Achieving community through urban connections, circulation, and microcosmic individualism.
“To advance culture, architects must embrace the power of unrealized ideas and nurture wild propositions.” - Jimenez Lai [2 p.12]. The fundamental culture of urban housing has always been confined by its introverted nature. Transgressive architects like Jimenez Lai, Sanaa and Tham, and Videgård have experimented with design strategies to promote individuality in environments that traditionally isolate occupants. Based in Los Angeles, Jimenez Lai’s A House Apart is an unbuilt theory project that focuses its study on implementing the exterior into more aspects of everyday living [1]. Vertical Village II is a neighborhood-like array of houses proposed by Tham and Videgård for a new development in Gothenburg, Sweden [3]. The Moriyama House, built in Tokyo, Japan by Sanaa, is a collection of 10 different buildings that work both together or separately [4]. Their vivid use of interior and exterior spaces, public versus private areas, and corridor relations help redefine urban housing. Within their architectural designs, Jimenez Lai, Sanaa, and Tham, and Videgård transgress community through urban connections, circulation, and microcosmic individualism.
Urban Connection
All three architects envelop their housing into the surrounding urban environment to unify the isolating disparity between the site and the city. Jimenez Lai shifts away from the traditional isolative suburban houses of Los Angeles to create a fragmented housing project that is built to connect the site with its neighborhood. These circulatory paths embed the project into the city by providing views and accessibility to the various parts of the neighborhood. Due to the distinct topography and varied distance between each house and the street, diverse paths connect the city’s corridors (streets) with the house’s corridors (Diagram 1). The larger paths that socially open up to the streets juxtapose with the smaller paths near the introverted parts of the site (Diagram 1). The use of confined and introverted paths near the private areas of the project develops security and privatization within the predominantly extroverted project (Diagram 1). While traditional housing units discourage outdoor living, Lai’s project creates spaces that assimilate residents’ everyday circulation with Los Angeles’s urban environment. Compared to Jimenez Lai’s A House Apart, Tham and Videgård utilize a radial layout for the Vertical Village II houses in order to better define the public and private spaces (Diagram 2). There are more public, socializing areas between the houses as you move towards the outside of the circles. Moving outside the immediate neighborhood of houses, the proximity to the surrounding community is very convenient, with close walking distance to parks and businesses. Inside the community, each house is given a circular yard (Diagram 2). Not only does this influence circulation and promote socializing, but it also contributes heavily to the effort of individuality. Other points of individuality that Tham and Videgård include are the unique color choices on the exterior of the houses and the different orientations of the units (Diagram 2). Sanaa’s insight into the circulation and fluidity a city provides is evident in the layout of the Moriyama House. It freely transforms between residency and urban community, encouraging circulation and interaction with the surrounding environment and people. Sanaa’s desire to stray away from the typical boxed-in feeling of urban housing and create a sense of openness in the dense district demonstrates his understanding that a new approach to living was needed [4]. The edge condition between the site and city is also evident within the project itself (Diagram 3). He pushes the envelope for what a house means and redefines it to correlate with the layout of the city (Diagram 3). By connecting their architectural designs into the surrounding urban environments of Los Angeles, Gothenburg, and Tokyo, all three architects transgress the boundaries between the site and the city in order to fuse the residents with the neighborhood’s culture.
