Tuesday 11 June 2013

Corrección Final

Planta Baja esc. 1:250


Primera Planta esc. 1:100


Tercera Planta esc. 1:100


Segunda Planta esc. 1:100





Sunday 2 June 2013

Five proposals for five locations


From 20’s to 50’s, the worldwide architecture was influenced by the modern movement and its ideas about internationalization of architecture. These postulates were defended and promulgate by C.I.A.M. congress around the world. But day by day, the society began to realize the real problems of these modern approaches.

However, between 1954 and 1956, a new generation of young and aware architects promoted the tenth C.I.A.M. congress. For that, architects like Aldo Van Eyck, Georges Candilis and Alison and Peter Smithson proposed a new way to understand architecture focused in guaranteeing social relationships, a correct growth of cities, and relationships between buildings and its environments.

Alison and Peter Smithson were the most implied couple. They took part in the writing of the” Doorn Manifesto”, and they made two presentations for the last C.I.A.M. congress. One was a scroll which illustrated their ideas about the concepts of identity, association, cluster and mobility. They illustrated these ideas thinking about the different patterns of growth for city and scales of human associations: House, Street, District and City.

The first case answers to the isolated house. A & P Smithson presented “Borrows Lea Farm”, an earlier project of 1953. They use it as an example of design related with its surrounding environment.




The second case corresponds to the Hamlet, and this design was called the “Village unite”. It is a clear-cut architectural unity of five dwellings. Here, they understood this archetype as an alternative to the standardized suburban houses which ignore the location and the community. It is important to remark the setup of its gardens and the way these open onto main roads and fields.



For the third case, the village, appear the “Fold Houses”. These houses, which may be built in different configurations, are characterised for its massive walls, tow storey high, which serves as a windbreak.




At the next level up, we found the Town. For that, the Smithson couple designed the “Close Houses”. These houses provide a covered passage only for pedestrians based in the distribution in parallel of the different sorts of houses. If they implemented it on a longer scale, they could form a distinct continuous network.





Finally, the “South Facing Terraced Houses” were designed for the city level. These are a twelve-storey residential building which contains one hundred and eighty dwellings. Their typical curved form tries to catch the sun exposure and reduce the shape of the building in the city.





In this way, Alison and Peter Smithson offered a new opposite point of view to the modern movement. Instead of continue the internationalization in architecture, they propose a seriously care about the problems of each location and its environment.


Sources:
Team 10: 1953-81: in search of a utopia of the present
Author: Heuvel,Dirk Van Den

Tuesday 28 May 2013


Walden 7, una comunidad de ideas formalizadas en el espacio.



   El Walden 7 nace como un experimento social basado en la vida en comunidad. Así, el proyecto busca una experiencia social que se sirva de las tres dimensiones del espacio.  El objetivo final, es el de crear una ciudad en altura, con una densidad muy elevada y unos servicios centralizados. Donde además. se puedan dar unas relaciones sociales fomentadas por los espacios comunes, y una privacidad real en las diferentes tipologías de vivienda.

   Pero, ¿Cómo conseguir estos objetivos a una escala tan grande?

   La respuesta, pasa por la formalización de una estructura matemática, intrínseca en el edificio, que sea capaz de aclarar las leyes que organizan todo el proyecto. Dicha estructura será solucionada por "el taller", a partir de un modelo formal cubico que permite la industrialización y que es lo suficiente flexible como para admitir su variación en un futuro y su división en otros sub-modelos formales. Gracias a  estos modelos mínimos y a sus posibilidades de combinación, pudieron empezar a trabajar a una mayor escala apoyándose en un elemento representativo de los tres ejes ortogonales: la rejilla ortogonal en retícula.

   Sin embargo, todo el programa no se iba a plantear en una única torre, sino que serían 18. Pues el objetivo era duplicar o incluso triplicar la densidad normal de la ciudad. Es aquí donde se plantea un nuevo problema a la hora de resolver la relación espacial entre estas. Finalmente, optan por acercar las torres lo suficiente como para poder unirlas físicamente mediante corredores y puentes, que se apoyan en escaleras y ascensores intencionadamente volcados a los encuentros interiores de las torres. Así, estas últimas se dispondrán ortogonalmente  formando cuatro patios internos.


   De esta forma, cada torre se forma a partir de la agregación en dos dimensiones, una vertical y otra horizontal, de un mismo modelo formal cubico, que se divide en otros dos sub-módulos amontonados. Tras agrupar estos modelos verticalmente, la siguiente estrategia consiste en aplicarles un desfase horizontal de un tercio de modulo gradualmente. Este corrimiento se da e n un sentido hasta la planta octava y en el contrario desde esta planta hasta la última. Con este movimiento se encuentran unos resultados formales en forma de C que fomentan la entrada de aire y luz en los patios interiores,  permiten espacios de encuentro social cubiertos y cierran el edifico a la ciudad. Por último, una retícula plana fundamentada en el tartán, unirá cada torre en dos direcciones planta a planta.


