To wrap the activity of LIFE
Not setting the rigid space for person, but ACTIVITY VOLUME should be set at first. Because the space wouldn’t be rigid without understanding how much this volume is needed.
To abstract the nature of dwellers with architecture
Without depending on any particular materials, the façade confront to the environment should reflect the character of dwellers, which is the reflection of the book spines’ colors to the frosted glass, in this case.
3. To get informations outside indirectly
The meaning of Informations include Light, Shadow, Noise… In this project, the main floor is at the basement, where the hygrothermal environment is relatively stable, and the sunlight is coming down from higher points. The difference between outside and inside of house consists in how much those informations are direct or not.
The most important issue when in designing newly-built house was to invent the simplest way of storing the inherited goods inside the limited space restricted by legal and economical limitations, efficiently.
To think about efficiency was due to rethink about staircases, also. The over and the under space of them, such as triangle or pentagonal void spaces, which are sometimes uncontrollable, for example, too much high ceiling in fixing fluorescent lights over staircase, too narrow space to walk in under staircase: all of such kinds of problems are coming from the reason that they are “STAIRCASES” and nothing else. These dead spaces are inevitably created if you regard staircases as an independent element for moving up/down stairs, although it is not so particular or sacred element, in actually. It is okay if there is a slanted cave over steps.
At first, instead of thinking that I should set enough shelves inside a house, I chose the way of subtracting a house from a pure storage. More concretely, there was an image of some parallel screens standing with certain intervals are penetrated by some rectangular spaces at right angles, with enough scale. Each side of the RC structural wall (D300) is covered with being arrayed vertical board frames of book-shelf (W@500 x D300), which support the horizontal shelves with dowel pins, from the bottom to the top of the structure. Adjustable horizontal shelves and regular vertical shelves draw variable pattern of grid with same thickness of 30mm, according with the size of books and other contents. If you set void spaces without being obstacle to the life, the presence of the bookshelves is like floating in the air. These 5pieces of 900mm depth screen units were laid out inside the 10m square residential plan, with 10m height.
Along with this solution to the first problem, the next one could be also solved by digging out staircase from screen units. Keeping the faces of these units, I designed the hand rail with 32mm square steel pipe with same white color as shelves. Within these pipes, control switches of the lights for book shelves are included.
Some parts of spaces, especially private like bedroom, have to be enclosed by walls inside a house. I’d like to call such a character to be private shafts. In this project, there are three private shafts, one for the senior, one for the junior, and one for the lessors living in collective house, which is divided into six parts again. In engineering words, they are acting as a kind of huge beams to endure the out-of-plane deformation taken place on the series of structural planes inside the screen units, cooperate with two sheets of slab.
This composition of volume is set 3m under the ground level, which is connected to a public road level with gentle slope and steps. So, the basement level, which is cooler in summer, and is warmer in winter than upper level, is the main floor for this house. And the hoods at the each end (top and bottom) of the stairwell can control the inside air through a year.
When those screen units are wrapped with envelope, this composition can be completed as a finished structure. This envelope is with striped surface of glazing and galvanized steel plates, which accords to the rule; screen units are covered with steel, and the gaps between book shelves are covered with glazing. As the portion in front of book shelves, the floors are finished with grating steel flooring, and this portion is always under the glazing of envelope, the natural light sheds the torrent through from the roof top to the basement.
There are four volumes inside this structure, Dark Red, Brown, White, and Silver, which ties those volumes into one. Dark Red is for the son, Brown is for the parents, White is for apartment dwellers. These three volumes are used as personal spaces which keep privacies for each dwellers. Other spaces are open to the public, including Living space, Kitchen, Studies, Book Shelves. which is covered with the stripes with glazing and galvanized metallic wall, Silver. I wanted not only to shuffle and rearrange the way of layout and order of, so to say, a Housing, but also to make these independent volumes to work as kinds of beams to support those parallel walls orthogonal to them.
