Rooms + Cities

Sixteen Rooms

Sixteen Rooms

University of Dundee, School of Environment

Fifteen Rooms, a study

beyond my reflection

through the skylight

at the partition

ascending the city

the clock, the fireplace, the picture frames

ornament defines the interior

layers of artefacts

urban connecting device

multiple perspectives of a room

a container of memories

information and order

space dissolved by time

layers of enclosure

in the darkness I am projected outwards

home, away from home

Four Comparative Diagrams

Air Rights, a project

object, surface, frame

1

2

6

10

14

18

22

26

30

34

38

42

46

50

54

68

63

73

78

1

Fifteen Rooms:described through text, plans, diagrams and images

32

The small, rectangular, domestic room has one door and one bay window.

There are musical instruments mounted on the walls. The room contains a

sofa, which is pushed hard up against the North wall. The door opens into the

room, the window looks out over the estuary.

Tenement Room

0 1 3m

I

54

76

A room described in a novel. A typical garden shed containing all of the

appliances necessary for everyday life. A single locked door opens into the

room. A skylight provides the only view out. The room is lined with corked

tiles. It is a room constructed in the imaginary.

Fictional Room

0 1 3m

II

98

1110

An almost square room with two shuttered windows that open onto a piazza

to the East. The room is enclosed by white lacquered timber frame and infill

panel walls, linoleum covered floor and plastered cloth ceiling. There are four

doors, three open into the room and one out. The room contains a double

mattress with white sheets, there are two chairs. One chair faces a desk made

from timber sheet and two trestles, the other a small table and frayed oriental

rug. A laptop computer sits on the small table. There is a radiator on the North

wall, the pipes are exposed. A pendant light with a spherical paper and wire

shade hangs to waist height from the ceiling, just off centre.

Apartment Room

0 1 3m

III

1312

1514

A tower, circular in plan, enclosed by thick stone walls punctured with small

windows. The tall and narrow space enclosed within is occupied by a helical

staircase, allowing access to an observatory platform and views over the city.

Water Tower

0 1 3m

IV

1716

1918

The rectangular living room is enclosed by plastered walls and ceiling, the floor

is covered by a fitted carpet. Two windows open to the outside and two internal

doors open into the room. A wood burning stove stands in a fireplace in the

centre of the East wall. The room contains many personal objects and images.

Living Room

0 1 3m

V

2120

2322

A room of ornate cornice and ceiling detail, the plan form of the parlour

consists of a geometric circle placed in addition to a square. Four doors open

into the timber panelled square room, there is a fireplace set at the centre of

the South wall. From the circular addition there is a view to the garden through

seven timber framed windows. Eight supporting columns stand externally to

the bay window.

Parlour

0 1 5m

VI

2524

2726

A room with ambiguous boundaries, formed by a series of layered rectilinear

enclosing walls. A domestic space preserved and curated for public viewing, it

is adorned with the artefacts collected by its former inhabitant.

Museum Room

0 1 5m

VII

2928

3130

A long narrow foot tunnel is enclosed by two white tiled walls, the floor and

ceiling are both cast in concrete. Fourteen fluorescent lamps distributed evenly

along the two walls provide light. A mosaic decorates one of the walls. Puddles

of water have formed on the uneven floor.

Foot Tunnel

0 1 10m

VIII

3332

3534

The room contains a bar and old mismatching furniture arranged in

scattered fashion. Two large windows in the South wall open onto the street,

framing the performances that take place within. People are buying drinks

at the bar, or sitting at the tables talking and drinking. A woman plays the

guitar.

Bar Room

0 1 5m

IX

3736

3938

The attic contains timber trusses framing a triangular space three meters high

at its apex. The enclosing surfaces of the room which are formed by timber

sheets. The room, which is used for storage, contains many personal objects. A

single pendant lights the room and there are no windows, there are no visual

connections to the outside and no natural light enters the space. The sound of

the weather, as it acts upon the timber skin of the room, creates a heightened

awareness of the outside.

Attic

0 1 5m

X

4140

4342

The room is a rotunda form, enclosed by a dome with a central oculus as the

solitary source of natural light. There are eight entrances at regular intervals;

four on the ground and four which open onto a continuous balcony above.

Entablatures and recesses create a series of datum lines. Shelving holding

volumes of public records line the wall.

Archive

0 1 10m

XI

4544

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

PRO

DU

CED

BY

AN

AU

TOD

ESK

ED

UC

ATI

ON

AL

PRO

DU

CT

PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT

PRO

DU

CED

BY A

N A

UTO

DESK

EDU

CA

TION

AL PR

OD

UC

T

Programme

Axonometric of General Register House showing the public programme arranged as a sequence of archive rooms through the centre of the building

4746

An open skeletal concrete frame comprises floor slab, columns and ceiling. The room is created by the two solid surfaces, the clearly defined rectangular platform below and canopy created by the floor above. Although unoccupied and open to the elements, a sense of a room, formerly enclosed, remains.

Common Room

0 1 10m

XII

4948

5150

A raised Glass platform, rectangular in plan. Within a brick clad courtyard, below a glazed ceiling, sits a room within a room.

Egyptian Room

0 1 10m

XIII

5352

5554

The interior of a coastal cave. A single surface of limestone rock forms the walls

and ceiling of the room, sand and water form the floor. The space enclosed is

more than 80 meters in length and 6 meters across at its widest point. Light

enters from the two entrances at either end.

