milestones in the pursuit of better performing buildings
In Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Housing Development Authority continued to develop and deliver new housing for the population. Most recognizable of the various types is the tower block with a cruciform typical floor. I’ve been mentioning this since at least 2017 as an example of a stable typology that is difficult to improve on. […]
This post applies the lessons of the previous post to construct the proposal of the post two before, and with minimal customizations and operations. Apartment parts (makes two apartments) 6 x 20 ft (6 m) shipping containers 2 containers for living/dining/kitchen 2 containers for two bedrooms 1 container (half-shared with another apartment) for bathroom 1 […]
This building has a single flight staircase that passes by two entrance doors and two kitchen windows, one of slightly reduced height. It’s deck access because the stairwell and access balcony is open and can therefore ventilate and illuminate the inner rooms. This is important. People are trying to use a single configuration to solve […]
Looking around, I see most high-rise residential buildings are slabs with multiple cores having either one or two double-sided sided apartments per side. In this first image, the end wall windows of the new build in the distance are most likely bathroom and kitchen windows. This means that in order to illuminate and ventilate them, […]
An automobile appeared in this blog only a few weeks ago when I used this image to suggest a nascent postmodernism was, in 1960, already guiding product design in the direction where what a thing meant or represented was more important than what it was or did. Since that post I’ve become more aware of […]
Occasionally, buildings use only walls to enclose and define a space and have no need for a roof. Prayer Room at the Tehran Carpet Museum, Kamran Diba, 1978 But, if one sees the provision of shelter as the defining or at least the dominant characteristic of a building then it’s reasonable to expect a roof […]
For me, this linking of Brutalism with the Solomon R. Guggenheim is the last straw. There’s little point recalling Brutalism’s former role of applying economies of materials and the rationalities of construction to fill a social need. That all belonged to a time three quarters of a century ago when national governments were still concerned […]
I can’t look at exuberant structure without thinking of the amount of steel that went into its various contortions so I’m not unaware of embodied carbon. I learned from Log magazine’s issue #47: Overcoming Carbon Form how there’s much more to it than that. Carbon form includes roads and all buildings such as shopping malls […]
The core is a relatively recent invention. Burnham & Root’s 1891 sixteen-storey Monadnock Building in Chicago never had one. What building services there were, were all in the middle of the building but hadn’t yet coalesced into a core. Structural rigidity was afforded by the load-bearing masonry construction. Steel frame construction and the invention of […]
This post began by revisiting some of my favourite windows but morphed into something else, bringing together some past themes as well as some more recent ones. Rear garden window at Villa Beer, by Josef Frank, 1929 This window is all about enjoying a boundary rather than blurring one. This is a very Edwardian notion […]
Walls and furniture fall naturally into orthogonal arrangements when space is in short supply and this is perhaps why curvilinearity is consistently regarded as a sign of affluence, and then mistaken for beauty. This post is a reminder that breaking an orthogonal geometry every now and then is a good thing if all it takes […]
Most one-bedroom apartments have their entrance between the kitchen and the bathroom. The kitchen can be closed, semi-closed/open or closed but there’s less distinction between the hallway and the kitchen when the apartment is small. The kitchen and entrance hallway occupy the same space. Typically, there’s a closest and bathroom entrance the other side of […]
Is it possible for an architecture to be popular and affordable? Is it even possible anymore to conceive of an architecture that exists outside the perceived status- and value-adding mechanisms of art? MUJI are giving it their best shot. For a start, their houses are not unique in the way that superior art and architecture […]
When the market for architect-designed private houses finally dries up it will be said in today’s world the private house is passée and anachronistic and no longer capable of conveying architectural meaning of any relevance. We’re practically there now and architects have no option but to cast their nets wider and embrace the mass-produced home as […]
