Monday, 23 April 2012

ARCH1201 - Week 7 Notes

ARCH1201 - Week 7 Notes:

Guest lecturer from landscape faculty at UNSW.

1) Villa Medici - Italian Renaissance at Fiesole, on hill overlooking Florence: long terraces, formal gardens, different heights, paved or gravel courtyards with walls, doors, gates to add ceremony; ornamented with pots, urns etc; loggia connecting villa to outside/garden; repetition of trees; pool; terraces overlooking the view have low walls with parts carved out; a pergola is covered in greenery and is bordered with flowers-informal. Lower terraces have formal patterns of maze-like hedging cut low and shaped trees.

2) Villa d'Este, at Tivoli, near Rome. Also Renaissance era.                                       
High position, has terraced gardens, an oasis in contrast with rather arid surroundings; very elaborate layout; lots of pots; narrow sloping paths with walls and vegetation enclosing the paths, lots of water eg. wall with regular jets from carved animal heads along the base, ferns, fountains; descending series of ponds; further away from the villa the garden is wilder, not so trimmed.

3) Canberra-Sculpture garden at National Gallery, bordering Lake Burley Griffin, native plants, careful placing of sculptures

4) Ballast Point Park, Birchgrove: re-use of metal, rubble; plants used to clean water, remnants of the past incorporated into the park. Different levels, terraces. Small windows in enclosed lookouts frame the view.

5) Paddington Reserve, Oxford Street: old arches, pools of water, sunken garden.


ARCH1201 - Assignment 2 - The Gehry House

ARCH1201 - Assignment 2 - The Gehry House

 LIGHT

 LIGHT (Cont.)

 MATERIALS

 EXTERIOR SPACES

 CONCLUSION

 Different Windows Model

Framed Tree Model 

 Framed Tree Model 2

 Materials Model

Week 8 (No Lecture)

Week 6 (Mid Session Break)

Week 6 (Mid Session Break) - Work on Assignment 2

Week 5 (No Lecture)

Week 5 (No Lecture)

ARCH1201 - Week 4 Notes

ARCH1201 - Week 4 Notes:

(Students presented their last assignment for the first half of the lecture)

Emphasis on thinking about what is being explored architecturally and trying to express this concept in the drawings.

Note how Corbusier shows transparency and lightness, Gehry has energy and vibrancy, Alto stresses the particularity of everything.

Functionality: form follows function. The idea of functionality differs between architects. Functionality influences HOW people live in these houses.

Next exercise:

The Life of the House - the program. Concentrate on specific aspects of the house. What can you see and how do you show or render this? Be imaginative, ambitious.

ARCH1201 - Assignment 1 - The Gehry House

ARCH1201 - Assignment 1 - The Gehry House

 Side Perspective

  Rear Perspective

  Side Perspective

Front Perspective

(Under Construction)

 Floor Plans

Elevations

ARCH1201 - Week 3 Notes:

ARCH1201 - Week 3 Notes:

Villa.

What do you notice about this historical masterpiece which was designed in 1929 to 1931. Colin Rose wrote a book regarding this house was continued to be printed up until 1990.

Consider the depths, power and thought of the house. It inspires inmaterialisation, that is, it hovers above the forest in part, but it is also buried in to the ground.

It also floats above to give the impression it is come from outer space. It calls into question all that we ever thought about houses. The use of materials to revolutionise us to mass production of houses. It was a house for all, not just for the rich. The design of the house is really 4 houses on top of each other.

As a metaphor for production of a new world. The house could also be called a piece of equipment. And the Villa is framing of a project into mathematical formulas. For example, the stairs with curved geometrical and mechanical attributes that talk you through space. The building floats as you float and parts of the building begin to lead you on a journey to the end.

The building is a triumph over nature. The final journey is to the upstairs open courtyard which is the centre of the house, with a roof garden with all the living space of this open area. The house is inside and outside living which is unusual. The central courtyard at the top of the house gives you the feeling of length due to the long glazed doors and the table is situated on the outside but looks more like a table you would find inside the house. The openness gives you the impression that you are part of the landscape. The bathroom and the bowl at the front of the house are sculptures and the bowl is risen to give enjoyment.

Many different materials were used in the construction, but they are all rendered and painted white to give the form of 1 material. The appearance of the construction being all the same gives the impression that it is a system that can be always apply and it is a system for life.

