Analysis of and Addition to a Significant Residence
This project involved two parts involving a significant residence: analysis of its architectural relevance through sectional and sequential exploration, and addition to the existing residence with respect to the analysis of the original. I studied Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Three Courtyard Houses (1935).
The Three Courtyard Houses are three separate, distinct residences that have no common spaces. This residence was never built; it instead exists as an experimentation for Mies’s later courtyard house explorations.
In these residences, a combination of solid interior partitions and glass exterior walls create a permeability of indoor and outdoor spaces. The glass walls allow a constant view of the gardens. The roof plane floats effortlessly on a grid of columns
However, the fluidity created through the floating roof plane and permeable glass walls resides within the confines of heavy masonry walls, setting hard, rigid limits to the outdoor spaces. Though residents are constantly pushed outdoors, the garden spaces ultimately represent an artificial representation of these ideals, as they lack the expansiveness of the true outdoors.
Key Geometries
In my analysis, I discovered the importance of two key geometries in the plan spatial organization of Mies’s Three Courtyard Houses: the square and the golden rectangle. The square is used primarily in the definition of indoor and tiled spaces, and the golden rectangle is used to define the gardens.
Columns
Mies achieves floating roof planes through a regular columnar grid. These columns allow the structure of the house to dissipate, placing the focus more on planar fluidity and the permeability of the glass walls which form the primary boundaries between indoor and outdoor spaces.
Interior Partitions
The only solid walls, aside from the heavy masonry exterior walls, are thin interior partitions, which float along an irregular grid independent of the columns. These partitions create compression at the entrances of each residence, then open to a living area at each garden’s threshold.
Mies uses these three spatial organizers to not only allow for permeability between indoor and outdoor spaces, but to actually push residents out towards the gardens.
The use of the golden rectangle indicates the importance, the perfection of the garden spaces.
The regular columnar grid provides subtle structural support allowing the walls to dissolve to glass—forever including the view of the garden in the indoor spaces.
The interior partitions provide a system of compression and release that drive residents to the open living spaces, and ultimately out across the threshold into the gardens.
Over and over, Mies emphasizes the importance of the outdoors.
Through highlighting the leading interior partitions, the fireplaces, and the garden walls, I use this axonometric view of the Three Courtyard Houses, to demonstrate the spatial sequence of these residences.
Each residence, though separate, has a similar sequence of compression and release.
Faced with compression upon entrance, residents are immediately confronted by interior partitions.
After passing through the entrance, residents are allowed horizontal release as the partitions fall away to an open living space with a grand fireplace.
Past the glass walls, one witnesses as the roof plane melts away, providing horizontal and vertical release, the garden enticing residents with its expanse.
My tower addition works with Mies’s utilization of the square and the golden rectangle, regular grid of columns, and irreglar grid of intersecting planes as spatial organizers to transition his ideas of compression and release and spatial overlap from the horizontal to the vertical.
The sequence of my tower adds on to the existing sequence, pushing you out from the main living space to the courtyard in order to access the tower. From there, you experience a series of compressions and releases, both horizontally and vertically, which ultimately culminate in a vast, expansive view of the courtyard and surrounding landscape from the rooftop balcony.
Library Stair Concept Sketch
Studio Concept Sketch
Rooftop Balcony Concept Sketch