Koolhaas Modernism: 4+2 Houses by Viral Shah

Koolhaas

Modernism 4+2 Houses Dissertation by Viral Shah | Submitted 08.01.13

contents

Abstract

Page 2

Introduction

Page 4

Patiovilla

Page 8

Villa Dall’Ava

Page 18

Dutch House

Page 26

Maison à Bordeaux

Page 34

Conclusion

Page 44

Drawings Catalogue

Page 48

Bibliography

Page 72

abstract

The domestic building commission is of great significance to an architect’s development. It offers the platform of a small-scale laboratory for innovation, experimention and development of ideas and technologies that may further progress to be utilised in larger scale projects. This dissertation is organised around the examination and dissection of four villas, created by Rem Koolhaas between 1988 and 1998: The Patiovilla, Villa Dall’Ava, Dutch House (also known as the House in the Forest) and the Maison á Bordeaux. These villas are primarily crossreferenced with elements extracted from the Tugendhat House by Mies van der Rohe and the Villa Savoye by Le Corbusier, to highlight their presence in Koolhaas’s work. Prompted by a certain degree of suspicion prior to my detailed reading of the work, this research aims to approach Koolhaas’s architecture by means of formal analysis. Koolhaas’s projects seem to have a schizophrenic-slotmachine quality to them, borrowing elements, constantly disestablishing, and rarely repeating. Due to the proximate criticism with every building, which has and continues to elude his work, there is a difficulty to establish why the buildings are as they are. This paper explores the complex formal compositions and spatial manifestations with the aid of drawings and diagrams* aiming to deconstruct his motifs and make them more explicit. Essentially, this dissertation aims to equip the voyeur of Koolhaas Modernism with the insight of his intentions in order to find something out about the difference between Modernism and Post-Modernism in modern architecture. The dominant aim is to understand the way that Koolhaas used Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier’s heavily theorised ideals and spatial characteristics, as a palette to create his own architecture. I intend to see Koolhaas working within the same disciplinary tradition as Mies and Le Corbusier, only at a different moment in time. In doing this, my own understanding of how Koolhaas creates architecture that teases and questions ideas will be made more clear, and allow me to utilise his appropriation of Mies and Le Corbusier in the same way as he did, as a series of techniques for self-planning. *All figures are drawn by the author except where explicitly stated otherwise. A full set of drawings are located from page 48. 3

introduction

In a question directed at Charles Jencks and Rem Koolhaas I asked: “Both of you have conversed over the role of Postmodernist devices in the work of OMA.1 I would like to know what commentary you can give on the early works, in particular with the villas created in the 1990s?” Rem Koolhaas responded: “The projects represent the category of Small (in reference to Koolhaas’s book ‘S, M, L, XL’).2 The category has just as much value as the ‘Extra Large’ projects since the engagement of individuals is on a more personal level. I feel a sense of nostalgia about it due to the escalation of larger public commissions at OMA over the years. It’s the most direct connection through architecture to an individual client. For example in the project in Bordeaux, with the client who was bound to a wheelchair, we were able to create a building that was bespoke to only him. I must add that the Maison á Bordeaux is two hundred square meters, and the last house commission we were asked to do was two thousand square meters.”3 Koolhaas acknowledges the importance of the private house commission to the development of an architect’s personal language; he ceased the opportunity of the ‘Small’ project as a ground for experimentation and individualistic engagement to client specific requests. His own exploration of the domestic buildings of Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier as precedents reflects a similar process that the architects themselves used to explore and interrogate housing of the time. In the works of Mies and Le Corbusier there lies a sense of clarity in form and structure that expresses their ideals in a digestible way; each architect developed particular styles in response to the massive social

Charles Jencks, ‘Radical Post-Modernism and Content,’ Charles Jencks and FAT, ‘AD: Radical Post-Modernism,’ John Wiley & Sons, London, 2011, pp. 36-45.

Rem Koolhaas, ‘S,M’L’XL’, Moncelli Press, California, 1995.

Rem Koolhaas with Charles Jencks, Jencks Award 2012, RIBA 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD, 20 November, 2012.

Figure 1. Patiovilla Figure 2. Villa Dall’Ava Figure 3. Dutch House Figure 4. Maison à Bordeaux

change that was happening throughout their careers, beginning at the start of the 20th Century. Their architecture is saturated in their personal ‘grammatical interpretations’ of the same movement; their work is made from the basic architectural elements that position their work as Modernist pieces. These elements remain honest to their constructional means, and clearly correlate to the technology of the time - columns, walls, roofs and partitions were all ultimately designed for a singular presence and they remain autonomous; allowing their raison d’être to be immediately understood. Essentially, these Modernist components, if dissected from the building they are embodied within, can hold their own but are also identifiable as those of Mies and Le Corbusier. Such clarity, however, is often camouflaged or methodically hidden from immediate reading in Rem Koolhaas’s work. Mies and Le Corbusier’s villas were born from explicit rules of a single language, where as Koolhaas’ dwellings are subject to seemingly deliberate play of modern language coupled with a typically unconventional idea and arguably surpass the superficial commitment to surface4 associated with Postmodernism. Regardless of it’s illegibility, Koolhaas’ work doesn’t ignore the conventions perfected by the Modernist masters; rather it references the formal vocabulary of Mies and Le Corbusier’s architecture and presents an interpretation, often suspending parts of the reference or utilising its ‘rules’ in an entirely different way. Koolhaas seems to reject most Classical connotations; if they do exist, they are hidden beneath layers of peculiar rules, purposely avoiding ‘aestheticisms’. The villas aren’t neo-anything. Instead, the villas are mere compositions, where building programs and architectural ideas have been deconstructed and reassembled.

Frederic Jameson, ‘Foreword by Frederic Jameson’, Jean François Lyotard, ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,’ Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984, pp. vii-xxii, p. xviii.

