Sketching

My little refuge is turning out very exiting and much better than the first one. It is in Old Kent Road south east London. The area is not the best family place on earth but I started to like it. My first site was on top of another building on Trafalgar avenue. It was a light dismountable structure. Now, it is on the ground between all the surround buildings on the corner. I have to demolish a little extension which is more like a shed and replace it with my little house. The nice thing is that now it face the park beside it . The east side is the only part that can have windows. Because it is a dark site I am trying to design a light well or doing the whole ceiling taller to have more light Inside for longer periods. The main bad thing about the brief is the size of it. I am not thinking as a young single university student. I am thinking how can I make my children fit happily there, we are a family of four now. My solution is to have all the furniture collapsing or folding at the wall like the bed ( that we all share) and table. Walls are made of curtains and Storage for toys can be under the floor for easy access. it also is going to have a beautiful terrace between the park and the house. I really think that I should indulge myself with another room and extra space just because I have a family but I will stick to the 25sqm just to see what can be done.

If it gets too impossible I will include some kind of attic with the light well to fit few more beds there. 

I dont believe in art

Today I went to see the exhibition The Bride and the Bachelors: Duchamp with Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg and Johns at the Barbican Centre. www.barbican.org.uk/duchamp ( for a good description and video) It is honestly fascinating and beyond my description of it. In 2008 I went to see the Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia exhibition at the Tate Modern. It really made a difference in me because I stayed there until everybody left. I loved it, I could not have enough of it.  

This exhibition is different; and even more engaging, the exhibition touches all your senses. It shows how Duchamp and his successors contribution was crucial to what art, music theatre and I can say Architecture is today. There are music, dancers, a ghost piano, a ghost dancer; some of the most important Pieces of Duchamp, some manuscript, chess, and all of it involves you deeply. The highlight of the exhibition for me was the music. The music heard and the music written. It seemed as if you were wandering around their studios. And see the process of creation and composition. The exhibition was very sensitive and takes you on to another level of thought.  Where life and art takes the same route.

Le Petit Cabanon

‘Every house should be a repository of sunlight’.

The next study is ‘Le Cabanon’ de Roquebrune 1952 by Charles Edouard Jeanneret, Le Corbusier. This is an amazing and unexpected project and again despite being very personal it is so inspiring, 14sqm the minimum modernists required for a social housing, yet huge in concept. I will simply share Stephen Bayley’s words.

“So far from being a sinister and soul-less machine à habiter, Le Corbusier's cabanon is satisfying, subtle and perfect proof of the architect's essential belief that good proportions and ample light are the constituents of excellence in building. The cabanon inspires contemplation; it is not surprising that the young Le Corbusier studied Cistercian cells. With exiguous resources and minimal cost, the cabanon shows how richly rewarding simplicity can be.”

The Solar Pavilion

'Things need to be ordinary and heroic at the same time,'
Alison Smithson 

The side of the house where the inside of the old cottage was left outside as a living area 
photograph by Georg Aerni



One of the Precedent works for my little retreat is the Solar Pavilion Upper Lawn of 1956 in Wiltshire by Peter and Alison Smithson I did my dissertation about their Economist Building of 1964 and fall in love for their work. This was their own holiday home for 20 years. This little building describes their deep ideas of Brutalism despite this being very delicate. They applied the ideas for reusing and reinventing the existing, as described in their theory of “as found as” that basic needs of a house are a patio and a pavilion. That it only needs a ground, a view some privacy and nature to completes our physical and spiritual needs.

The wooden frame, cladding and glassing are very simple but it was very advanced for the time. What interests me more about this house is the way it responds to its site and to the people living there. For example the building never had heating so they could experiment the weather as it was. The stair to the upper floor is like climbing in a tree house. It was supposed to be like ‘camping in the landscape’ as they described it. The most fascinating space to me is the little terrace outside where a window of the ancient cottage was left in place like an outside living area. It is the most symbolic connection of the inside with the outside.  

On the street side the Pavilion is all closed to follow the ancient cottage wall, it reassembles a bird hide. On the other side it is opened and invites the garden into the inside. Even the upper floor reflects that because of the extensive use of glass. Inside, the house was very modern and even minimalist because there they kept furniture to a minimal just a table and shelves, there has never been even beds and they cooked on a stove outside. The connection of the frame on the stone wall and the rooms to the landscape and garden achieved something that is inspiring and transcendental turning it more than a architectural piece but also a spiritual place.

Refuge

 Edgar Degas                                                                   
 Woman at a Window 1871–2         
 Photo © The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London

During my second year of university I gave birth to my first child. During this time of recovery I had to design a 25-sqm place for myself. I eventually failed that. Now this project hunts me. I decided to revisit it again now. I am taking a year out to stay with the children, so my house is not a place to just sleep anymore. It is the children’s world.

This Degas’ painting tells me a lot about a home, more by the way he painted it, than the composition of it. He used the essence of colour to give the light to the space. He thinned the paint until he got its last shade of colour. The essence you can only find on the last layer rubbed off of the canvas and that is what makes the painting so powerful. To design such a personal space, the essence needs to be composition.