When I started to choose my site location and context for my cabin design, I first wanted to understand Alvaro Siza's context choice for Casa Tolo. 
He directed Casa Tolo's rear facade to face the south, this way he positioned the building to recieve the maximum efficiency of natural sunlight and ventilation though the five major floors.
Alvaro uses the five major floors to interlink the entire building so that there are different uses usually on alternating floors. This creates a number of different containers of activities for the household. However, my cabin design is restricted to 75 squared metres.
When I started thinking of designing my Cabin i wanted these features to be evident. Somehow i wanted to create an interlinking cabin space with a vast use of natural lighting to activate the main areas of the building. I also wanted to feature the use of interlinking staircases and build the object into the ground, so that it is unified with the terrain to make it work well with the environment.
Knowing all these features and restrictions, i created a number of diagrams to help with this problem. My final diagram is shown below.
I worked out that because my cabin has a very constricted space compared to Casa Tolo, I was to interlink the main used room in the center of the building and have all the other rooms branching off from it. I used the living room as this main interlinking space, with the kitchen, entrance, study and varandah all connected with it.
I was also able to create the use of an interlinking staircase by using one to access the varandah from the rooftop and the staircase below to join the study with the master bedroom. This was able to be done because of recessing the second story into the ground below the first story. By doing this i unify the building with the terrain and also allow the rear facade to recieve natural sunlight by facing the north-east.
Using the weather aspect I was able to create, (picture above) I was able to start positioning my rooms into places they were most suitable. I chose to position the study to face the north so that it collects good light and hardly any glare. It is warm generally all year and only moderate heat.
The bedrooms are positioned so that they are cool in spring and cold and hot in summer and winter. The garages and bathrooms face the west because it is the worst side to face due to the dusty weather, glares and bad temperatures. It is due to these rooms being hardly used. All the other rooms i fit in to match a correct temperature and light quantity.
Once I worked out the direction and position where I wanted to place my cabin design, i started focussing my attention on working out the contours and environment that surround it. I decided to place it on the north side of Mount Methology, with the rear facade facing the north-east on a sloping hill construct. This way it was able to imitate some of the qualities featured in Casa Tolo's design, (eg- binded with the hill side, rear facade facing the direction of most natural sunlight).
I used the contours of the land to make my cabin design on a hill construct. This way it creates an open design with a delightful experience. The delightful experience would be because of the organic interlinking mixture of the terrain and the materials of the design, the view out towards the north-east and the circulation and spatial arrangement around the living room.
0 comments:
Post a Comment