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12 rooms (Summer Project 2013-14)


What are rooms?
What relation does a room in a city have to the city?

Where do we identify this relation? [façade, window frame, proscenium arch?]
Are there relations or analogies of form and scale?

How do rooms + cities cross with other oppositions:


  • private + public space?
  • inside + outside?
  • small + large?
  • intimate + distant?
  • space + (infra)structure?


    Select a room to study from the list below, and post your choice in the comments field.Post your choice as soon as possible as they will be allocated on a ‘first come first served’ basis and no duplicates are allowed. In each case, you are confronted by a particular relationship(s) of an interior to a city.

    Through scaled plans and sections, 3D projections, perspectives, photomontage:
    Document the room.
    Document the relation of the room to the city.

    You will be looking for:
    • Relations to the city [geometry, materials& details, sequence& thresholds, position, views, ideology]
    • Degrees of intimacy/enclosure
    • Materials, surfaces and boundaries 

    You should use this exercise to:
    Orient your thinking about rooms + cities in a way that has the potential to carry over into your thesis design project;
    Develop the graphic skills for intensely exploring space and spatial relationships in conventional and unconventional architectural media. 

    The rooms have been chosen as they might all be described as places of exchange, and/or places of representation.
    Consider this when making your drawings - exchange of what? Dialogue/ knowledge/ cash/ goods? Exchange for whom? Representation of what? culture/ identity/ history/ the city?Representation to whom?

    In all cases you should consider both the physical and the intellectual/cultural context of your given room. Consider for example other, rooms of similar use, works by the same architect or other ideas/architects who might have influenced the work or who might have been influenced by it.

    1. The Theatre, Sabbioneta, Scamozzi 1590.[i]
    2. Resurrection Chapel, Woodland CemeteryEnskedeSweden SigurdLewerentz, 1925 (note the peep-hole)
    3. Main concert hall in Casa da Musica, Porto OMA, 2010
    4. Market Hall in AarauSwitzerland,  Miller &Maranta, 2002.
    5. Café and cinema foyer, RiffRaff 3&4 Zurich, Marcel Meili and Peter Marcus, 1999 (it’s a community of riffraff)
    6. Olivetti Showroom, Venice, Carlo Scarpa, 1958
    7. Gallery 3/6 (the ‘shopfront’) Nottingham Contemporary Caruso St. John, 2009
    8. The Yellow house, Flims, Valerio Olgiati, 1999
    9. The stair hall, Neues MuseumBerlin, David Chipperfield, 2009
    10. The reception room, Murcia Town Hall, Raphael Moneo, 1999
    11. the monument to the resistance, Cuneo, Aldo Rossi, 1962 (not built, but also refer to ‘monument to sandro pertini’1988)
    12. The breakfast room, Soane Gallery, London. John Soane 1792-1837 (perhaps compare to the first floor drawing room)
    13. The central courtyard, An Gaeláras, Derry, O’Donnell and Tuomey 2009 (check out their own model of the courtyard, presented at the Venice Biennale, 2010)

    Please submit any questions via the comments field. You should bring your initial drawings for discussion in the studio on Friday 13th September.

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