Analysing Part Two

A House is a Container of Human Activities

1)Patterns of Use

We have already discussed that the Isaacson Davis House was designed with patterns of use in mind (Carter 2008: 62), so here is a diagram showing how...

In wanting to do something similar, I cam up with this:

Its probably a little hard to tell without seeing the whole floor plan, but the pink at the left shows the studio, the purple in the middle represents living areas, and the blue is areas for sleep and for bathing.

2) An Open and Adaptive Floor Plan

John Wardle asserts that the floor plan of the Beach House is "open and adaptive", and I tend to agree. The following diagram shows only the permanent walls and fixtures of the house, and the opportunity to change the usage of the spaces clearly exists.

And here is my plan, which shows I have tried to follow the same line of thinking:

3) Public Vs Private Areas

One of the things that first drew me to this house was the binuclear plan, with living on one side and sleeping on the other, clearly defined into public and private space.

When looking at the design of my cabin, I wanted to keep in this line of thinking, and designed the living as public areas, the studio as semi-public and the bedroom/bathroom as private areas. And then came the brainwave which changed my design completely- an architect has *clients* at their studio. This made me think that perhaps the studio is the most public of all spaces, with the living being semi public, and the sleeping still being private. My plan evolved to having three distinct areas with differing levels of separation.

To get from the public (pink) to the semi-private, you have to leave the actual house, while to get from there to the private, you need to leave the room and walk across the deck, indicating the crossing of thresholds.