, people have a fascination with trying to re-create, as accurately as possible, a natural occurance within interior architectures, (for example The Rain Room by Random International), yet we moan when it rains naturally outdoors! Why can we not, then, capture this natural occurence, and create an interior atmosphere that uses it naturally, without the need for re-creation, and create a magic out of it? My sites are located in an area that already naturally blurrs the definition of inside and outside, by siting all four in towns located in bays, within inner seas. The sites I have chosen are: - The Gulf of Mexico - Coastal Plains - Morgan City (Sweat Lodge) - The Agean Sea - The Malian Gulf - Thermopylae (Greek/Roamn Bath) - Honshu Japan - Tsugaru Strait - Imabetsu, Aomori (Onsen Bath) - The White Sea - Dvina Bay - Archangel (Russian Bania) Each site will have it’s own brief depending on social activity and local culture. This will determine whether the design will incorporate programmes for private spaces, connections with private homes, spaces for doing business, treatment and healing or game playing, for example.
Agenda As my design project is interlined with my interests within the Thesis, there are a few questions that I hope I will be able to answer by using esign and writing symultaneously. - Why, beyond cleanliness, do people bathe? - What are the different processes and actions of bathing across different cultures? Why? - What is the link between inhabitation by humans and the weather/landscape? - How can we design architecture of ecology? - How can we blur the boundaries between outside and inside? - How can we enliven social interraction by creating a new bathing culture? - How can design for bathing become an instruction manual for cultural bathing? - How can, therefore, spaces that actively create an environment for social interraction, become natural interior environments?
Design Rules - Bath house must incorporate another programme - Bath house must play with inside/outside -Bath house must use the landscape in its function - Bathouses on each site must contain a social core