Domino/ OpenHouse

The use of the frame and skin as a modern building system and theoreticalmandala.

The materialization of ideas.

To put together materials and elements in an architectural ordering system.

Abstract

System

Keywords

order

Material

Frame

WeatheringSkeleton

Skin

PilotisDomino House

Villa Savoye,Poissy, 1928-31,Le Corbusier

• Le Corbusier was born on Oct. 6, 1887, in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. He settled in Paris in 1917. He received formal training under the architects Auguste Perret in Paris and Peter Behrens in

Berlin. He died on Aug. 27, 1965.

Model for Villa Radeuse

Villa Savoye

Vila Savoye, entrance

Vila Savoye, Poissy, 1928-31, view from south-west.Vila Savoye, axonometric sketch showingRelationship of roof terrace to sun and the Processional character of the automobile Approach.

Vila Savoye, salon on first floor lookingTowards roof terrace

Vila Savoye, view from roof terrace to Salon and ramp.

Vila Savoye, view across terraceTo ramp.

Vila Savoye, section showing salon, terrace and bodoirAt first level

Study of symmetrical scheme for VillaSavoye, Sept 1928

Villa Savoye, Poissy, 1928-31

Still Life with Numerous Object, 1923.

Development sketches for Villa Savoye, Sept 1928

• Le Corbusier's five points called for the use of

• (1) pilotis (columns that raise a building above the ground);

• (2) flat roofs with gardens; • (3) the free plan (independence of the

structural frame from the internal walls); (4) the free facade (no structural limitation on window placement); and

• (5) a continuous horizontal window (one aspect of the free facade).

Breaking the box, opening up the walls.

Another way to see windows.

Mies van der Rohe 1889-1969, Born in Germany, practised in Berlin and emigrated to the USA in 1937 to head the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago until 1959.

Abstract

Opening up

Keywords

Structure

Material

Walls

FramingsEdges

Planes

OpeningsOpen House

Farnsworth House,Plano, Illinois, 1946-50,Mies van der Rohe

‘Architecture is the will of the age conceived in spatial terms’

Mies van der Rohe~

TRUTH‘Truth is the significance of fact’

Thomas Aquinas

‘Architecture is the will of the age

conceived in spatial terms’

Mies van der Rohe~

TRUTH‘Truth is the significance

of fact’Thomas Aquinas

Farnsworth House,1946-50A small week-end retreat, designed for a doctor, Edith Farnsworth. Located on land near Fox river in Plano, Illinois.

The glass pavilion that brings the building of Mies’s IIT to the domestic scale.

Continues his experiments in the abstraction of the plane

Consisting in a minimalist rectangular box enclosed by a floating roof slab

3 floating slabs – a terrace slab, and behind it floor and roof slabs – are all lifted from the ground. The welding of the supports to the sides of the slabs, as though the magnetism kept the frame whole, enhances the floating quality of the spreading slabs. Smaller slabs, although seemingly floated, serve as stairs, from the ground to the terrace and from the terrace to the entrance porch of the rectangular glass-box living area.

Farnsworth House,1946-50Floor slab suspended 1.5m above ground because the Fox river occasionally flooded the site, sits as a simple white frame in the landscape, as elegant an expression of skin-and-bones architecture as could be imagined.

Roof and floor slabs – both supported by 8 exterior steel H-cloumns.

Integrated into the natural landscape, blurring the distinction between inside and outside.

The walls were of large panes of glass.

End result – poetic lightness and sense of open, flowing space.

However – point of argument for the owner – the transparency of the house –poor climatic control?

Farnsworth House,1946-50The glass walls can be screened with white curtains when privacy is desired, but the play of light as it reflects off the glass and the immediacy of the natural surroundings viewed through the walls are more effective unscreened.

Thus, it is an expression of an architectural ideal rather than a model for everyday family living; it carries the concept of the Tugendhat House to their logical conclusion, losing in the process a certain degree of practicality.

Whatever the complaints about Mies’s reductivism, the formal results are elegant, almost timeless. In fact, the Farnsworth House can be interpreted as a classical temple, its stylobate or base slid forward to create an arrival of sequence.

Farnsworth House,1946-50

Interior – a single space, subdivided by a kitchen-bathroom-fireplace service core and a set of closets that formed a partition for the sleeping area.

Farnsworth House,1946-50

Required Reading

“Five Points Towards a New Architecture”

Le Corbusier 1964

End!