The complete  complex.
        1. Difficult;
        2. Contrary;
        3. Generous;

Bordeaux House.

The house was designed with different materials, each with a different element. Look at the fire places in the Villa which are very plain and simple and form part of the house, whereas the fireplace in the Bordeaux House are a strong element with different materials.

This house also has vertical and horizontal elements with lots of weaving to give the impression of work. This building shows a richness of texture and colour to give an appearance of a strong building.

It is a complex building with rich colours, rendered to give it a skin but each skin has a different colour.

The garden is different in that it has been moulded into colour to reflect the building.

This house is designed around living and is also 3 houses, one on top of the other. The lower level being cave-like, the top house divided into 2, one for the owners and once the children and the middle is the main part of the house, bringing it all together. The middle house is very open and stretches to both.

The lower level has vertical aspects in that an elevator is used more like a platform rather than an elevator. The reason why the elevator was so much part of the construction is that the owner of the house was in a wheelchair, but rather than a conventional elevator a platform was used and the platform can stop at different levels of the house, which then changes the aspect from being in the kitchen, going up to the library and going up to the upper level of the house etc.

The Gehry House.

It is harsh and rough to give it a freshness of physical and rough energy which can be seen from the drawings which also create rough energy.

The pink bungalow has been framed as a picture and the extensions wrap the house in parts of the building are objects of contemplation. Gehry has chosen rough materials in an attempt to excite the visitor by the building.

The building is to give the impression that it is not finished, which generates the energy that you receive on a partly constructed building site. The energy of going onto completion. The energy of doing. The window is being used to capture the outside light post, so the night life can permeate the house.

The house uses different windows and different glasses to give different perspectives from each of the windows. The angled window also captures the cactus to give it a picture like position.

Summary.

Villa. Abstract, floating above the forest, all of one material, the basin and bathroom are items of sculpture and forming part of the house, windows are such that they create pictures.

Bordeaux house. Brown, heavy house looking, out of dirt, not pure, physical, dirty and strong, realistic, forming part of the landscape, furniture and curtains are of a different era and are a statement in itself. The structure is heavy and looking through the holes give a different perspective of the surrounding view.

ARCH1201 - Week 2 Notes

ARCH 1201 - Week 2 Notes:

Alvar Aalto – Villa Mariea (1938-39)
·         Designed for one of the wealthiest families in Finland – for Marie and Harry Gullichsen

·         Built in Noormarkku

·         Aalto and Gullichsen established a famous furniture co.

·         Marie had studied art in Paris – wanted to bring modern art into Finland’s culture

·         Unlimited budget.

·         L-shaped house, with veranda to sauna and pool.

·         Researcher’s research area is “patterns and structures of living”.

·         Uses the example of seats – in a row – interconnectedness with seats to the side, behind and in front.

·         Questions to ask:

1)     Underlying architectural patterns?

2)     Relationship to site?

3)     Relationship to climates?

·         Research thesis – Aalto – “methodical development of flexibility”.

·         By 1935, Aalto was one of the leading functionalist architects.

·         In that year, gave a lecture to attack modern functional architecture as lacking a human element.

·         “Generate diversity and coordinate it”

·         Flexible order.
 

3 major formal strategies:

1)     Multiple, co-spatial structures of the architectural world

2)     High levels of formal articulation

3)     A predominance of non-repetitive relations in dynamic equilibrium.

·         Relationship with ridge.

·         Connects the site with the topography.

·         L-shape follows the ridge

·         “Drew floor-plan over topographical map”

·         Diagonally links/faces the old house

·         3 key lines – need for excavation, levelling, and elevation.

·         Relationship with Forest – the forest can be both good and evil according to Finnish mythology – Aalto clears the forest to build villa mariea; but then included a tree column inside the house.

NB to create a social area:

a)     must start with a ‘central place’

b)     must set a ‘diversity of activities’ around that central place – the parameter

c)      set an outer-parameter.

There are 7 kinds of relationships b/w these 3 elements:

1)     formal/casual

2)     short/long term

3)     visual

4)     physical access

5)     spillover of activities

6)     shelter and protection

7)     openings

 L-shape gives an ‘implied centre’

But there is also the ‘Dining room centre’ & the ‘Living room centre’.

Need for different centres for the variation in climate. And also with surrounding diversity.