Shopping List

Stuff we need to get on here... Please.

• Photos of your art
• Photos of your house / studio as it is
• Site Photos

We can use all this to evaluate the language of the precedents and attempts.

Ephemeral Installations

Stop picking on Martin's contributions Rory. I have included the 'leaves' because this is what I have been driven to in the past. Every house I have lived in has been hostile to ephemeral installations. These sculptural activities bring me more pleasure than 'stuff' yet the spaces have never been condusive to the work. Even worse is the fact that they have to share the space with furniture and the general crap of living. It should be a house full of spaces inviting installations but just as happy if there is none there. - Lily

Homer's Dream Car

Classic styling, all American power, drink holders everywhere, musical horn, and look, it's got a separate bubble for the noisy kids in the back, just like the Carnegie House!

So Proud & Pawson

Wowo i'm so proud of you guys for scanning and posting and commenting and writing. this thing is awesome already.
Also, did you like your dinner last night? Because tomorrow I'm gonna serve up some more PAWSON. I think you're headed there already...

Culture

Whilst we do not want to live in a De Chirico builiding (definitely no arches) we wouldn't mind the mood that is evoked by his spaces. Interplay of light and shade etc.

Language:Reflected Forever

This came up in conversation. 'Reflected forever' in relation to the bathroom ceiling idea. These also reflect the minimalism that we envisage the project embodying in general.
Agnes Martin The Islands c.1961
acrylic and graphite on canvas






Agnes Martin Untitled 1959
oil on canvas

Precedent: Trahan Church

Further to Steven Holls reflected light which, Rose in particular, all of us loved. We loved these windows that aren't windows, the "windows that let light in but don't have views" that there has been so much talk about, used in this church (by Victor Trahan) in Louisiana. All of the orifices into the sacred space are designed to refract light as it enters without any visual access to the outside. We think this idea would particularly suit the main bedroom as a place of sanctuary and rest.

Precedent: The Carnegie House

McGlashan & Everist's Carnegie House in Sorrento has aspects that we have talked about. Particularly the seperate 'pavillions' that are connected only by covered walkways. Lily and I have pushed around the idea that the main living area might be dislocated from the studio and the girl's bedrooms. The size of the components is also not daunting.

Design: Tennis Court

The tennis court always seemed to stick out in the brief as a big issue, potentially compromising the intimate scale imagined for the building.
The idea is to introduce heaps of extra poles for the fence, instead of the standard 8 or so, and dot them around the perimeter in clusters to put the tennis court in a dialogue with the surrounding forest, as in Aalto's staircase in the Villa Mairea. The idea for the fencing is to make it out of standard cyclone mesh, but of different guages collaged together to read like camoflage, the same technique Gehry used to generate the text (which has since been removed) on the Santa Monica Place shopping centre carpark in L.A.
Images: Alvar Aalto, Villa Mairea staircase, 1937 & Frank Gehry, Santa Monica Place shopping centre carpark, 1980

Interest: Dualities

• Not quite the country or the coast
• Too far from the city to be desirable, not far enough to be inaccessible
• Geographically remote, but culturally connected (internet and magazines)
  
• To design something challenging, or something nice?

Issue: Imposition

Although Lily and Martin claim they want something 'imposed' on them, they already have very clear ideas of what they want, especially regarding materiality and dimensions. This process of blogging will hopefully direct what is imposed into being something they can actually stand to be in. This is not to say I will take on all the ideas they suggest - as in design by committee - especially if its a Doric style portico and false stone facing.
Image: Howard Roarke tearing off the changes made to his masterpiece by the board of directors. The Fountainhead, 1949

Precedent: Stephen Holl

Lots of talk about 'windows that let light in but don't have views'. This image doesn't quite capture whats happening in this interior by Stephen Holl, but essentially its a double skin wall, with windows cut into the outer wall, and openings in the inner wall that don't line up with the outer wall openings. The back of this inner wall is painted in a colour, which then spills out from behind the gaps as subtle indirect coloured reflected light.
Photo: Stephen Holl, D.E Shaw Offices, 1992

Precedent: The Eames House

Ok, I honestly don't know how I got this one so wrong. I was so excited! I was sure I'd hit it! It's only for that reason that this makes it on here, I've got no issue with ditching it. But, for the blog - which will remember every false move - here's why I like it:

1. Standardised. I still find the transformation of whats just an industrial shed into a rich collage amazing.
2. Creative Space. This to me is the ultimate creative space. Everything is at hand; books, materials, equipment, space, light etc. Maybe all the little trinkets would annoy me a bit though.
   
3. Refinement. This houses invites constant refinement. I've always loved your house down at Barwon, and to me its like your 'life project', constantly being refined and modified, walls built or moved, bathrooms cast, furniture accomodated etc. But I had no idea this maintainence was such a burden!
4. Flexibility. The structural grid is interpreted and interrogated throughout the house, through colour, layout, patterning and furniture. Objects can sit on or off the grid without either being pretentious or appearing intentional.
5. Landscape. It's nestled in within huge trees, but is of a foreign language and doesn't try and imitate. The landscape is dumbly (but in a good way) introduced into the house just as potplants and ferns.
   

For a contemporary extension of the ideas of the Eames house, see French architects Lacaton and Vassal. They use off-the-shelf greenhouses and industrial sheds to address the issue of 'space' in low-budget housing.
Photos: Charles and Ray Eames, Eames House, 1949-50

Precedent: Heide II

I still find Heide II the closest precedent to what we've talked about to date, particularly for its type as a house/gallery. This doesn't make it exempt from criticism though, here's my list of pros and cons:

Pros:

• Engagement with the landscape through walls framing views.
• Material language. Concrete blockwork and timber decking.
  
• Flow of space.
  

Cons:

• Treated too much as a sculpture itself, not to be reconfigured or modified.
  
• A space-planning failure. Great gallery, but an awkward house.
• Material language may also be a bad thing, associations with depressing 60's housing.
  

Images: Heide II, McGlashan Everist, 1965

A note on the medium

I think having this discussion on a blog is good for a few reasons. Firstly, its going to force us to carefully and succinctly articulate our ideas - which may help the problem of talking about the same thing, but meaning different things. So until the day comes when we can plug directly into someone elses brain, this will have to do.
Secondly, I think its good because as far as I know it hasn't really been done quite like this before. There are plenty of examples of architects using social software to communicate and collaborate within a team. For example by using workflow tools (so bored), or the tracking of emails to follow a design conversation as done by the architecture firm Terroir (a bit bored), or the research done by SIAL into Wikis for design collaboration (not that boring); but none of these 'digital conversations' are between the designer and the client.
This is interesting because it can potentially break down the 'imposition of genius' of the architect on a client, by making the conversation transparent, and including them in this conversation. But what happens if the client expressly requests this imposition?

A note on the title

This blog takes as its title a revision of Le Corbusier's dictum of a house as 'a machine for living' (Towards a New Architecture, 1931), but instead of being informed by purely functional requirements, acknowledges the need for something more 'spatial'.
Photo: Villa Savoye, Le Corbusier, 1929-31

'A Sculpture For Living' begins...

Following the inaugural meeting over dinner last night, 'A Sculpture for Living' is now up and running. In an attempt to bring the page up to speed with the discussion, I'm going to try and add all the stuff thats been talked about up to this point, even though much of it may have been abandoned already.
Photo: Rory, Martin and Lily by Amy. 18.12.06