Patiovilla

“Each element in a collage… must be known in its own right. Although collage may engender new compositions as well as shifts, slips, accidents and other chimerical effects, the long-term effect of collage is to valorize a finite catalogue of elements and/ or processes.”5 In his essay ‘Towards a New Architecture’, Jeffrey Kipnis discusses the process of collage as a fundamental tool of an architect. Through the use of this technique, Koolhaas’s scepticism of the orthodox is validated in the Patiovilla; elements are borrowed from the villas of Mies and Le Corbusier and composed in unconventional ways, not only on a conceptual basis but also in the immediate physicality of the building. Built in 1988, the Patiovilla is one of two connected dwellings located in Rotterdam; they form some of the first projects that Koolhaas realised within the ‘Small’ category. The building is not immediately striking as it portrays itself with an introverted sensibility. Rather, it is beyond its pastel façade that Koolhaas’s virtuosity is suggested. The dwellings are projected onto a raised embankment of a highway that was never realised accordingly forming two levels of the house, a lower level where one enters the dwelling and an upper level comprising of the main living areas. Beyond the upper level, a glass façade overlooks a view towards the garden, which concludes at a canal marking the boundary of the site. Retaining sidewalls slice into the embankment and project beyond the face of the building, hinting at its compositional makeup of different elements. Some of the elements found in the Patiovilla are derived from Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye; a collage in itself that embodies almost all of the values developed within his built oeuvre during the 1920’s. Le Corbusier refers to the ideals as the ‘Five Points of a New Architecture’6, a list of prescribed elements realising his interest towards the new techniques of mass production and aesthetic of machines, expressing his own

Jeffrey Kipnis, ‘Toward a New Architecture,’ Greg Lynn, ‘AD: Folding in Architecture,’ John Wiley & Sons, London, 1993, pp. 40-9, p. 101.

Le Corbusier, ‘Oeuvre Complète: Volume 1 1910-1929,’ Birkhäuser, Switzerland, 1995, pp. 128-129.

Pilotis

Horizontal Strip Window

Free Plan

Free Facade

Garden Terrace

Figure 5. Le Corbusier, Five Points of a New Architecture

reinterpretation of the orthodox house7 of the time. The main façade of Koolhaas’s building directly references one of the ‘Five Points’; the long strip window or ‘fenêtre en longeur’ as Corbusier called it, running along the entire width of the upper level. The strip windows of the Villa Savoye surround the entire first floor in a continuous ribbon, framing the horizon but concealing the ground and the sky. This technique reinstates the villa’s detachment of its situation, within a large featureless site surrounded by trees, where it “sits on the grass like an object”.8 Although the Patiovilla is nestled onto a plot adjacent to other houses, Koolhaas’s appropriation of this element functions to frame the view towards the woodland as seen from the main living area, obscuring the road and other buildings in front of the house (Figure 5). The continuity of the strip windows around the Villa Savoye also adds complexity to the perception of interior and exterior spaces; it is only once inside the villa amongst the main living spaces that the internal/external relationship can be fully understood. Almost half of the area of the first floor is dedicated to the garden terrace; another of Corbusier’s ‘Five Points’ first realised in his contribution to the 1925 Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, in the Pavillon de l’Espirit Nouveau. The introduction of the element within the building’s volume introduces vast amounts of light and air and defines the radial organisation of the internal spaces (Figure 6). As suggested by its name, the Patiovilla references this secondary element, but rather than keeping the patio to the perimeter of the buildings volume, Koolhaas collages it directly into the heart of the first floor, essentially internalising an external volume into the main living area (Figure 7). Koolhaas’s patio is perhaps better understood in relation to Mies van der Rohe’s Court Houses (Figure 8). Over a period of nine years, Mies developed a series of autonomous projects based on the composition of a limited number of elements consisting of a roof plane supported on steel columns, floor to ceiling glass and interior walls within a walled courtyard.9 The houses featured one, two or three hierarchically sized 7

Le Corbusier, ‘Towards an architecture,’ Getty Research Institute, LA, 2007, p. 136.

Villa Savoye: A manifesto for modernity, Paris, Centre des Monuments Nationaux, 2009.

Roger Sherwood, ‘Modern Housing Prototypes,’ Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1978, p. 42.

Figure 6. First Floor Plan Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye

Figure 7. First Floor Plan Rem Koolhaas, Patiovilla

Figure 8. Mies van der Rohe, House with Three Courts

internal gardens; small for bedrooms, larger for living rooms, and still larger for entry.10 The gardens are pushed to the perimeter of the house boundary and subsequently bordered by walls on all sides, some solid and some transparent. This is unlike Koolhaas’s patio, which is set into the heart of the living area. The asymmetric position of Koolhaas’s patio establishes the organisation of the main living areas on the first floor. This is a technique derived from the primary space-defining element utilised by Mies in the Farnsworth House: the core (Figure 9). The Miesian core operates on several levels, it functions as a nodal point in the plan where the key spaces within the dwelling radiate about and its asymmetric placement emphasises public and private areas through the push and pull affect on the layout of the room. The element also centralises the services, creating a point at which absolute private spaces such as the bathroom are located. Though, unlike Mies who utilised a core as a solid element, Koolhaas has inserted a void, subsequently piercing an internal courtyard into the Patiovilla’s almost square plan. Its position alters the proportions of spatial division within the floor plate and subsequently generates the kitchen, dining and living areas regardless of whether it is solid or void. The Koolhaasian core embraces a duality that rationalises its presence within the building. Its floor is made of translucent glass planks that provide natural daylight to the fitness room below; two of the walls are mobile allowing further division and refinement of spaces on the upper level, similar to the draperies running on tracks in the Tugendhat House where individual areas can be closed off “reintroducing the concept of separate rooms without disrupting the unity of space.”11 Koolhaas’s sliding walls however also operate to blur the boundaries between interior and exterior through the patio’s deconstruction. The spatial organisation of the levels are comparable to the Tugendhat house; it is made clear through the section where the hierarchy of public and private functions correspond, the main difference being the flipping of the organisational section by Koolhaas. On the ground floor, Koolhaas composes the private spaces using a traditional cellular plan, a layout 10

Ibid, p. 44.

Wolf Tegethoff, ‘Mies van der Rohe: The Villas and Country Houses,’ The MIT Press, Cambridge, 1985, p. 96.