Grand Cave

0 10 50m

XIV

5756

5958

A vast rectangular foyer, defined by the concrete megastructure above, is

transformed into a public room by the act of social gathering on Sundays. The

space is structured by 24 massive columns and two escalators that carry people

up and down from the building above. Glass curtain walls reaching down to a

point four meters above floor level define the boundaries of the space.

Undercroft

0 5 25m

XV

6160

6362

Fifteen Rooms:four comparative diagrams

6564

production of labour

production of knowledge

fig. 1, sizeFifteen rooms set in relation to the average size of a room in a new British home

6766

I

VI

XI

II

VII

XII

III

VIII

XIII

IX

XIV

V

X

XV

IV

fig. 2, contextFifteen rooms (r) set in relation to their containing building (i) and reciprocal public space (x)

i

x

r

6968

fig. 3, formFifteen rooms represented through plan form, section form, and isometric

7170

fig. 4, surfaceFifteen rooms compared according to the porosity of their unfolded interior surfaces

0% 40%

7372

Air Rights:a project

7574

The site for the project, Air Rights, is an

open-to-below space, a 2.5m by 46m atrium,

directly adjacent to our studios, which

overpasses a busy communal thoroughfare

and exhibition hall. This interior is defined

by both tangible and intangible boundaries.

A board marked cast-in-situ concrete

balustrade encloses its horizontal plane, its

upper and lower edges defining the more

ambiguous vertical limits.

We describe this physically unoccupiable

space as the building’s most significant.

Sight, sound and light unify the floors

into one large room, while physical

connections remain divided. The balconies

and balustrades provide both platform and

shelter, allowing one to see and be seen; this

is shared space that mediates between public

and private experiences. This tension of this

duality imposes a constant conflict on its

spatial conditions. Tangibly, we inhabit this

space only from above or below; intangibly,

we travel its surfaces and occupy its whole.

The form of the project has arisen from our

initial analysis of the 15 studies of rooms

as documented in the preceding pages,

implemented in a new context and with a

greater attention to the collective thinking

of the unit. Using these studies, we sought

to reduce each room to a fragment to be

installed within the open-to-below space.

These initial proposals saw the emergence

of three over arching elements which

encompass the nature of rooms: object,

surface and frame; that is to say, what the

room holds, how the room holds us and

where the room holds us in relation to.

By developing a language for the interior, we

have begun to define the essence of a room,

to recognise its limits and its reaches, and

thus the complexity of the spatial conditions

it creates. Its surfaces are our boundaries, we

read them, project ourselves onto them, and

past them through its openings. Through

them we place ourselves not just in an

immediate context, but also into a wider

framework; rooms to rooms, and ultimately

rooms to city.

It is important to understand here that Air

Rights is a real project. It has a real budget

with real investors, real permissions to be

acquired, real time frames, real learning

curves and real set-backs, real back

scratching and real head scratching, real

feuds, real sub-plots and real red-herrings,

real misnomers, nay-sayers and antagonists,

and gladly, at the end, real dei ex machina.

However, this is not the register in which

we can understand the project: it cannot

care how we build it, who we are, or what

trajectories we take, so what can it do?

Air Rights frames a gap, an imperceptible

surface. Simultaneously it incloses an interior

and excloses an exterior. The inside is in the

outside and, likewise, the outside is in the

inside and yet here is a third space which is

neither. Air Rights is not an exhibition, it

is not an installation, a sculpture, or other,

it is not a lesson or a demonstration. We

understand Air Rights as architecture in

that we understand architecture as spatial,

we have created a space. As architecture

we hope that Air Rights will function as a

framework, a site for further discourse. This

remaining, nothing remains to be said.

Rooms + Cities Studio / 14.12.2012

fracture

partition

rotation

locus

“ It s sur faces are our

boundar ies , we read them,

projec t ourselves onto them,

and past them through it s

openings ”

“ the inside i s in the outside

and, l ikewise , the outside i s

in the inside ”

7776

7978

An assembly of six welded flat bar mild steel frames each connected to

4 others at right angles by an equivalent length of mild steel angles to

form a box frame. Each angle is separated from its two attached flat bar

frames by a 3mm gap with the connection made between each adjoining

frame by four bolts. The frame is suspended 2.6 meters above the floor

of a communal atrium between the surfaces of two concrete balustrades,

spanning the open-to-below space. A standard light fitting hangs by its

electrical cable, off centre, into the interior described by the frame.

Room XVI

0 1 10m

Rooms + Cities

8180

Dr. Lorens Holm

Helen O’Connor

Cameron McEwan

Charles Rattray

Neil Verow

Fraser Davie

Michael Grieve

Lorna Hughes

Qutham Jamjoom

Laura Keane

Alasdair McAlpine

Jennifer Moffatt

Jill Morton

Tom Piggott

Orlaith Phelan

Magnus Popplewell

Tom Rainey

Euan Russell

Charlotte Stewart

Fifian Yip

R. Y. Thompson & Sons, Dundee

G.T. Diamond Drilling Services

Gratefully, Greig Mackintosh and G.T. Diamond Drilling

Services; Brian Adams, Dr. Neil Burford and Lyle McCance at

University of Dundee School of Architecture; Alister Cuthill

at University of Dundee Estates & Buildings; Laura Simpson

at Duncan of Jordanstone Exhibitions; Ruaridh Macdonald,

James Scott, Claire Summers and Cecilie Waersted at

University of Dundee Division of Civil Engineering

Supervisors:

Assistant:

Critique:

Rooms + Cities Studio:

Fabricator:

Installation:

Thanks: