04

The Dwelling

NTNU 23.03.2023
TASK

Develop plans for typical domestic interiors and living environments in your neighbourhood.

Working in your groups select a single dwelling and develop it to a 1:20 scale of detail.

At this scale you can explore the spatial qualities of the dwelling, its materials and the layout of fixed items
of furniture (e.g. kitchens and bathrooms).

It also allows you to think about subtler aspects of a home such as:

• the size, swings and composition of doorways;

• the size of windows and where openable windows are located;
• to test room and balcony sizes with multiple potential furniture layouts to ensure it can be used
flexibility and by all members of society.
TASK

Your main priority is to maximise the qualities of the dwelling.

Carefully consider:

• How to maximise the light and views to and from different orientations.

• The thresholds between inside and outside.

• Thresholds between the different spaces within the house.

• Minimise circulation space.

• Maximise the flexibility and usability of the homes for their inhabitants.

• Make the dwelling feel as large as possible even if it is quite small.

• Be sensitive to the everyday activities/rituals/interactions of domestic life.

OUTPUT

At the end of the project, you are required to make a presentation with a focus on the following key
representations:

• Plan of the dwelling (1:20)

•
• Section of the dwelling (1:20)

• Model photo which illustrates the spatial properties of the dwelling –

this should be similar in quality to the images for the ‘At The Threshold’ project.
The plan is a society of rooms – ‘The Room’ (1971)
Louis I. Kahn
‘If anything is described by an architectural plan, it is the nature of human
relationships, since the elements whose trace it records – walls, doors,
windows, and stairs – are employed first to divide and then selectively to
re-unite inhabited space.’
Robin Evans - ‘Translations from Drawings to Buildings and Other Essays’ (Architectural Association: London, 2023) p.56.
The Society of Rooms or The Plan of Rooms
‘In this house one room leads onwards, unfolds, unlocks. I stand in our
library and can go in three directions. The grand salon leads to four other
spaces. There are alcoves and spiral staircases from the bedrooms up to
the servants’ rooms so that clothes can appear and disappear. You catch
sight of a winding staircase arcing up, bisected by a balcony…

…I think your bathroom might be the only room with one door.’
Edmund De Waal- ‘Letters to Camodo’ (Chatto & Windus: London, 2021) p.52.
Plan of Camondo Mansion – now the Musee Nissim de Camondo, Paris, FR (1911)
Rene Sergent
‘The matrix of connected rooms is appropriate to a type of society which
feeds on carnality, which recognises the body is a person, and in which
gregariousness is habitual.
Robin Evans - ‘Translations from Drawings to Buildings and Other Essays’ (Architectural Association: London, 2023) p.88.

Carnality – the physical feelings and desires of the body

Gregarious – socialable, friendly, enjoying companionship
‘Reflections on the Chambered Floor Plan

A floor plan, formed out of nothing but individual enclosed spaces,

Without corridors. Connections exist where passageways and lines of
sight are desired.
Luca Selva
Queens House, London, UK (1635)
Inigo Jones
Meri House, La Florida, CL (2014)
Pezo von Ellrichshausen
‘A bedroom is a room in which there is a bed; a dining-room is a room in
which there are tables and chairs, and often a sideboard; a sitting-room is
a room in which there are armchairs and a couch; a kitchen is a room in
which there is a cooker and a water inlet;…’
George Perec - ‘Species of Spaces and Other Pieces’ (Penguin Books: London, 1997) p.27.
Areal Sandfelsen, CH (2009)
Luca Selva Architekten
Java Island Housing, Amsterdam, NL (2001)
Diener & Diener
Hampstead Elderly Housing, London, UK (2022)
Sergison Bates
Hampstead Elderly Housing, London, UK (2022)
Sergison Bates
Rooms and Regions or Served and Servant Space Revisited
The Box Rule (2007)
E2A
Xixi Wetland Estate (2015)
David Chipperfield Architects
The Spaces Between Dwellings
Klee Housing, Zurich, CH (2013)
Knapkiewicz+Fickert
Klee Housing, Zurich, CH (2013)
Knapkiewicz+Fickert
Klee Housing, Zurich, CH (2013)
Knapkiewicz+Fickert
Living Spaces Between Facades
‘If (as the philosophers maintain) the city is like some large house, and the
house in turn like small city, cannot the various parts of the house -atria,
xysti, dining rooms and so on – be considered miniature buildings?
Leon Battista Alberti
Im Gut Housing, Zurich, CH (2012)
Peter Markli
Im Gut Housing, Zurich, CH (2012)
Peter Markli
Zukunft Zurich, Zurich, CH (2015)
Duplex Architekten
Katzenbach Housing IV-V, Zurich, CH (2019)
Edelaar Mosayebi Inderbitzen
Seidlung Buchegg, Zurich, CH (2018)
Duplex Architekten
Seidlung Buchegg, Zurich, CH (2018)
Duplex Architekten
Letzigraben, Zurich, CH (2019)
Von Ballmoos Krucker Architekten
Letzigraben, Zurich, CH (2019)
Von Ballmoos Krucker Architekten