Figure 9. Plan - Mies van der Rohe, Farnsworth House

Figure 10. Section - Rem Koolhaas, Patiovilla

Figure 11. Section - Mies van der Rohe, Tugendhat House

technique incorporated into Mies’s upper floor plan, which is composed of three separate masses that form the bedrooms. The spatial focus in both villas lies within the open living areas with views over the landscape, behind the houses, taking up roughly two thirds of the level. In both the Patiovilla and the Tugendhat House, the main living areas are reached through vertical access, but in opposite directions due to Koolhaas’s reversal of the section (Figure 10). In the Tugendhat House, one enters directly onto the roof terrace from the road side and down a winding staircase into the living area (Figure 11), where as in Koolhaas’s villa, one enters from below and moves upstairs. In this sense, movement within the Patiovilla is much more similar to many of Le Corbusier’s early villas, where the main living spaces are located on the first floor and entered from below, an important device in regard to his interest of movement through architecture. In raising the house on pilotis he also created space for the location of the garage. A striking difference in the organisation of space is that both Mies and Le Corbusier have freestanding columns in their villas, but Koolhaas does not. This is particularly evident when compared to the lower ground floor plan of the Tugendhat House; the regularity of columns provides a grid creating an ordering framework to proportionally define spaces. Similarly in the Villa Savoye, but more liberal in their regularity, the placement of pilotis creates a framework for the placement of screens. Instead, like the Farnsworth House that has only two fixed elements, Koolhaas has incorporated a free standing wall along with the villas patio, which defines the layout of the upper level much like the relationship between the Miesian core and the fixed wardrobe that demarcates the bedroom in the Farnsworth residence. The free standing wall splits the living areas of the upper level; on the west of the wall, the kitchen, dining and living room area, and on the east, the study and master bedroom with an en-suite connecting the two spaces together through a secret corridor. The nature of the freestanding wall is perhaps more clearly understood in relation to the Tugendhat House where the wall serves to separate the living area from other functions. Koolhaas has directly referenced this element, however in doing so he has adapted it; concealed behind the wall, sliding doors or rather planes move to physically disconnect the public and private spaces on the main level. And rather than Mies’s choice of aristocratic materials such as marble, he opts for bare chipboard. This material isn’t typically found in private dwellings, its presence extrapolates 15

Figure 12. Southwest Elevation- Rem Koolhaas, Patiovilla

Figure 13. Northeast Elevation - Mies van der Rohe, Tugendhat House

Figure 14. Southwest Elevation - Mies van der Rohe, Tugendhat House

Koolhaas’s teasing of the orthodox and hints at his interest of polarity in his architecture. The naked material portrays a sense of temporality, as an ironic commentary on works of architecture considered to be fixed, complete and impervious objects12, he uses elements within this process to tease and question established conventions. Specific to this building, Koolhaas also utilises materials to confound the senses, through play of reflection, opacity and transparency. He applies four different types of glass into the buildings palate (armoured, etched, clear and green) where three of the four walls of the core and the southern façade overlooking the garden, create visual obstructions and intensifications13 within the main living areas (Figure 12). Mies is familiar with the effects of visual articulation as evident in the Tugendhat House, with the use of both clear and etched glass (Figure 13+14). He utilises clear glass for the façade overlooking the landscape and etched glass along the curved walls of the villa’s main entrance on the upper ground level; it is a moment of transition, portraying a semi-private sensibility. Unlike Mies’s careful and restrained use of materials, Koolhaas expands the palette and juxtaposes the different types of glass, next to one another in an intensive manner.

Paul Goldberger, ‘The Architecture of Rem Koolhaas’, Jensen & Walker, ‘The Pritzker Architecture Prize,’ Jensen & Walker, Inc., Los Angeles, 2000, pp. 32-41, p. 34.

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living, Vivre, Leben’, Birkhäuser, Boston, 1998, p. 44.

Villa Dallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ava

“The client wanted a glass house with a swimming pool on the roof and two separate ‘apartments’ - one for the parents, the other for the daughter. They also wanted a panoramic view - from their swimming pool - of the surrounding landscape and the city of Paris.”14 The subject of irony has been briefly discussed in the previous chapter in regards to the materials used by Koolhaas in his work. The Villa Dall’Ava is saturated in ironic commentary, not only in its materials, but also in specific elements derived from the Villa Savoye. Unlike the introverted nature of the Patiovilla, the reference to Le Corbusier’s Purist Villa is purposefully blatant; the pavilions of the Villa Dall’Ava utilise the strip windows, pilotis and roof top garden, in varying degrees of direct and indirect quotation where Koolhaas modifies the elements as a means of commentary on the key Modernist building. According to Goldberger, the Villa Dall’Ava is an “adept interpretation of a Modernist icon that has generally been considered so fixed and complete, an object of perfection as to be impervious to anything but adoration, and blows it apart.”15 Contradiction is a fundamental theme repeated throughout Koolhaas’s work; in terms of its make up of elements, each building tolerates the extremes of polarity and plays with the idea of duality and equilibrium. Not only is it a source for commentary but also a tool for design, simultaneously offering “a variety of spatial conditions and tectonic contrasts: enclosed vs. exploding, intimate vs. open, public vs. private, high vs. light, concrete vs. abstract”.16 The Villa Dall’Ava is no different, the clients in fact requested contradiction; “he wanted a glass house and she wanted a swimming pool on the roof”.17 The site requirements validated a secondary contradiction, “the context was small and the house was big, it had to have the smallest footprint”.18

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living,’ p. 48.

Paul Goldberger, ‘The Architecture of Rem Koolhaas’, p. 33

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living,’ p. 55.

Rem Koolhaas, ‘S,M’L’XL’, Moncelli Press, California, 1995, p. 131.

18 ibid.

Figure 15. First Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Villa Dallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ava

Figure 16. Ground Floor Plan - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye

The building is situated in Saint Cloud, a residential suburb west of Paris, and an area characterised by large manor houses of 19th Century classical vernacular. Whilst the other houses remain unassuming, blending into the suburban landscape, the Koolhaas building is far from inconspicuous; it’s an object explicitly sculpted by its clients’ requests and ironic commentary, and is irrefutably abnormal. The sizing, form and arrangement of the villa may initially seem random and enigmatic, however horizontal and vertical lines can be drawn onto Koolhaas’s plan, illustrating the fact that the house is primarily ordered by a grid (Figure 15). The house is a composition of three main parts that hold individual characteristics, two bedroom pavilions delineate the north and south and a central building connects the separate apartments. Three vertical ‘bands’ divide the site from east to west forming the garden, the footprint of the house and the driveway. The western elevation of the villa is inclined to follow the form of the site boundary that widens towards the back of the building. In order to maintain important visual relationships to the city of Paris, the bedroom pavilions are offset from one another causing the boxes to project over their neighbouring band. The Villa Savoye reflects Le Corbusier’s similar attitude towards the uses of regulating lines, as a means towards an end, rather than an end in itself. It is particularly evident in the structural grid, where Corbusier has modified the locations of the pilotis to accommodate plan requirements in terms of the spatial layout, causing the grid to become distorted (Figure 16). Whilst one of the pavilions cantilevers along its offset position, the other rests on a series of sixteen pilotis (some of which are drain pipes) that are tilted and shifted in a seemingly unregulated manner. They work to further complicate any sense of governing principles and contradict the cantilever supporting the other pavilion, again adding to this sense of polarity of conceptual and formal balance throughout the building. Although questionable in their raison d’être, the pilotis help to demarcate the main entrance into the villa along a curving path from the street. In both the Villa Savoye and the Villa Dall’Ava, the entrance isn’t pronounced, they remain subtle and further emphasise the larger significance of composed masses within each building. In the Villa Dall’Ava, Koolhaas references the ramp and the spiral staircase of the Villa Savoye but has once again modified the elements. Le Corbusier’s interest in the sequence of movement through architecture, or ‘architectural promenade’ as he calls it, begins at the door of the Villa 21

