Justin FrankCourtyard House

ContentsThe Brief 2Site Analysis 3Concepts 4Precedents 5Initial Ideas 7Idea Development 9Roof 13Materials 14Model Photos 15Drawings 17Perspectives 27

The Brief

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The husband is a mathematician, full time employed, however working from home is an option to him. The wife is a soon-to-be-mum, with a passion for cooking and photography. These charac-teristics may influence the design of the house.

My clients require a three bedroom house. However, due to the current situation, only one is needed, with two being required once the child is born. The third is incase a second child joins the young family.

Because of this, it would be useful to have a third bedroom that can be used as an office for the time until the second child. It would be helpful if this was slightly away from the rest of the house, in a well lit room.

As the mothers hobby of photography is space consuming, it would be useful if a room could be converted into a studio space. As it is only a hobby, the family cannot justify spending the space on a dedicated studio.

Ibstock has asked several architects to design ‘model’ homes usingmasonry construction. They are being built as exhibition houses but will be built to last and become permanent homes for people. usingmasonry construction.

The sites for the houses have been masterplanned to incorporate a shared courtyard. Each pair of houses will share a 6m x 6m court-yard. When the houses are sold the idea is that residents will buy into this idea of ‘shared’ living.

The internal floor area of the house should not exceed 130m2 ow-ing to budgetary constraints.

The schemes are all to be designed to appeal to people who wish to live in a modern house which encapsulates a certain type of 21st Century living.

The house must accommodate at least the following:- A place, or places, to prepare and eat food- A place, or places, to wash and defecate- A place, or places, for all occupants to sleep- Accommodation for a guest couple, ideally with separate washing facilities

The external wall thickness will be 450mm as the sponsors would like to demonstrate that the house of the future will be a heavily insulated building.

The masterplan for the whole ‘exhibition’ site has paired plots around a shared 6m x 6m landscaped space with a tree in it. There are views to the south over a landscaped park, and the paired houses are laid out so that light can enter the plots from the east and west. However, the passage between plots is apublic footpath leading into the park.

Site Analysis

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View to the Country ParkThe view in all other directions is either facing

the neighbouring buildings, or the road.

The sunpath diagram above shows that in summer the buildings site stands in the way of the sun reaching the courtyard during morning hours. The building should be low towards the south in order to let more light in to the courtyard, and the neighbouring building.

Concepts

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Density.

Through reducing the amount of masonry and solid walls towards the courtyard, focus will be drawn towards it, as well as increasing privacy towards the exterior.

Mathematical Derivation.

One of the clients has requested that the design of the house should be derived rationally,, through use of equation or similar..

Privacy vs Openness.

Whilst the clients have stated they want a house with strong connections to the outdoors and neighbours, this must be carefully balanced with the need for privacy when necessary..

Neighbours.

It is critical to my clients that they are good neighbours, meaning that the building should attempt to not infringe on their neighbours sunlight, views or privacy.

Precedents

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Gillespie, Kidd and Coia were well known for constructing many modern masonry churches throughout Scottland. I chose this example due to the innovative and striking roof, and the solid-ity of the masonry, using both materials to their fullest potential.

Building:St Benedict’s ChurchArchitects: Gillespie, Kidd and Coia

Year: 1965/1970

For the 1958 Expo in Brussels, Iannis Xena-kis designed a pavillon in which he composed music, and the building in which it was to be played. The pavilion is a cluster of nine hyper-bolic paraboloid in which music was spatialized by sound projectionists using telephone dials. The straight lines combined to create smooth undulating curves.

Building: Philips PavilionArchitects: Iannis Xenakis, Le Corbusier Office

Year: 1958

Precedents

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Danish Architectural firm BIG have become world renowned for creating beautiful buildings strongly influenced by clear rationale. In this example, the buildings shape was inspired by the fact that as much sunlight as possible was to enter the courtyard, as well as max-imising views for the residents of flats.

Building: 8-HouseArchitects: Bjarke Ingels Group

Year: 2010

Santiago Calatrava is an architect who initially trained as an engineer. His architecture is thus very mathematically inspired. The roof of this museum, many straight louvres open up like wings, creating a beautiful curved shape made from straight lines.

