Project 2: Final presentation and thought through design progress

Project 2: Double house

Site: Victoria St. 123

When I first looked at the site, the key challenge came to my mind was "how do I arrange the space?" The site is 10 x 30m which means it is quite long and narrow. Plus you can only get sunlight and air flow from two side of the building (east and west). The design requires us to fit two dewelling and a gallery into this narrow space, so the arrangement of space is what I focused on in the early stage of my design.

My site plan and street front elevation.Site is long and narrow.

From my previous research of Adolf loos' villa muller, his idea of "designing space instead of floors" really insterests me. So I thought, what is the most important space in this project? My answer is - the gallery space. Hence, my primary objective of this design is building a large, bright, high gallery in the centre and putting other spaces to serve this space. Let the visitors view it from variety of angles.

Plans and section. Gallery space in the centre and other space around it.

One advantage of this particular site is the view of city. Hence I opened up the entire west facade as glazing curtain wall to embrace that city view and sunlight. I also have varieties of meeting space, office and bedroom space on west side to maximum the value of the view.

I have the art collector's dewelling on the top floor with a private stair hall. It has both city view at the back and street view, also with the opening on the floor (right on top of the gallery space so the art collector can view that space from where he live) and skylight on top of that opening to create a pillar of light lead right into the gallery space.

For the other client, he is a young photographer.I decide to make his journey across the house more dramatic with different light experience. His dewelling is below the street level. He will go downward a long stair in order to get to his studio and furthermore his living area. To make his trip more dramatic, I put the skylight on top of the stair hall to create a interesting shadow effect. Then he went into a dark studio, after that is a bright studio. His living area is 1.5m below with the view of city and good solar access. The roof of his living area is a roof garden that he can access from his studio.

Space for art collector, photographer and public.