Figure 17. Roof Plan - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye

Figure 18. Roof Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Villa Dallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ava

Savoye and raises upwards via the central ramp and stair; the ramp is the main route into the raised living area and roof garden (Figure 16). Koolhaas’s ramp doesn’t rise above the ‘unclean’ ground as in the Corbusier’s villa but rather tracks the slope of the site into the glass pavilion. Travelling upwards from the base of his ramp, the landscape begins to reveal itself, the horizontal inclination creates moments of contraction and expansion which is an effect similar to the opening and closing of views in Corbusier’s villa. In both cases, solid walls transform into transparent elements but where the Villa Savoye’s ramp offers unequivocal access onto the roof terrace, Koolhaas’s promenade is broken up around the plan in response to his concerns of the house becoming a corridor to the sublime view from the roof terrace (Figure 15).19 Unlike the Villa Savoye, which is concluded on its roof top terrace with curving concrete forms (Figure 17), the Dall’Ava has rudimentary plastic fencing, the same kind often seen on building sites (Figure 18). Koolhaas could have used a material already within the palette of the main building but instead offers an interpretation of the Corbusian terrace. Despite its permanence in the drawings, its existence represents a sense of unfinished temporality, perhaps hinting at his commentary regarding the sensibility of precedential reinterpretation; in the same way Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe reinterpreted previous dwellings of their time. The most direct Corbusian reference is, of course, the fenêtres en longeurs set into both raised bedroom pavilions (Figure 19). The daughter’s bedroom sees a larger rectilinear window cut into its metal façade, which can be seen from the villa’s northern elevation and works to differentiate one pavilion against the other. Equally contrasting, the corrugated metal cladding is finished in a different pigment on each pavilion; copper for the daughters bedroom and aluminium for the parents. This choice in material offsets the otherwise identical reference to the elevations of the Villa Savoye and further aids the theme of referencing and modifying architectural elements. The pavilions’ ‘shanty’ aesthetic contradicts the pure form of the Villa Savoye (Figure 20) and announces the villa’s disposition as a collage of elements. This is in stark contrast to Koolhaas’s previous dwelling, the Patiovilla, where the referenced elements are somewhat more subtle. The internal layouts of the pavilions are also dissimilar; the daughter’s 19

Roberto Gargiani, ‘Rem Koolhaas/OMA Essays in Architecture,’ Routledge, 2008, p. 141.

Figure 19. North Elevation - Rem Koolhaas, Villa Dall’Ava

Figure 20. Northeast Elevation - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye

Figure 21. Second Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Villa Dall’Ava

pavilion references a spatial device that was also used in the main living area of the Patiovilla (highlighted in Figure 21). Here, the bathroom and access stairs are centrally positioned within the core, leaving the rest of the floor open where as the parents bedroom contains elements that are more contiguous to the rest of the building. When comparing the two pavilions, it becomes apparent that the daughter’s bedroom appears more independent from the rest of the villa. The construction of the Villa Dall’Ava is only superficially simple; it is designed to portray a heavy object floating precariously on a house of glass. The swimming pool is supported along a row of concrete columns that are encased within the glass pavilion surrounding the living area. “The base and the suspended body compress a continuous intermediate or ‘in between’ space bordered by glazing”20, this description can also be applied to the Tugendhat House. Mies’s building utilises cruciform columns to support the three masses above the main living area. Where Mies has clad his columns in chrome, dissolving their presence, Koolhaas has hidden his within a hollow chipboard wall, a now familiar material, that doubles as storage for the occupant’s domestic objects. A reoccurring theme that evolved throughout Mies’s career is his utilisation of materialistic juxtaposition, a technique that creates an emphasis on the departure of the old for the new. An example of this is seen in the Tugendhat House, with his use of aristocratic materials such as marble, freely placed amongst the grid of stainless-steel columns, where traditionally loadbearing material becomes paired with modern technology. Koolhaas utilises a similar technique, in the marriage of opposites; relishing the use of cheap material to evoke a similar contrast in materialistic sensibility, but instead he uses the gage in an ironic intellect. A result of this, as an example, is a shift in spatial emphasis in program that has a direct association to a choice in material. The polycarbonate corrugated panelling used along the curved wall of the central building defines the kitchen, and when illuminated, projects light into the main living area. The use of materialistic contrast in the Villa Dall’Ava coincides with Koolhaas’s interpretation of the uniform villas, or rather ‘objects’ as Goldberger puts it, of Mies and Le Corbusier.

ibid, p. 138.

Dutch House

The Dutch House is Koolhaas’s most direct reference to the work of Mies van der Rohe. Although it has an immediate look of the Farnsworth house it is only on a superficial level; the constructional logic is very different. The organisational principles of the Farnsworth House unify all elements of construction into a single form where as the Dutch House is a montage of fragments; there is no unifying order. It is therefore appropriate to understand Koolhaas’s motifs not only through the reference of the Farnsworth House but also Mies’s Tugendhat House, which is too, a house brought together in montage. Situated in Holland, the Dutch House is a response to difficult topographic and environmental conditions; the unstable ground and strict site requirements including height restrictions yield a limited area that can be built upon. Koolhaas interpreted the site conditions to form the basic frame for the building in a process that echoes Mies’s motives behind the massing for the Tugendhat House, significantly influencing the organisation of the villa’s program. Mies’s building consists of two main levels and a basement; the upper ground level incorporates three masses, asymmetrically arranged, enclosing the family’s bedrooms and utility rooms, their positions are thoroughly balanced, framing a significant view towards a castle on the other side of the valley.21 Below, over two thirds of the lower ground floor is dedicated to the living area, it is a powerful demonstration of Mies’s interest in the free plan where a loose succession of spaces open into one another22 within a regular grid of chromium-clad steel columns. The remaining portion of the floor utilises a cellular layout appropriated for the service rooms and servant’s quarters; the spatial composition of the lower ground level combines fluidity with intimacy, all within a single story.23 Koolhaas clearly understands this, along with his interpretation of the client’s request for two individual residences; he splits the house, horizontally offsetting one floor against the other subsequently establishing two ‘containers’ that form the individual residences, one for the parents and one for the three grown up daughters. Like the Tugendhat House, he borrows the contrasting techniques of cellular and spatial planning, applying each to a single container. The point at which 21

Wolf Tegethoff, ‘Mies van der Rohe,’ p. 92.

ibid, p. 95.

