OB_2.1

Some of my first attempts at putting my 5 terms together into models. First model deals with all the terms. I did it thinking about them in order from 1-5 and my second is an attempt at just thinking about #5 the separation between architecture and nature. Thinking more about the relationship between raw vs. redefined...

OB_2

OBSTRUCTION_02 [flip-flop]

"... language is a system of interconnected elements that necessitate, through comparison, the presence of all others for its meaning.."

The second obstruction is to "flip flop" the house, in other words to take 5 of the key components/ideas of the original house and create a new interpretation using the opposite of those ideas. The opposite 5 descriptive terms/phrases become the rules that guide the new design. 

                        __The whole process also needs to be a 3-D discovery (models, models, models.......)

The 5 descriptions/ terms that I chose are:

1. Uninterrupted views 
2. Diagonally separated volumes 
3. House is buried away
4. Slow discovery of all elements 
5. Intertwined building and landscape

: and their opposites

Interrupted views  1. 

Joined masses (perpendicular)  2.

Lifted Up or Dug out   3.

Interior progression (fast/direct)  4.

Separation of architecture and nature 5.

OB_1.2

The final drawings..

OB_1.1

After some delay uploading the most recent stages of my project this is how it has evolved...

I updated my original model that was constricting me to only one axis. I opened up the model and started to think about how the masses would interact with the site and more importantly how the roof planes would start to create a more linear/distant garden than in the original. 

 The relationship between the roof planes/exterior experience became became just as important as the architecture and plan layouts, as so much of the original house deals with that exterior experience. 

One of the challenges I faced was trying to make an already linear and extended circulation longer. In the original the garden is essentially only at the top level, so I decided to extend the garden and roof axes to all the masses.

 In my original schemes for the layout and actual plans I wasn't thinking linear enough and placed the long skinny spaces next to each other rather than start to intertwine them.
The plans became longer and better defined and I started to think about how furniture and necessary fixtures would be incorporated into the design.

 

  

OB_1

OBSTRUCTION_01[slim]

" The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity..."

_Ludwig Wittgenstein

The first obstruction deals with "slimming" down the house. Maintaining the general organizational strategies, compositional systems and forms, the goal is to explore new lean/slender interpretations of the existing structure. 

Thinking of what "thin" really meant I tried expressing my original schemes using some study models. In my first model I started to manipulate planes, openings, and arrangement of program to come up with a language that was "thin" and started to compress and open up spaces vertically and horizontally. While in  my second I took more of a sectional/ elevation approach that started to help me visualize better how the new structure could start to sit on the complicated site.

 

All of my diagrammatic discoveries were put together into a book. I used some of the concepts I saw important like the use of frames, and the manipulation of the pages to have more than one aspect to a single page. The images attempt to show this but the original goal can really be appreciated with the book in your hand...

Take a look at the Book 

Diagramming 

Series of diagrams focused on the main volume of the house. The relationship between the horizontal and vertical walls is interesting because you can start to see the importance of views and openness towards the ocean. The axon diagrams keep analyzing the walls and starts to show how although there are more horizontal walls the vertical ones are longer and clearly more important.  

Looking at the progression in the main volume, the section analysis helps to identify the relationship between the mass( the house) and the cliff (nature). While thinking about progression and circulation I found another significant connection between the building and the site. The smaller diagrams show that the path going down towards the children's pavilion becomes very narrow with the house on one side and the rocky cliff on the other  

Diagramming 

Some of my first sketchbook notes and thoughts on the house. I started to discover relationships between nature and the architecture, how the inhabitable volumes where placed on the site and how movement from one space to another was as much of an experience as the actual architecture.

After these first notes and "napkin sketches" I began further analyzing the site and the building at a bigger scale, starting from the top of the site and working my way down.                      

These diagrams start to show how boundaries are created by the house and how the sculptural basalt's sit on the roof deck.

An attempt a showing the different ramps and stairs that lead you down towards the main volumes of the house. Also highlighting the different planes and levels within the top roof deck.

Artist: Caspar David Friedrich

                 "Monk By the Sea" 

This painting is a reflection of my last post which is one of my favorite images of the house. Both the picture and the painting show a subject overlooking a vast ocean. This image is powerful because it's hard to make the distinction between the physical boundaries and edges ( the cliff) and the lack of visual boundaries that let your eye wonder far beyond the immediate surroundings. 

 CASA PITE

PAPUDO CHILE

"The temptation of being on the brink, of establishing 

a strong interior–exterior relationship, is exacerbated 

by the important presence of the ocean and an abrupt 

cliff. The project develops through the articulation 

of the different spaces and zoning on the slope. The 

shape brings the spaces ever closer to the edge, there 

where vertigo, extension and a vacuum appear..."

Smiljan Radic Profesor, Escuela de Arquitectura, The University of Texas at Austin