Related Dualities
Triplex in Boyle Height exploring the relationship between a central plan and a pinned perimeter container.
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Single Triplex
There is a duality to the dwelling typology, it is big and small, simple yet complex, and private and public. The difficult mediation of these oppositions stretch and fold onto one another to form the domestic program. This project distributes consolidated masses into a center-to corner scheme as a way of organizing the triplex. The disjunction between the three units, four corners, and one center produce an estrangement of the formal characteristics that break the symmetry and produce contradiction.
A more violent kind of accommodation occurs within the central core. Vertical elements such as stairway and fireplace as well as solid masses of program like bedroom quarters and public showers are interposed –solid and void- to compromise a volume and challenge the duality of the central core they constitute. In an echo to the problem of solid vs void the core’s spatial behavior vertically shifts between three stages that are determined by its surrounding. At the bottom, the core is the residual –or negative- space dominated by the space around it, which is the programmatic space of two apartments. At the middle (which is above the two units but before extruding from the mass) the core is transitory space of clustered objects and open space; it is both negative and positive space. When the core protrudes from the central mass, it becomes an object that symbolized the volumetric and programmatic conditions of a house’s core; it is positive space.
The architectural distortions of the interior are reflected on the outside. The location, shape and sizes of the carving in the form contradict the overall symmetry of the typological form. The relationship between the core and the mass also reflect the complexity inside by describing either unity or breakage in the connection between core and form. In some instances the mass appears stretched to the exterior as an effect of the core protruding outward, but in other instances the joint dips inward revealing the push of the core from the outside in. This components serve to mediate the relationship between large scale and the small building, it attempts to amplify the tension and complexity of a simple housing project.
The house is set in a flat and open interior site, enclosed only by its adjacency to other houses and trees. Like a pavilion or object, this house relates to the ground only superficially to reiterate the individuality and unification of the form. This abstract composition of the house combines linear, diagonal and curving elements. The rectilinear elements propose a relationship to the dominant orders of space in plan and section through symmetry and precision. The diagonal instances produce directionality in space –such as in the entrance and walls-, and reinforces function on the water-shedding roof. The curves relate to mediation of directionality and space, it functions as the transition from space to wall. The relationship of dualities does not attempt to achieve harmony, rather it intends to exemplify the difficulties of the diversity in the domestic program.