Zdenìk Kudìlka,’Comparative Analysis’, UNESCO ‘Tugendhat Villa in Brno,’ UNESCO, Prague, 2001, pp. 42-50, p. 47.

Figure 22. Plan - Mies van der Rohe, Farnsworth House

Figure 23. First Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Dutch House

the conflicting plans meet is at the physical cut, metaphorical on many levels in regards to the clients’ prerequisite to “avoid the impression of vacancy when there aren’t any guests.”24 Paradoxically this “physical cut is where reconciliation is found”25 in an emotive and literal sense through the precise geometric joining the two ‘containers’ together. The two containers contrast on many levels “like a basement with a glazed volume on top, but horizontally shifted”26; they break from the “simple heavy-light sequence”27 of a typical construction, professing the villa as a building of collage. Through immediate reading of the plans, it becomes obvious that Koolhaas not only references the ‘glass box’ look of the Farnsworth House but also applies its main space-defining element; the core (Figure 22). However, as mentioned before, the constructional logic is different, although Koolhaas has juxtaposed the Tugendhat House plans, his free plan does not include a grid of columns. Rather, the walls of Koolhaasian core become load-bearing elements (Figure 23) functioning as the primary support for the flat roof, defiant of the Farnsworth House’s skeletal frame. He further modifies the Miesian core by incorporating the parent’s bedroom within its solid shell; perhaps as a response Dr Farnsworth’s much debated issue with privacy. Here, Koolhaas seemingly montages elements of the Tugendhat House with that of the Farnsworth House. And again, like the Patiovilla, the core becomes the element to which other functional spaces radiate around; its asymmetric position delineates the floor area into the service and entertainment spaces, mimicking the proportions of the Farnsworth House. Unlike Mies’s glass box that conforms to a strict setting-out grid as a result of its dedication to constructional clarity, the curtain wall of The Dutch House has an irregular rhythm of mullions, designed to emphasise the invisible boundaries between the differently functioning spaces in the parent’s container. Externally, the setting-out of the mullions begins to acknowledge the disruption of the constructional clarity of the Farnsworth House. Behind the mullions, Koolhaas references the silk curtains of the 24

Roberto Gargiani, ‘Rem Koolhaas,’ p. 186.

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living,’ p. 48.

Roberto Gargiani, ‘Rem Koolhaas,’ p.186.

27 ibid.

Figure 24. Ground Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Dutch House

Figure 25. First Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Dutch House

Farnsworth House but also adds an external mesh curtain along the south façade. The external curtain primarily functions to reduce heat gain but also further validates his interest in contrast, defining the threshold between the inside and outside, public and private and material disparity through the lightness of the silk curtains and the heaviness of the exterior curtains. The daughters’ residence is based more on a traditional cellular plan, in contrast to the open plan of the parent’s container; its walls are mostly solid elements that affirm its position below the datum of the ground (Figure 24). Whilst movement flows freely through the parent’s container, the paralysed compartments of the lower level demonstrate the affect on movement through fixed partitions, validating the intelligence of Mies’s open floor plan. Whilst both containers include an outdoor patio, they operate on vastly different levels. Within the glass box, the patio is incorporated into the solid core, introverted and only discernable from within the master bedroom (Figure 25). Where as in the daughter’s residence, it is seemingly another ‘room’ within the layout of the cellular plan projecting light along a single axis into the living room and onto the base of the physical cut. They function very differently to one another and in particular to the patio/core of the Patiovilla; once again the purpose of the element is questioned and teased. The surrounding wall of the daughters’ unit is solid and continuous; it wraps around the internal spaces maintaining absolute privacy, suggesting borrowed principles of the Mies’s Court Houses. Similarly, this container also features smaller private patios that serve the bedrooms of the residence, again reflecting the hierarchically sized patios of Mies’s projects. As a central node that connects the two containers, the significance of the ramp is resonant of the compositional logic of the Villa Savoye (Figure 26). Le Corbusier’s ‘promenade architecturale’ is affirmed in the ramp; the sequential movement towards and through the Villa Savoye is something that Koolhaas considers in the Dutch House also (Figure 27). The driveway goes underneath the main floor of both houses and the entrance is in close proximity of the car park but with Koolhaas’s villa, he incorporates a witty element into its composition, a pivoting drawbridge that gives access to the service area below and the master bedroom above; a floor that acts as a wall and vice versa. The walls around the ramp are geometrically interesting; at very few points do the planes meet 31

Figure 26. Ground Floor Plan - Le Corbusier, Villa Savoye

Figure 27. First Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Dutch House

Figure 28. Ground Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Dutch House

perpendicular to one another. The angles create a push-pull effect upon the sense of space moving from one container to the other. Through offsetting the containers, a terrace is exposed upon the roof of the daughter’s residence, hinting at one of Corbusier’s ‘Five Points’. The roof garden is utilised in the majority of his residential projects reclaiming the ground that is lost within the building’s footprint reinstating also the connection with the natural environment. Another of the ‘Five Points’ is referenced in the pilotis that support the glass box. Interestingly, Koolhaas terminates the columns at the floor plane, freeing up space above and interrupting the logic of the Corbusian Dom-Ino system where pilotis alone provide the structural framework of the building. Instead, as mentioned, the support of the flat roof is dependent on several elements including primarily, the solid core. Like the Villa Dall’Ava, which is organised on a grid of triptych sentiment, the Dutch House is crudely organised along a grid of dissimilar widths (Figure 27+28). Through the analysis in previous chapters, it becomes apparent that Koolhaas begins to repeat this theme of three main regulating lines to set out the layout of the floor plan. In this villa, the lines within the containers are dissimilar to one another, but reflect the modification of the structural grid to accommodate plan requirements in the Villa Savoye. In no way is the building a unified construction, like Koolhaas’s previous dwellings, the building is a series of elements that are montaged. The project’s focus was “to compress maximum program into a minimal amount of formal gestures”28 and Koolhaas does just this, his selection of fragments is minimal, but it is his ability to montage and modify the elements that makes the Dutch House an interesting critique of the Miesian and Corbusian precedents.

