Tanikawa House Kazuo Shinohara 1974

House in Plum Grove Sejima & Associates 2003

Imperial Villa of Katsura Architect Unknown circa 1600

Nick Huggard Ryan Moroney Paul Thomas Clouston

Sejima & Associates House in Plum Grove 2003
Domus, no. 866, January 2004, pp. 64-73

Situated in a dense Tokyo suburb this 77m2 white box

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approached Kazuyo Sejima with the notion that their
home should not represent economic power or attract
attention to itself whilst functioning as a small family
residence. Due to the limited amount of space of the
site 50mm thick external walls and 16mm thick internal
walls were made out of painted steel sheets to form the
structure of the house. A plain white interior was em-
ployed to eliminate the sense of depth by creating a two
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to gauge how large or small the space is. Once inside a
room ones view is extended through a series of aligned
windows, often passing through three separate spaces.
No room has been made larger than it has to be, a bed-
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and sink. Where it has not been possible to increase the
sense of size double height ceilings have been used.
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Every room has an extended view through either a
glazed window, a doorway or an internal cut window.
These views will often pass through at least 3 sepa-
rate spaces and in rooms where this was not possible
a double height was used. This creates the sense that
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A plain white interior removes any depth a room or
series of rooms may show. By creating a two di-
mensional view it is hard to interpret the actual size
of each room the 16mm thick steel walls contain.
This bathroom is narrower at one end to exaggerate
the perspective view. From one end this gives the im-
pression that the room is longer than if it were a stand-
ard rectangular space. The wider end has a window
extending ones view out into the built environment.
Alison and Peter Smithson
Upper Lawn
1959-1962

references:
Lotus, no.119, 2003, pp. 58 - 73
Architecture and Urbanism, 2006 Mar, n. 3 (426), p.
112 - 117
A + P Smithson, Changing the Art of Inhabitation (Lon-
don, Zurich: Artemis, 1994)
A + P Smithson, The Charged Void: Architecture (New
York: The Monacelli Press, 2001)

Completed in 1962, Upper Lawn is a week-end house,

designed by Alison and Peter Smithson for their own
use. It is acknowledged by many as an iconic building
resembling the ideas of ‘New Brutalism’.

The Smithsons acquired part of a farmstead in Wiltshire

that consisted of a large walled yard with a labourer’s
cottage built into the northern wall. The best part of the
cottage was pulled down to replace it with a new and
modest pavilion, answering their needs for a weekend
home. Of the original front façade, only one of the old
chimneys was left intact to function as the centre of the
new pavilion. The timber framed pavilion sits on the
existing stone wall which fully encloses a grassed and
cobbled garden, and is fully glazed on three sides. The
pavilion becomes an enclave, the view was its domain.

The Smithsons summarised their original intentions as

“an attempt at a simple ‘Climate House’”, which means
that they are able to open up the service areas on the
ground floor into the old paved areas or the garden and
as rapidly close them down again when the weather
changes.

Abdul Samat, Mohammad Afiq Shazwan

s3169356
fl
Shigeru Ban
Curtain Wall House, 1995

References:
- Shigeru Ban, Princeton Architectural Press, 2001
- The Japan Architect no.20 ; Special issue 1995 Anuual
part 2, 1995

Curtain Wall House by Japanese architect ShigeruBan is

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Japanese house.

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up.

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connecting space. Due to this, the spaces are
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left out.

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one corner.

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than it is actually.
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of fabric for the curtains to go around the long
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larger than it is in scale.

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Michael Markham, Field Consultants
Holyoake Cottage
2000
Holyoake Cottage, Hawthorn, Melbourne, Australia Ar-
chitectural Review Australia, no.73, Spring 2000

The cottage, designed for the architect’s family, was

described as a “rethinking of a modern cottage within a
local 19th century cottage site”. The main feature of the
cottage is the circular internal courtyard, planted with
only a single mulberry tree. The courtyard, surrounded
with full height glass windows and doors, links the ele-
ments of nature directly to the house. No overhangs,
nor roofing. The design suggests a very transparent
and continuous open plan. Other than the bathroom
and toilet, there are no walls to distinguish the spaces
inside the interior. The front of the house was designed
to be built with a series of meshed screens, whereas
the back of the house, where the bedrooms are located,
was constructed with opaque plastic sheeting to allow
southern light to penetrate. The flat roof was fabricated
to hold approximately 50mm of water, acting as a cool-
ing method during summer.

Holyoake Cottage won the Harold-Desbrowe Annear

Residential Award and the Victorian Architecture Medal
in the 2000 RAIA State Architecture Awards.
 fi

fl
fl
Weekend House, apan, 1999

Architects: rounds, Nishizawa, Ryue

Detail, Issue 2, 1999, pp.233-236

El Croquis, N.77 l +99 - azuyo Sejima+Ryue Nishizawa

The brief required that the daughter of the family, an artist,

should be able to exhibit her work in this weekend house.
Since it stands relatively isolated in a wood, it has few
external windows. Instead, a series of courtyards serves
the needs of lighting and ventilation. The timber posts are
laid out to a 2.4 x 2.4 m structural grid. The outer walls
are clad in galvanized corrugated steel sheeting, which
is perforated over the outer faces of the courtyards to
create a semi-transparent screen. The large
internal space is articulated mainly by the courtyards. The
reflections in the glass walls and on the shiny ceiling create
an almost labyrinthine effect, which serves to enrich this
minimal, simple structure. The shadows cast by the louvre
coverings over the courtyards add to the visual fascination.

