Inspirations
Light and connection to outdoor Flow pattern
Experimental building Unité d’Habitation by Le Corbusier will also be analyzed to find the relationship between different levels of privacy and exterior-interior connection. After World War II, architects were facing the great dilemma of designing large scale housing project. According to his concept of “vertical garden city”, the Unité d’Habitation was focusing on dense, communal living and proposed a mixed-use building with interior streets, shops, playgrounds, shallow pool and so on. It was, and still is in a way, a radical and challenging idea and he had to work a lot on spatial organization of the apartments as well as the relations between private and public spaces. By analyzing the section of the building (fig 19) we can make a parallel with the earlier defined three scales of Space Metamorphosis: exterior, intermediate and interior. As the building is lifted from the ground by pilotis, it is not interfering with the public space and nature flow. Interior streets, rather than corridors, between apartments and common activities located on the rooftop are illustrating the intermediate layer. The privacy is more restricted, yet the spaces each have a clear function: street, pool, kindergarten. In between these public and common layers, the private units are located. For the building to operate fully, both horizontal and vertical circulation are needed, they allow users to have a continuous yet changing journey. His efficient system of interlocking volumes allowed to fit more units while providing quality living spaces by working with flow patterns and light. The organization principle of the unit has many innovative solutions for the time. For example, narrowing the units and allowing for a double height space, while placing a balcony at each end (fig 18) of the units protected by a brise-soleil, that allowed to have cross ventilation flowing through the narrow bedrooms into the high living room emphasizing an open volume rather than an open plan.[14] Those design solutions brought quality to the living spaces which are appreciated by the building inhabitants. The building’s layout suggests a specific lifestyle which on the one hand can not satisfy every user, but can bring a lot of value for those who shape their life around the building and explore all opportunities it has to give.
INTERMEDIATE
INTERIOR
EXTERIOR Fig 18 (top). Repetitive facade of Unité d’Habitation showing how interlocking volumes are affecting the exterior expression Fig 19 (bottom). Section of the building analyzing the relationship between different privacy levels
[14] Kroll, A. 2010
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