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living,’ p. 58.

Maison รก Bordeaux

“I like complexity and contradiction in architecture. I do not like the incoherence or arbitrariness of incompetent architecture nor the precious intricacies of picturesqueness or expressionism. Instead, I speak of a complex and contradictory architecture based on the richness and ambiguity of modern experience, including that experience which is inherent in art. Everywhere, except in architecture, complexity and contradiction have been acknowledged.”29 Venturi’s attitude towards complexity resonates in Koolhaas’s approach to the part-to-whole relationship within his own work; the elements of the compositions are in themselves autonomous spatial constructs that have been montaged into a single assembly. This is unlike the organic relationship demonstrated with a building like the Farnsworth, where the parts add up together to form the whole building. Koolhaas portrays complexity through contrast and montage as demonstrated in his previous dwellings. “Designed in total freedom yet subjected to strange rules”30, his projects embody a ‘freedom’ that tolerates a combination of different elements, particularly those of Miesian and Corbusian origin as discussed in this dissertation. He seemingly evolves the ideology of modern architecture and composes it in unorthodox ways in response to clients’ specific requirements. Where a design criterion creates boundaries, Koolhaas ceases opportunities by challenging the conventional, just as Mies and Corbusier did themselves. The most significant boundary in the brief for the Maison á Bordeaux was that of the client’s circumstances in being confined to a wheelchair as a result of a car accident. Prior to the commission the client’s former house began to seem like a prison due to his altered circumstances; a traditional vertical dwelling also in Bordeaux, its architecture impaired his movement significantly. Paradoxically, Koolhaas abbreviates the villa as “three houses on top of each other”31, which immediately contradicts the convention of flat accessible dwellings for wheelchair users. A hydraulic

Robert Venturi, ‘Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture,’ The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1977, p. 22.

30 François Chasolin, ‘The Gay Disenchantment’, Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living, Vivre, Leben,’Birkhauser, Switzerland, 1998, pp. 12-16, p. 12. 31

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living,’ p. 62.

Figure 29. Ground Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Maison รก Bordeaux

Figure 30. First Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Maison รก Bordeaux

elevator interconnects the three floors, becoming a literal translation of Corbusier’s words, where a machine is the heart of the building. In doing this, Koolhaas is directly addressing the clients prerequisite for a “complex house.”32 Amongst this seemingly unorthodox way of vertical connection, for a house, Koolhaas responded not only to the physical requirements of the client but also the psychological needs of both the client and his family, liberating the occupants to inhabit the house both in body and mind through metaphorical figures. Each ‘house’ in the Maison á Bordeaux holds its own characteristics, in a similar way to the pavilions of the Villa Dall’Ava; no part of the plan is duplicated or repeated, consequently the relatively simple volumes are made complex through their part-whole relationship. Here it becomes apparent that Koolhaas is not only referencing Mies and Le Corbusier but also himself from the previous dwellings he had designed. The ground level is carved into the hillside; its floor plan evokes the curving forms on the Villa Savoye’s rooftop within its ‘free’ informal geometry (Figure 29). The floor contains the spaces suited to the ‘service’ aspects of daily family life, typically found in the cellular parts of Mies and Corbusier’s plans. The single façade that opens out onto the courtyard employs a mixture of opaque and transparent glass, shuttering parts of the floor and further emphasising its semi-private manner. It is at this point that references to the rear elevation of the Patiovilla are seen, with similar uses of different types of glass. The door, camouflaged amongst the façade of glass is only made apparent by the position of an illuminated bollard. The house is entered not by a turn of a key, but by pushing the bollard like a joystick of a machine, a playful element evocative of the drawbridge within the Dutch House. Visually, the main living space above is entirely open to the landscape; glass curtain walling delineates the perimeter of the indoor space whilst the remaining area, facing the city of Bordeaux, is external (Figure 30). The interior space is reminiscent of the Dutch House, except here, the core is the hydraulic elevator which alternates between void and completeness depending on the position of the platform. Again, mimicking the Dutch House, curtains address the issue of privacy within this almost invisible level. Sliding screens, like those on the raised living 32

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Bordeaux House and Pool (The Sustainable House),’ El Croquis, ‘OMA Rem Koolhaas,’ Fiorucci, Madrid, 2006, pp. 70-95, p. 73.

Figure 31. Second Floor Plan - Rem Koolhaas, Maison รก Bordeaux

Figure 32. Cecil Balmond, Maison รก Bordeaux

area of the Villa Savoye, open out onto the protected terrace. The lack of structure accentuates the nature of the level, as a void inbetween the other floors; the perspective created by planes extending out towards the natural context is reminiscent of the open living area of the Tugendhat House, framing nature between two planes towards an expansive floorto-ceiling window. The most prominent feature of the house is the solid concrete box that is held in space above the main living area (Figure 31). The Corten steelclad box contains the bedrooms of the parents and children that are physically split by means of an exposed corridor, continuing the ‘split unit’ theme inherent in Koolhaas’s previous villas. Whilst the parent’s bedroom features a layout reminiscent of the Patiovilla, through combining the core with a freestanding wall, the children’s unit contains more informal geometry that fragment the space along diagonal axes. The box’s solidity hints at its private contents. Aside from the earthy colour, which was chosen in response to the regulations regarding discernibility as seen from the city of Bordeaux, the importance of this ‘floating box’ was evident even in the early sketches of the building showing “a prism with a square plan resting on pilotis.”33 From afar the box seemingly floats above the site; a similar description can be applied to the Villa Savoye, which is also a conclusive villa within a series of explorative dwellings. Unlike the Purist Villa however, the constructional logic isn’t as clear, the building is balancing amongst a “series of interdependent offsets”34 that Koolhaas, in collaboration with structural engineer Cecil Balmond, has designed to make the box appear visually unstable and seemingly reliant on a single tension cable, just as the owner is reliant on his wheelchair (Figure 32). It is seemingly frozen in between a twisting moment in sublime equilibrium. The box is supported on an offset steel portal frame and a single hollow column only to be balanced with hidden tension rods and a cross beam that is held above the concrete box. The structural elements also incorporate degrees of plurality; the hollow column is dematerialised through its reflective steel cladding, distorting and disguising its sizeable presence within the middle level. This is a

Roberto Gargiani, ‘Rem Koolhaas,’ p. 204.

