bordeaux HOUSE& machine architecture

Architectural Communications 2BDES2021

Dion Sebastian Isan Tan Moult311028837

Rem KoolhaasBordeaux House, Bordeaux, France

Tutored by Lucian and Hugo

A house is a machine for living.

1 RESEARCH Situated in Bordeaux, France, the Mai-son a Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas fol-lows the story of a crippled man:

A near-death car accident left a man with a wheelchair - his old house now a prison.

Contrary to what you might expect, I do not want a simple house. I want a complicated house because it will deter-mine my world.

Koolhaas solution featured three floors, each unique in characteristic, with his own workspace able to move between them - determining his world, and offer-ing him liberation.

2 PRIVACY Designed to be left alone, the Bordeaux house features physical isolation, calcu-lated apertures within the facade, and an underground cavern.

3 PROPORTION Every dimension, furniture, ornament, and object tailored towards a crippled man.

4 DETAIL A stunning technological feat that just clicks - openings that slide away, sur-faces that adjust height, and carefully considered spaces that dont repeat any-where throughout the house.

I want a complicated house because it will determine my world

5 DEPENDENCY The house shares the instability of my own body. What happens when the cord is cut? A constant reminder to my own livelihood.

The husband passed away in early 2001. The house is currently uninhabited.

6 PROSTHETIC Each primary structure is an indispen-sable part of the handicapped client, opening up new possibilities of move-ment and private areas not shared by other family members.

7 FREEDOM ... [the house] will determine my world. Whereas my old house became a prison, this house will give me freedom.

8 RENDER Daytime overview of the entire site and its immediate context.

9 RENDERCONT.

Nighttime eye-level perspective of north-west facade.

10 RENDERCONT.

Interior perspective from 3mx3.5m el-evator platform on ground floor facing spiral staircase tube.

11 RENDERCONT.

A precursor to freedom - the house that defines his world and frees himself.

12 CONCEPT A house is a machine for living.- Rem Koolhaas

A machine is tailored for its purpose. In the world of machine architecture, the best architecture aims to perfectly model real life. If a machine sees the world the same way we do, it works well - Bor-deaux house saw the world through the eyes of a cripple.

To translate real life into a machine, the first step is to create an abstracted model of the domain - in this case, we choose to deal with the human hand.

13 CONCEPTcont.

Domain | noun /dmn/A specified sphere of activity/knowledge.

To construct tailored architecture - the abstracted model is used to pick out ma-jor features of the domain. This maxim-ises the effectiveness of the architecture by filtering key issues and improves un-derstanding of the problem.

14 CONCEPTCONT.

Model | noun /mdl/A simplified description, of a system or process, to assist.

What does a hand do? It has a natural form, it allows specific movements, and can sense pressure. This forms the com-plete abstract model of the domain.

Context | noun /kntekst/The circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed.

With the model in place, an ideal con-text can be designed to accomodate the natural state of the domain - a context that sees the world through a hand.

15 CONCEPTCONT.

I place my hand into the context - and I dont need to think. The mould respects my hands relaxed shape, supports me where I need it, and allows my fingers to move in their natural orientation.

This is a machine for living.

Note: model is designed to my hand specifications and may not be comfort-able for others.

16 CONCEPTCONT.

17 PLANS, SECTIONS, ELEVATIONS

Rem Koolhaas has broken away from the conventions and vernacular of Bor-deaux, and turned a standard project into something quite spectacular.

Not to scale, see A3 for full version.

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