Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Assignment 2 - Final A2 Drawings and Models

Circulation:

This drawing explores the idea that the Villa Savoye experience begins before one even enters the house. The house features a very defined sense of circulation, and by taking the visitor around the ground floor facade, they are allowed to begin to experience the house's interior through the slitted glass.

This drawing uses colour to highlight the ramp as the main mode of circulation, and to explore the areas of program directly accessed by it. Blue marks out the ramp, green highlights external areas or areas linked to nature, while orange indicates living spaces. The ramp can be seen to encourage social and environmental interaction by largely providing direct access to public and outdoor areas. The drawing also uses shading to indicate the ramp's role in circulating inhabitants towards the upper, more "enlightened" and more public regions of the house.





This model was made predominantly from perspex and balsa wood, and seeks to again explore the areas directly accessed by the ramp within the house. The balsa wood represents these areas, while the perspex provides a contextual framework of walls. The model provides three dimensional evidence of what the above section drawing also attempted to convey - that the areas directly connected to the ramp are largely open, public and exposed to nature, indicating that Corbusier wanted the house's inhabitants to experience social and environmental interaction.


Colour:


This drawing attempts to isolate the white, Modernist "box" of the middle floor, and highlight its role in portraying the villa as a "machine for living". This in turn can be used to explain the highly functional aspects of usage within the house, such as built-in furniture.

The green of the ground floor exterior is an example of the highly selective yet careful application of colour within the Villa Savoye. This drawing shows the way in which green was used to connect the house to the landscape around it. The experience of the villa can be thought of as a journey upwards, from the earth to the sky, and as the ground floor is really just a "staging" area before beginning the true experience of the house in the levels above, the green is used to ground the floor within the earth.

The use of pinkish orange on certain walls in the bedrooms and the main living room was an attempt by Corbusier to encourage interaction and intimacy between inhabitants of the house. This drawing is a representation of this idea, and suggests that these rooms in particular were singled out for specific social usages.


Interior/Exterior:

This plan drawing represents through shading the divide between darker, private, enclosed space and lighter, outdoor, public space on the middle floor. The living room is portrayed as an outdoor area due to its excessive exposure to the exterior world through the horizontal windows, but more importantly through the glass sliding door opening on to the terrace, which effectively blurs the boundaries between inside and out. The drawing expands on this idea by representing the way in which nature is brought from the plant boxes on the terrace into the living room via the glass door.

This drawing explores both the way in which the middle floor is divided evenly between inside and outside, and the way in which the proportion of outside to inside increases steadily as one travels upwards through the house. In this way it can be deduced that more private usage within the house is encouraged on the lower levels, while public activity is emphasised increasingly on the upper floors.



This model expands on the idea of the middle floor being divided evenly between interior and exterior, and therefore private and public usage, through three dimensional exploration.


Architectural Proposition:

My proposition is a simple sectional drawing highlighting the connection two buildings share through a mutual relationship with an external garden. Both buildings use extensive glass to bring nature into their exteriors. This prominent strategy employed by Corbusier in the Villa Savoye is one that I will definitely explore for my design in assignment three.