Clare Melhuish, ‘Balmond takes your breath away,’ Architects Journal, June 3, 1999, http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/home/balmond-takes-your-breath-away/771883.article (accessed November 3, 2012)

device similar to the cruciform columns seen in Tugendhat House. The hollow column’s void is filled with the spiral staircase leading into the children’s bedroom unit. The offset location of the steel portal frame projects beyond the rectilinear footprint of the main living space creating an opportunity, aside from its structural purpose, to operate as a discreet down pipe into the ground containing services, similar to the service pipe underneath the core of the Farnsworth House. Koolhaas once again incorporates the technique of oppositions into the villa, despite the house’s idyllic situation on top of a hill overlooking the city of Bordeaux; he has shrugged off the conventional. The house shifted away from the view, and in place a series of holes are perforated into the solid box, providing a select series of fragments at precise points relating to the axis of all circulatory lines and specific views around the space.35 “Instead of the horizon, the eye has a choppy vision never perceiving more than a sum of miniature pictures”36; a striking contrast to the space underneath, whose transparent walls offers panoramic views. Equally contrasting, the notions of solid vs. void and heavy vs. light are clearly established in the composition of the raised solid box and open space below. The Koolhaasian core again spans multiple definitions, it acts as the heart of the house around which the rest of the spaces radiate; its movement holds the house in a state of visual flux; the platform is the client’s office and remains the only way to access the wine cellar. This peculiar method to connect spaces educes an indirect indication of Le Corbusier’s ‘arterial movement’, considered in the Villa Savoye. Corbusier’s building relies on the movement of the user along the central ramp to generate the dynamism across the spaces, where as Koolhaas’s work confides upon itself, changing the dimension of each floor constantly and thus “enlarging or impeding the flow of space between them.”37 The surrounding wall of the Maison á Bordeaux bounds the house, 35

Rem Koolhaas, El Croquis, ‘OMA Rem Koolhaas,’ p. 78.

Jaques Lucan, ‘The Pleasures of Dissymmetry,’ Rem Koolhaas, ‘Living, Vivre, Leben,’ Birkhäuser, Switzerland, 1998, pp. 18-21, p. 19.

Herbert Muschamp, ‘Living Boldly on the Event Horizon,’ New York Times, November 19, 1998, http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/19/garden/critic-s-notebook-living-boldly-on- the-event-horizon.html?ref=remkoolhaas (accessed October 21, 2012).

Figure 33. Southwest Elevation - Rem Koolhaas, Patiovilla

Figure 34. South Elevation - Rem Koolhaas, Dutch House

Figure 35. South Elevation - Rem Koolhaas, Maison รก Bordeaux

courtyard and housekeeper’s flat together within a single element and slides into the hillside, it is reminiscent of the solid wall utilised in the Dutch House. Koolhaas has, however, developed the original Miesian element three-dimensionally beyond its singular privacy definition; the movement of vehicles along the driveway forces arrival from underneath the wall into the courtyard and includes features pierced into the solid wall including a pivoting circular aperture, echoing a similar element found on the solid box of the house itself. During the era of the Purist Villas, Le Corbusier went through an iterative evolution towards the final Villa Savoye that encompassed all the features of the house machine he strived for. The Maison á Bordeaux incorporates some features seen in previous villas and is both reminiscent and contradictory of Corbusier’s ‘Five Points Towards of New Architecture’. The façade is free; the windows run the length of the space along the raised living area; the main structure is raised in the air, but in a much more complicated manner; an open floor plan exists on two of its levels and the building includes an outdoor terrace. It is clear that even in referencing himself, Koolhaas continues to utilise and evolve elements differently to their original situation. Reading the elevation of the Maison á Bordeaux, references to the intense juxtaposition of different types of glass in the Patiovilla (Figure 33) and the solid-transparent relationship of the Dutch House (Figure 34) can be seen (Figure 35). Koolhaas’s composition of referenced, modified and montaged elements of Le Corbusier, Mies and himself generate complexity and in turn create the visually striking building. In no way is the building timid like the Patiovilla or immediately recognisable as having Miesian and Corbusian elements, Koolhaas has designed a building of his own vocabulary.

conclusion

“I do not respect Mies, I love Mies. I have studied Mies, excavated Mies, reassembled Mies. I have even cleaned Mies. Because I do not revere Mies I’m at odds with his admirers.”38 This statement is irrefutably relevant to this discussion. Koolhaas publically proclaims his adoration for Mies, but in doing so emphasises his scepticism towards his buildings, as works of architecture to be critiqued and disestablished. Similarly, this attitude is also portrayed in his scrutinizing of Le Corbusier’s work, perhaps even more so than Mies in reaction to his significantly different view of Le Corbusier: “There is little that invokes in me the fear that Le Corbusier used to give me when I was a student.”39 Despite his disparate views on the two architects, he has still treated their reference in comparable ways within the four villas discussed in this dissertation. Through the detailed reading of the buildings, it has become apparent that in challenging the orthodox, Koolhaas has developed his own architectural language that evolved from the basic elements of Mies and Le Corbusier’s work. His architecture engages the deconstruction and critique of Modernist buildings and collages the ideas into brutal and perhaps mocking compositions. By stepping out of the “established rules of the beautiful,”40 his architecture is subject to superficial criticism provoking dismissal by some, but intrigued by others. Koolhaas is often regarded as a postmodernist for this reason, aiming to understand his motifs under a general principle of mixing styles together to create something new. However, I disagree. If we are to label his work, it is conceivably more appropriate to address his architecture as ‘Koolhaas Modernism’. This term is more suggestive of Koolhaas interpreting the work of the Modernists and in turn creating his own type of avant-garde architecture. Encompassed in this term is his principal technique of contrast and contradiction where he collages elements at polar ends of a scale within a single building. Whether they are conflicting in terms of form, materiality 38

Rem Koolhaas, ‘Content,’ Taschen, Köln, 2004, p.182.

Roberto Gargiani, ‘Rem Koolhaas,’ p. 85.