Takasumi Inoue s3142626

fi
 fl

fl
fl
Boyd House 2, Victoria, 1958

Architects: rounds, Romberg and Boyd

Architecture and Arts, December 1960, pp.32-37

Robin Boyd, Living in Australia, Pergamon Press, Sydney
1970

The site is a narrow slice of an old garden in Walsh Street,

South Yarra. It has a high, old building on one side, and
a private garden on the other. But in this area there is
always the possibility of high flats being built on either
side. Thus privacy demanded an introverted plan, but a
view over roof top to the Dandenongs also called for an central courtyard first floor at parents block
outlook to the rear. A pre-planning decision was: virtually
separate flats for parents and children. Hence the division
of the house into two separate boxes, two-storey in front,
single-storey at rear for the children, tied together by a
single roof in which a hole is cut over the central court.
Both sections look inward to the court as well as the view
at the back, the upper level of the front box gaining its
view through the hole in the courtyard roof. The courtyard
has glazed walls, obscure where necessary for privacy.

central courtyard family living room

ABD SAMAT, Mohammad Afiq Shazwan (s3169356)

Betty Tang (s3170040)
Takasumi Inoue (s3142626)
Tim Lee (s3160412)

central courtyard family living room

fi fl

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elevation 1:500
Leça Swimming Pools
Alvaro Siza, 1966

Built at around the same time as the Boa Nova Tea

House and located a short distance to the south, the
Leça Swimming Pools complex is one of Siza’s most
visited works from the 1960s. The project is situated
along the coastal avenue, the mass of the building set
below the road level to allow an uninterrupted view to
the sea. The program includes two swimming pools,
changing facilities and a cafe.

Because of the need to limit construction costs and

to preserve the landscape, the project had to make
a minimal intrusion into the existing terrain. Since a
topographical survey was not available at the time,
the architect spent days marking the location of the
existing rock formations, to arrive at a design which
section a 1:200
would require the least blasting.

The large adults’ pool is bound by low concrete walls

that extend into the sea and are complemented on
three sides by the natural rock formations. The conti-
nuity of these walls with the existing topography and
the level of the water in the pool which appears to
be contiguous with the sea, create the illusion of a
seamless transition between the man-made and nat-
ural. The children’s pool, further inland, is enclosed
by a curvilinear wall on one side and sheltered from
the rest of the site by massive rocks and a concrete
bridge at its entrance. In a playful gesture, this bridge
is set just low enough to discourage adults from pass-
ing under it.
section b 1:200

pool changing rooms road view

a b

The access to the swimming pools is by way of a pe-

destrian ramp, which leads down from the coastal
highway. The visitor descends gradually, simultane-
ously losing sight of the horizon, into a maze of con-
crete walls, platforms and canopies of the shower
stalls and changing facilities building. After passing
through its long corridors, partially screened by the
cabinet partitions, a path along a high wall leads back
into the Atlantic light, but the water still remains hid-
den from view. A subtle play on the senses, this el-
ement seems to slice the landscape in two, leaving
only sky visible above and the sea audible beyond.
The composition of these elements as building proper
is understood only from the perspective of the swim-
ming pools, since from the road they appear as an ab-
stract figure, a series of carvings into the landscape.

Many of the materials of the swimming complex had

already been used by Siza at Boa Nova and in other
early projects, but here they achieve an unusual level
of homogeneity: the rough concrete, of a slightly cool-
er hue than the rock formations, smooth and wash-
able concrete panels for the pavement, Riga wood
carpentry, and green copper roofs, which seen from
the coastal avenue attain a color similar to the pools.

plan 1:500 site plan 1:500

Leca da Palmeira S
Paul Thomas Clouston Portugal

0 10
A single wall perfoms two fun-
cions. First to direct the bathers
to the swimming pool, second to
lead the eye to a chosen view, in
this case the atlantic ocean.
The eye naturally follows lines,
a curved line will draw in more
information into a space than
a straight line as the view is
captured perpendicular from
the edge. In this example the
outer edge facing the ocean is
curved, much like an ampithea-
tre.
The only architectural presence
seen from the road are the deep
shadows formed by parapetted
walls.
The program of the swimming
pool have been divided into two
contrasting elements. Once in-
side the changing rooms there
is no view of the ocean and
the shadows that run off the
thick concrete walls darken
the space. This is designed to
enhance the transition from
changing room to natural envi-
ronment where is appears that
all built form has disappeared.
There is an area of transition
between two edges. The two
edges being the hard sea wall
and the gentle ocean. Here you
can see the slow break up of
lines into angles then curves.
This prevents any strong juxta-
postions occuring which may
threaten to contradict the idea
of the architecture existing sec-
ondary to the natural environ-
ment.