Building: Milwaukee Art MuseumArchitects: Santiago Calatrava

Year: 2001

Initial Ideas

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These initial designs were all created using some kind of formula or similar rationale.

Initially I started with Danish Zoning laws, seeing if going to the limits of this created expressive volumes suitable for construction in masonry.

After this I tried some “formulas” of my own. The for-mulas were all meant to maximise sunlight and/or views for the courtyard, the neighbour and the house.

Block Carved to Maximise the Views of Country Park from Courtyard Level

3m + 80% of the Distance to the Neighbour

Initial Ideas

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45° from Ground Level 45° from 1m above Ground Level

Constant Angle from 12m to Ground Level Around the Perimeter of the SIte

Idea Development

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I decided to take this idea further. The slope of the roof towards the south, as well as in to the courtyard means that maximum sunlight is al-lowed into the courtyard. The high North wall, and relatively high East wall mean that noise and overlooking from the neighbours and road are kept to a minimum.

The internal layout of the buildings of ex-actly one and a half floors, or four and a half squarea, also gives the maximum floor area of 130m2. The other designs also created shapes that were unsuitable as masonry buildings, too large or impractical for floor plans.

This buidling shape however, created very awkward apce towards the south, where the ceiling gets too low to be useful space. By picking up the corner, this space is made use-ful whilst retaining a shape that allows light into the couryard.

Idea Development

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Ground Floor First Floor

The above rendering shows that while the ample glazing on the west side fills the ground floor with light, the first floor is very dark, not re-cieving enough natural light.

Below shows how the glazing facing the courtyard brings the outside in.

Idea Development

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A single large block of 6 x 18m.

The end facing the park gets lowered. This caus-es more sunlight to enter the courtyard, as well as

views being increased for both houses. The end facing the road kept high in order to increase floor

area, as well as reflecting noise from passing traffic, and making the courtyard

a more private place.

By lowering the western side further, more light is allowed to flood the courtyard, whilst

also increasing views of the sky whilst in the courtyard and for the

Due to this having decreased the light entering the top floor, one side

gets lifted, allowing much more views and light from the top floor, whilst not

greatly affecting the courtyard.

The fenestration is aligned in a way that causes “focus” on the shared courtyard.

Views

Idea Development

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The “Void” space in the centre of the building adapts to what is going on inside the building. Above in red, it can become an extension of the children’s bedroom, creating a space where the mother can keep an eye on them from above due to the open nature of the top floor.

Bottom, in green the diagram displays how opening the west side doors can allow the void to become an extension of the courtyard/garden.

The passageway for the family is straight through the house.

The stairs being right next to the entrance man that any visi-tors do not have to go through the “private” parts of the building to reach the “public” part.

Bedroom ideally suited for office space. Lots of sun-light, and far from the center of activity of the house, and sound isolated.

Roof

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Roof Detail1:20

DrainageInsulation

BlockPortland Stone

Precast Concrete

Drawing lines perpendicular to the slope of the roof, it becomes apparent that the more lines are added, the more it becomes like an undulating mesh as opposed to individual beams.

An analysis of the resulting slopes of the individual “beams” shows that water run-off would be as in the above diagram. In the four low-est points of the roof, columns mean that internal gutters can get rid of the rainfall, without ruining the clean aesthetic of the exterior.

Materials

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Roofing

The concrete Roof will be clad in Zinc. Zinc will cause the roof to weather better than the concrete would, as well as creating an aesthetic combination together with the stone. It is also a metal that is malleable enough to take on the shape of the roof.

Stone

The stone I chose to clad my building is a light cream coloured limestone called Portland Stone. This is a stone that has been used in construction for centuries,. The light colour will cause the building to not overpower its surroundings. The very flush joints that are possible between the stones mean that the building will look like it is carved out of one large block.

Glass

The glass that will be used for all the glazing, both external as well as internal, will be smart glass. Also known as switchable glass, it changes light transmission properties depending on the voltage being passed through it. This means that even with large amounts of glass facing the courtyard, the glass can be made translucent iff privacy is required.

Model Photos

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Model Photos

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Sit

e P

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Perspective Section

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No

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Ele

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East E

levation

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Wes

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So

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Elevatio

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Ground Floor Plan

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First Floor Plan

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Lo

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Sh

ort S

ection

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Ext

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al P

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Intern

al Persp

ective28