CIRCULATION
Shifting from the traditional use of the corridor, Jimenez Lai, Sanaa, and Tham and Videgård reformulate the relationship between the corridor and the housing site. Jimenez Lai uses the corridor to connect the detached architectural envelopes. In traditional housing, corridors are used to connect interior spaces. However, the fragmentation of the rooms creates a corridor that functions as an exterior space. This exterior corridor aids in creating an ambiguity between the interior and exterior spaces. Throughout the site, Lai uses the corridor as a mechanism to “contract and expand” [1]. Lai didn’t want A House Apart’s boundary to confine and limit the residents (Diagram 4). Instead, he wanted the fluidity of the corridor to not only connect the fragments but also connect the project with the outdoor culture of Los Angeles: outdoor playing, cooking, and casual reading [1]. This dynamic corridor also helps create a blurred and disorganized boundary between the interior and exterior, encouraging the occupants to build their own boundary as they utilize these gaps and spaces for a variety of different uses (Diagram 4). One main reason for the radial layout of Vertical Village II was that Tham and Videgård wanted to stray away from a standard suburb or row housing layout, which is common in Sweden [3]. Since the houses are not on a linear grid, the corridors between them become curved voids, promoting individuality in the public areas (Diagram 5). Instead of navigating through the straight, strict corners of a more typical neighborhood, the movement here flows with a more gentle circulation (Diagram 5). Similar to A House Apart, in the Moriyama House, the disjunctive property of the corridor blurs the line between exterior and interior, encouraging the residents to congregate and socialize. This emphasis on exterior circulation showcases the microcosm of urban movement in the city. He summarizes this well when he says, “Rather than a walled off privacy, I wanted the yard to create a sense of openness” [4]. Because none of the three projects are situated on a typical layout, the corridors and public spaces begin to blur the boundaries between the interior and exterior.
Microcosmic Individualism
Additionally, the three architects address the monotony and dullness of urban housing within their designs to showcase how the individual fits within the urban plurality of the site. The fragmented rooms of A House Apart develop the concept of urbanization within the site by reflecting the city’s complex character. The variety of sizes, forms, heights, roof structures, and orientations of the buildings illuminate individualized caricatures (Diagram 7). Each space has its own character and story, mirroring the idiosyncratic buildings and neighborhoods of the city. The juxtaposition between solid and void massing throughout the site showcases the transition between extroverted social spaces to the more introverted areas of the project (Diagram 7). Jimenez Lai reflects these images of the city onto his project. For example, the social “hearth” of the site functions as the “piazza of the city” due to its open and extroverted nature [4]. Lai creates a community within the site to showcase the individualized relationship between these architectural envelopes. Instead of merely creating a house that only functions as a human habitat, Lai wants to establish spaces that encourage human interaction in order to establish domestic stories within these spaces and corridors [4]. He wants each individualized space to represent different familial relationships and stories [4]. This shifts domestic housing into an apparatus that incorporates the community from inside the project. While the other two housing projects discussed are more focused on being exploded and spread out, each house in Vertical Village II is condensed and constructed upwards so that the neighborhood itself can be spread out. This allows space for each private yard, which is defined by the hedges that give a boundary (Diagram 8). What is showcased very well in the section of the Moriyama house is the sense of individuality within a project focused on community. From the view of the monocular subject, the heights of each respective room add hierarchy to the buildings. The taller rooms provide more secluded and private areas while the smaller rooms indicate accessibility and public space (Diagram 9). The larger windows are also used to further blur the line between city and house as it brings sights of the city directly into the more private spaces of the rooms (Diagram 9) [4]. Each architect uses different strategies to achieve individuality within the sites that focus on the urban aspects of the community.
A House Apart, Vertical Village II, and the Moriyama House redevelop the concept of the urban house through their utilization of urban connections, circulation, and individualism in order to unify the environment with the individual dwelling. Lai, Sanaa, and Tham and Videgård develop ambiguity between the border of the site and the city in order to expand the range of circulation and promote movement and socialization in the public areas. The three housing projects transgress a standard site layout and create corridor conditions between buildings that challenge typical boundaries to generate a more dynamic flow. All three architects also explore how the individual fits within the plurality of an urban site. Overall, these transgressive strategies evolve the traditional house from a standard domestic living to an individualized urban experience.
References
1. Archtalent. (n.d.). A House apart. Archtalent. Retrieved from http://www.archtalent.com/projects/a-house-apart.
2. Lai, Jimenez. (2012). Citizens of No Place: An Architectural Graphic Novel. Princeton Architectural Press.
3. Tham & Videgård. (2018). Vertical Village II. Tham & Videgård. Retrieved from https://www.thamvidegard.se/work/housing/vertical-village-ii/.
4. Yin, Sophia. [Sophia Yin]. (2018, February 11). Moriyama House | Urban Context | Ryue Nishizawa [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NZYVOJoc5U.