Case Study: Wall House – FAR Architects
Text: “Primitive Future” – Sou Fujimoto
The Wall House by FAR Architects conveys how architecture is related to environment and it’s surrounding. The careful placing and arrangement of spaces could give richness to the space. The infinite inbetween spaces create endless possibilities and functions within the space.
The design explores how the traditional wall could be split into numerous layers and how these layers could contribute to social interaction and climatic relations. “Bringing the outside in and taking the inside out”.
The house has several layers of spaces, the most inner or the most reserved space being a dense ‘concrete cave’ or the manmade “artificial cave”. This layer consists of the bathrooms or the wet areas of the house. The second layer is the stacked layer made of formwork panels and plywood. This area has some closed and some open areas, entailing of the kitchen and the dining areas. These spaces are arranged in such a away that the orientation give an assured amount of privacy and openness to the resident. The subsequent layer being the milky shell or the translucent skin of the house consists of living and the master bedrooms. This layer offers a more natural impression to the house by conveying more natural light and casting shadows from the proximate natural elements such as the trees. The milky shell acts as a cloud crafting unintended views of the outside.
The material density diminishes as one approaches out and the most outer layer being the soft skin or the energy screen. This layer expresses the relation to thermal zones in advanced architecture. This is the layer where the inside and the outside most blend together.
The house is designed in such a way that one feels that the wall is fading away and is drawn more towards nature. From a solid inner core to a soft delicate skin. The Wall House is the correlation of material and functional aspects with the environmental aspects in advanced architecture.
The relations between the artificial and the natural elements in nature are best described in the article by Sou fujimoto, “Primitive Future”. The transition from one point to another or the “Gradation” of spaces where functionality comes into reality.
By incorporating environmental relations into innovative architecture, architects have been able to invent more functional and habitable spaces that blends with nature. Thus, the inside and the outside are merged through the soft skin to create a more rich architecture. The transition architecture gives quality to a space and hence this is the ultimate concept of today’s advanced architectures.
City as a House. I believe the relational logics in advanced architecture could be applied to city planning and designing if we think of city as a small-scale house. For my personal research I am more interested in incorporating these relational logics to a “large-scale city” by thinking of the city as a “small-scale house”. By careful layering of different elements of a city and understanding how these elements could work “separately” and also “together” at the same times to create a better architecture. Where humans mingle with the surrounding nature and where nature fuses with artifice. Towards creating a self-sufficient city through the merging of natural, cultural, social and informational or technological logics.
Picture Source: http://krobarch.com/images/winners/2007/entry942.jpg