Week 2 - Public Verses Private

From week 1, the idea that i proposed was that the public and private was being split along the north south access, hence allowing light to penetrate the bedrooms, which are used in the morning, and leaving the afternoon sun for the public spaces, which are mainly used of the afternoon. I thought the best way to demonstrate this would be with shadow diagrams, to make sure my hypothesis was correct.

I set up shadow diagrams for 9am, 12pm and 3pm for each season, as my tutor asked. After finishing these shadow diagrams (which took so long), i concluded that my hypothesis was actually true.

I thought that this design strategy was extremely important, and one that I personally would never of thought of. This is one main strategy I have learnt during the process of this analysis.

Week 2 - Use of landscape

Progressing from week 1's work on the internal floor space to the footprint, my tutor wanted me more to focus on internal verses external. For this I measured the different amounts of areas and noticed that the Internal:External space was equal to 1:0.91. The calculations can be seen if you zoom in on the drawing above.

This is very rare in most buildings, hence I thought this was worth discovering more. I then thought I would make the spaces as boxes, and make it a tactile object rather than a drawing. I felt that people would only really understand this once they played with it and out all the internal boxes together and the external boxes together. Then they would realise the similarity. The above photos are a part of this model, however it doesn’t show each object being separated.

I thought that I should of progressed this further by somehow incorporating the calulations so people can tell, either it be by weight or some other factor. There will be more to come on this.

Week 1 - Use of landscape

When looking at the building, I noticed that there was alot of external space within the footprint of the building. Usually, houses are built, and they have the house spanning on all the footprint, with minimal exterior space within this footprint. Then they will have a garden outside, which brings there floor to space ratio down. After thinking about this I wanted to discover how much external habitable space there was within the footprint of the building.

I started to do calculations that can be seen if you zoom in on the text within the image above. I noticed that there is actually more external space then the footprint, and this is not even including the flat roof that is not tiled. If that was included the figure would be even larger. As external habitable space to footprint, it was 1.03%. This figure astonished me and I tried to think of another building like that and I was unable as I have not learnt of any yet.

I presented these findings through mapping out the external space within the building. This gives a visual representation of it. After presenting to the tutor we discussed many things, one of which was that in most building, we rarely measure the footprint of the building, and compare that to the external space, but rather we would usually measure internal to external space. From this point I then set myself the task of discovering the measurements of these factors, and if it was something out of the ordinary, then I would progress with the idea. More to come.

Week 1 - Use of Colour

I noticed that within the Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier uses minimal colour. The building is mainly white, even in its finished form. Due to this I think that the landscape jumps out at you, and creates an external landscape within the building. As a person’s eye is drawn towards colour, their eyes are drawn to the landscape.

The idea of this model was to reverse the landscape onto the inside. I have two colours, white for the building and green for the landscape. I then did the external walls which frame the landscape.

After producing it i thought that it failed to convey the concept in the best manner. My tutor spoke about how he has framed views. Back to the drawing board I went.

Week 1 - Public Verses Private

This week I wanted to investigate how within the Villa Savoye, public and private areas were differentiated. I noticed that it was basically split in half. I also noted that the public areas were much more open, and the private areas much more enclosed, like cells. For this reason I decided to have the private area made out of card, to show how enclosed it was, and the public space out of acetate, as they show how open the space is.

I noticed that the boundary between public and private is made directly North-South, hence Le Corbusier has split the house up for a purpose. He noted that the bedrooms are the main rooms used in the morning, and the public spaces used of an afternoon, hence positioned them in accordance with their function. This is why i have used different colours. The orange represents the colour of the sun rising, and the pink the colour of the sun setting. I regreted using these colours, as i thought they didn’t portray this correctly.