The big e z Andrew King
T he initial proposition was that the house is a magnifier for a partying and entertaining kind of life. We brought to the project an intention about the city and about densification, creating a house by defining a series of lines that move almost infinitely through the city.These lines become the tectonic elements of the house, the first being the property line, the second the curtain wall which defined the garden between the property line and the house, and then the lines get denser as you move through the house with the programmatic elements imposing themselves at certain places. We are creating an idea about how to densify the city, how to create an urban condition in what is right now a suburban condition. As you walk along beside it, its no longer a house, you’re walking along beside a two story curtain wall building. I mean, its not like you’re walking next to your grandmother’s house. There’s an intention there about the way in which we perceive and see buildings in the urban context. Tom:This is cultural criticism.
Andrew: It’s certainly a cultural criticism of the way in which we are dealing with our established communities. We’ve got a cantilever hanging out in front of the house where you’d never see a cantilever. It says, ‘this is the living box that hangs off the ground’. As part of the formal strategy, it talks about the house moving beyond its ground plane. It’s a box that could conceivably be projected all the way down the street, all the way along that north/south axis. It also talks about pushing the envelope of the bylaw boundaries. The house’s footprint is based on the foundation and the guidelines read that the foundation is where your setbacks are taken from. so essentially we’ve picked up five feet along the front of the house by cantilevering out past that. There’s a conceptual design issue, there’s some pragmatic issues, and there’s also a kind of practical issue in trying to give the client more space. The cantilever wouldn’t work at all if you didn’t perceive yourself being cantilevered.When you are standing in that zone hanging out above
e z
Cette maison vient amplifier le style de vie de fête et de diver- tissement. On y trouve une cer- taine intention au sujet de la ville et de la densification. On crée une maison en définissant une série de lignes qui se déplacent de façon quasi-indé- finie à travers la ville. Ces lignes deviennent des éléments
tectoniques de la maison, la première étant la limite de la propriété et de la maison, puis les lignes deviennent plus denses au fur et à mesure que vous vous déplacez dans la maison, avec des éléments pro- grammatiques qui s’imposent à certains endroits. Nous créons une idée sur la façon de den-
sifier la ville, sur la façon de créer une condition urbaine qui se trouve présentement en ce que nous appelons une condi- tion banlieusarde. Nous avons une poutre en porte-à-faux qui pend devant la maison, à un endroit où nous n’en verrions normalement pas.
Celle-ci transmet le message suivant : « voici la boîte vivante qui est suspendue au terrain ». Dans le cadre de la stratégie formelle, elle parle de la maison qui va au-delà du sol. Il s’agit d’une boîte qui pourrait facile- ment être projetée jusqu’au bas de la rue, tout le long de cet axe nord-sud. Elle parle aussi de
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O n S ite review
T ransformations
I ssue 7 2002
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