Psychological

Circulation in the Villa Bordeaux

Designing a house with one floor would have been a natural architectural response to the client’s disability. It would have created more ease for the wheelchair and unified the circulation of those on foot and on wheels.

Rather, Koolhaas devised a house - or three houses -  connected by three different vertical circulations. These circulations are also distinct to the users and their difference is accentuated by their position and structural relationship to the house.

The disabled clients moves through the three levels of the house via a large, open platform. The platform rises and falls to provide the client with access to each level of the house. The platform merges to the floor at each level of the house and allows the house, essentially, to come to the client. An almost continuous set of bookshelves, also rise through the three levels and form a wall along the platform's vertical path, thus responding to the moment of the platform. 

Reaching each floor, the platform completes the floor and becomes integrated into the wheelchair's horizontal circulation of the floor. The platform becomes part of the kitchen on the ground floor, links to the aluminum floor on the middle level, and forms a working space on the top floor. With the integration of the vertical and horizontal circulation, the mobility of the disabled client within the house is actually freer than that of the pedestrian members of the family.

The path of the platform through the three levels of the house creates a vertical, rectangular void at one end of the building. At the other end of the house, the three levels are pierced by a large, seemingly solid metal column. The  column conceals a spiral staircase, which extends from the ground floor to the bedroom level, with pedestrian access on each floor. In contrast to the platform, the spiral staircase provides a restricted, covert pathway to each level. 

The contrast between these major vertical paths (the platform and the spiral staircase) both in structure and spatial configuration, provide an accentuation of the different modes of transport their support, and reverse the traditional mobility experience of the users.

Pedestrians have a second vertical circulation path, via a suspended staircase found behind the platform's bookshelf. This staircase

ARCH 1201 - Project 2 Week 1

Selected house: Villa Bordeaux

Selected analytical:

• A spatial and dimensional study of the house's circulation, implying a narrative or plot connecting a series of uses
• An examination of the psychological relationship between the different zones of use in the house and analysis of the ways these are articulated and developed via architecture.
• A close look at the architectural relationship between the detail and the whole of the house, and garden and map, in terms of the building's use.

Early analysis: images

Circulation

“C’est une maison pour un invalide… La question n’était pas de savoir comment nous allions faire au mieux pour un invalide. Le point de départ est plutôt un déni (a denial) d’invalidité.” - Koolhaas

Translation “This is a house for an invalid…. The question was not to know how we would do our best for an invalid. The starting point was rather a denial of invalidity.” - Koolhaas

Psychological relationship
A complex universe.  A complete universe.

Details vs. the Whole
Moderated experiences, transitional forms

Villa Bordeaux - Drawings and Model Photos

Stairs. An early version...

Because we had an interruption.

Working on the garden

The completed garden, guesthouse and driveway

In progress...

Close-up of the rear of main house.

Wall of upper floor with detail.

Upper floor with section cut.

View of completed first floor.

Working on second floor interior.

Working on second floor interior.

Exterior view of completed main house.

Completed model with section cut exposed.

Completed model with section cut exposed.