40 Jean François Lyotard, ‘The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge,’ Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1984, p. 75.

or spatial layout for example, the contrast creates a dynamic composition that is always teasing and provoking critics to the point of irritation. Hybridisation of ideas, elements and building program create new architectural scenarios; Koolhaas incessantly experiments and speculates through combining building functions in his work. As seen in the Maison á Bordeaux, the building’s core is an elevator but simultaneously operates as a working space. He utilises this same technique of hybridisation in his larger projects to experiment with social behaviour on an urban scale. Where Le Corbusier and Mies freed the horizontal plan, Koolhaas’s interest in the elevator and vertical connection has brought freedom to the section that is considered in many of his projects. Again, the hydraulic platform of Koolhaas’s final villa changes the horizontal configuration of the plan but equally alters the vertical spatial relationships in section, depending on its position. The evolution of this language can be seen with every successive villa; it began relatively restrained in the Patiovilla but immediately accelerated in the Villa Dall’Ava and was further refined in the Dutch House. Finally it became fully established in the Maison á Bordeaux but true to the work of OMA, ‘Koolhaas Modernism’ is not a mere style but rather a series of techniques to formulate modern architecture. Beyond the villas discussed and within the larger scale projects, Koolhaas continues to quote himself but in doing so, perseveres to reinterpret each citation.

drawings

Villa Savoye

Page 50

Tugendhat House

Page 54

Patiovilla

Page 58

Villa Dall’Ava

Page 62

Dutch House

Page 66

Maison à Bordeaux

Page 70

Villa Savoye Le Corbusier 1:300 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Garage Car park Ramp up Maids Room WC Service Rooms Laundry Wine Cellar TV Room Elevator Platform Footbridge Studio Fitness Room Void Terrace

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 50

Patio Kitchen Living Room Dining Room Summer Dining Area Winter Dining Area Study Bedroom Master Bedroom Parent’s Bedroom Children’s Bedroom Guest Bedroom Bathroom Swimming Pool Balcony

7 4 4 2

Ground Floor Plan

28 27

5 5 16

First Floor Plan

Roof Plan

Section A-A

Southeast Elevation

Northeast Elevation

Tugendhat House Mies van der Rohe 1:300 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Garage Car park Ramp up Maids Room WC Service Rooms Laundry Wine Cellar TV Room Elevator Platform Footbridge Studio Fitness Room Void Terrace

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 54

Patio Kitchen Living Room Dining Room Summer Dining Area Winter Dining Area Study Bedroom Master Bedroom Parent’s Bedroom Children’s Bedroom Guest Bedroom Bathroom Swimming Pool Balcony

1 5

5 28

28 26

Uppoer Ground Floor Plan

Lower Ground Floor Plan

Southeast Elevation

Section A-A

Northeast Elevation

Southwest Elevation

Patiovilla Rem Koolhaas 1:200 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Garage Car park Ramp up Maids Room WC Service Rooms Laundry Wine Cellar TV Room Elevator Platform Footbridge Studio Fitness Room Void Terrace

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 58

Patio Kitchen Living Room Dining Room Summer Dining Area Winter Dining Area Study Bedroom Master Bedroom Parent’s Bedroom Children’s Bedroom Guest Bedroom Bathroom Swimming Pool Balcony

7 13 1

Ground Floor Plan A

First Floor Plan

Section A-A

Northeast Elevation

Southwest Elevation

Villa Dall’Ava Rem Koolhaas 1:300 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Garage Car park Ramp up Maids Room WC Service Rooms Laundry Wine Cellar TV Room Elevator Platform Footbridge Studio Fitness Room Void Terrace

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 62

Patio Kitchen Living Room Dining Room Summer Dining Area Winter Dining Area Study Bedroom Master Bedroom Parent’s Bedroom Children’s Bedroom Guest Bedroom Bathroom Swimming Pool Balcony

Ground Floor Plan

First Floor Plan

Second Floor Plan

Roof Plan

Section A-A

North Elevation

Dutch House Rem Koolhaas 1:300 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Garage Car park Ramp up Maids Room WC Service Rooms Laundry Wine Cellar TV Room Elevator Platform Footbridge Studio Fitness Room Void Terrace

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 66

Patio Kitchen Living Room Dining Room Summer Dining Area Winter Dining Area Study Bedroom Master Bedroom Parent’s Bedroom Children’s Bedroom Guest Bedroom Bathroom Swimming Pool Balcony

16 26

2 18 19

Ground Floor Plan

14 15

18 16 15

First Floor Plan

South Elevation

Section A-A

West Elevation

Maison á Bordeaux Rem Koolhaas 1:300 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

Garage Car park Ramp up Maids Room WC Service Rooms Laundry Wine Cellar TV Room Elevator Platform Footbridge Studio Fitness Room Void Terrace

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 70

Patio Kitchen Living Room Dining Room Summer Dining Area Winter Dining Area Study Bedroom Master Bedroom Parent’s Bedroom Children’s Bedroom Guest Bedroom Bathroom Swimming Pool Balcony

7 Ground Floor Plan A

22 First Floor Plan

30 Second Floor Elevation

Northeast Elevation

Section A-A

Section B-B

bibliography

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University Press. Spaeth, D. (1985) Mies Van der Rohe. New York: Rizzoli International Publications. Tegethof, W. (1985) Mies van der Rohe: The Villas and Country Houses. Cambridge: MIT Press. Online Newspapers Muschamp, H. (1998). Living Boldly on the Event Horizon. New York Times. [Online] Available from: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/19/garden/critics-notebook-living-boldly-on-the-event-horizon.html?ref=remkoolhaas [Accessed October 1st, 2012) Online Journals Clare Melhuish, ‘Balmond takes your breath away,’ Architects Journal, June 3, 1999, Available from: http://www.architectsjournal.co.uk/home/ balmond-takes-your-breath-away/771883.article (accessed November 3rd, 2012) Documents Villa Savoye: A manifesto for modernity, Paris, Centre des Monuments Nationaux, 2009. Zdenìk K. (2001). ‘Tugendhat Villa in Brno. Prague: UNESCO. UNESCO. Report 1052. Image References Figure 1. Reinier de Jong Design (2012) OMA Villa. [Photograph] Available at: http://www.reinierdejong.com/2012/06/villa-rem-koolhaas/ (Accessed December 20th, 2012) Figure 2. OMA (1998) Maison á Bordeaux. [Photograph] Available at: http:// oma.eu/projects/1998/maison-%C3%A0-bordeaux (Accessed December 20th, 2012) 76

Figure 3. OMA (1995) Dutch House. [Photograph] Available at: http://oma. eu/projects/1995/dutch-house (Accessed December 20th, 2012) Figure 4. OMA (1991) Villa Dallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Ava. [Photograph] Available at: http://oma. eu/projects/1991/villa-dall-ava (Accessed December 20th, 2012) Figure 32. Balmond, C. (1998) Structure. In: Koolhaas, R. (1998). Living, Vivre, Leben. Boston: BirkhĂ¤user.