2/7/2017 - The First Obstruction: Slim(Fast) House

There's no mystery to it. Through this you will be able to take an existing precedent and run it through a "replace. combine, and sensible design" approach to reach your goal. A personalized system and the 3 keys to the Slim(Fast) plan work hand in hand to achieve ever so slender buildings:

• Replace the traditional notion of the architecture for a thin one: Consider the qualities of the traditional architecture (such as its programmatic requirements, forms, sequence of space/movement, edge/thresholds, structure, wall openings, etc.) and how these should or could work within a thinner form.
• Combine these elements into lean ones: Rethink these elements to deal primarily with the tension between long walls, spaces, sequences, movement, how light enters, etc. and short ones. Rethink the notion of inhabitation so that the body so that the body is encased by these slender forms and traverse these long spaces. Combine these elements within  the logic of the traditional architecture. Consider their organization as one where the linear and slender predominates (ie. enfilade, parallel, sliding, delaminated, etc.)
• Sensibly design so that the existing forms or formal strategies, compositional systems, and general organizational strategies remain but the building is "ever so slender": Compose the structure so that it becomes a slimmer version of the first.

       After receiving this project I started to think about what a "thin" building would look like. If it would look thin on the exterior or if it would feel thin as someone is walking through and experiencing the architecture. And I thought of doing both, so it looks thin and feels thin, which I found out are two separate things, one can look thin but feel spacious inside, or vise versa. For class we had to come up with 3 schemes of how to intemperate how to turn our buildings into thin ones. 

        My first idea is to double the height of the floor to ceiling. To double the height of the columns to draw attention to the height and to make it at tall space and the columns to help give the feel of being "thin".

       My second it to pull apart the rooms, make them longer and connect them with long hallway. By doing so, opening up spaces to have more trees, the tree I feel accentuated the vertical more than the columns do. 

       My last idea was more of a combination of small things, taking the stairs form a double run, into a single run. Taking the fun U-turn form the kitchen to the dinning room and pull it making the hallways longer, Taking the brise-soleil's and adding more vertical elements, so the openings aren't horizontal but vertical and thin. Enclosing the ramps, adding walls on either side up to the ceiling to feel tall the thin as one it traveling through them. Adding twice as many columns to the roof terrace to give the feel of tall and thin. 

       After showing Professor Carranza what we had (we split up into 3 groups and showed him our works) he looked disappointed. He said "GO CRAZY!!" to push things to the limits. How thin can I make this? To push things to the limit then push things some more. So I'm going to take my ideas and pull them as thin as I can then pull some more.