   Una vez desarrollado un sistema de agregación que permitiera alcanzar de una forma experimental los objetivos propuestos, "el taller" empezó a definir en detalle cada una de las dos tipologías de vivienda: simplex y dúplex. Como ya habíamos comentado, las viviendas son la parte variable del edificio, así que, en su diseño se busca una distribución flexible, que pueda soportar las reformas de sus inquilinos. Con estos preceptos, la propuesta de Bofill rompe con todas las ideas de vivienda de su época. Pues plantea una vivienda diáfana formada por un espacio central multifuncional apoyado por una franja fundamental que contiene los servicios y por donde se practica la entrada. Estas viviendas pretenden posibilitar la decisión de sus habitantes de abrirse a la comunidad interna del edifico o encerrarse en la privacidad del hogar, y por tanto deben tener dos fachadas, una abierta a uno de los patios, y otra enfocada a la ciudad.


   Por su parte, la materialización también será partícipe de la ideología general de la obra, de esta forma, aprendiendo de experiencias anteriores, la estructura de formación del edificio no coincidirá con el soporte físico del edificio. Así se evita la dependencia de estos y no se rigidizan los espacios interiores y exteriores. Por otra parte, al igual que planteó Le Corbusier en su Unité d’habitation, la estructura portante del edificio se constituirá por un soporte de hormigón armado en retícula, propio de la arquitectura tradicional; Mientras que las unidades de vivienda se basarán en un modelo prefabricado y fácilmente seriable.

   Con esta estructura, el Walden 7 nace y se llena de vida, y 40 años después, podemos apreciar, que gracias sus generosos pasillos, puentes y pasajes, y gracias a su gran cubierta, se ha conseguido un ambiente de vecindad propio solo del pueblo. Aqui sus miembros  se apoderan del espacio público para vivir en comunidad.

   Mediante todo este proceso, una utopía se convierte en realidad y una arquitectura de investigación, típica del ámbito académico, se convierte en una arquitectura de consumo y no de servicio. Así, la idea proyectual inicial prevalece a los intereses de los grupos de presión que la dominan y para los que trabaja, y por una vez, la comunidad gana a la individualidad.

Wednesday 8 May 2013

Entorno
Influencias
Módulos Formales
Implantación en el entorno

Soleamiento
Planta baja
Viviendas








Saturday 9 March 2013

The Villa Mairea By Alvar Aalto



  
When you have got the bus off, you are nervous, you are looking everywhere, but you only can see forest. Then, you start the march and you can intuit a particular shape behind the mist of wood. It‘s a special moment and you are too excited to understand what you are contemplating. When you want to react, it’s late, you have crossed the hall, and you are inside but you don’t know it until the guide Sais you: you can’t take photos.

The house was bought between 1936 and 1939 in a clearing in the woods of Noormarkku. It was designed by Alvar Aalto for a couple of wealthy friends who managed a wood company.  The clients gave Alvar Aalto total freedom to design their new house, and he and his wife Aino Alto make the villa Mairea up.

The house is shaped by the addition of four volumes: one for the servants and the kitchen, another one for the dining room (some authors relation this room with the core of the house) other for the library, the living space and the winter garden, and finally, the volume which contains the main hall. The bedrooms are upstairs and there is a study above the winter garden. Outside we could find the swimming pool and the sauna connected to the house by a covered terrace.

Certainly, the layout of the villa Mairea is organic, but Alvar Aalto never took any decision deliberately. To find support to the distribution of the volumes and spaces, he resorted to the grid of squares, playing with the halves, thirds and quarters. However, this theory is established by Simon Unwin. In fact, when the reporters ask Alvar Aalto, he said that his module was a millimeter.

Another fact that we could remark of the house attached by the forest is the entrance. It’s for Alvar Aalto, the most important space in the house, as he explains in his writing titled: “from the threshold to the living room”. He explains that the hall has to be the expression of the house, but after all, it must be the connector “in-between” the inside and the outside. The dwelling can’t begin in the hall, because it has to begin in the courtyard.  So, the house and the garden, have to be in a continual relationship. In this house, the halls are caring with these premises out, suddenly we can find an organic porch, a covered terrace or maybe the transition doesn’t exist because the whole house is the transition by itself.

Also, it is true that the rectangular shape of the two storey house is a rough split between inside and outside, but I think that Alvar Aalto used the overlapping shapes of the in and out spaces to melt it with the natural shapes of wood. I’m referring to the swimming pool, the porch of the main entrance, the expansive volume of the study and the changes in the levels of the plot.

But, adaptation not only consist of organic distributions and crazy shapes, in my opinion are the leaves scattered around the courtyard, the clouds reflected on the water of the pool, the mud in the stairs of the winter garden, the moss over the stones in the terrace and even the transparence of the sliding glass wall, the facts that melt the villa Mairea into the forest.

Summing up, we could describe the villa Mairea like a whole of overlapping layers, where the edge between human and nature is blur ,where nature tries to come in the house layer by layer, and where someone could lose the sense of time, and confuse a quarter with one hour of visit, like me.

 Sources:
Twenty buildings every architect should understand. Simon Unwin. Ed: routledge.2010.
Alvar Aalto. Richard Weston. Ed: Phaidon. 2011.
Villa Mairea. Noormarkku. Alvar Aalto- Museo, Jyvaskyla