Esquisse 1

Left: Interior of New Museum, starkly white, heavily contemporary. Flexible but static. Right: 798 factory, designed by German engineers in 1950's. Specific but responsive, heavy but adaptable - much more potent.

This discussion became the premise for my first esquisse.

An archetype: concept diagram

The task was a sketch design of a building that is conceived and built with the intention for adaptive re-use: specifically to be converted into three different programs over time.

The design was developed around an archetype, the simple image of the kind of house elevation that we all have in mind - a pentagon formed out horizontal base, two vertical walls and the two sloping pitches of the roof.This form was then stretched out and elongated along the roof slope section and then repeated three times in different sizes. This approach tests the robustness of an archetype rather than a specific building type - It questions whether there are specific shapes that are both enduring and accommodating to spatial functions. 

Site Plan

Stage 1: Residential. The building begins as three separate dwellings of varying heights. The dwellers can find their own homely environment inside each little individual 'house' scaled to their size and connected to their roots.

Stage 2: Kindergarten. The second phase sees the building transformed into a kindergarten. The entry is situated between two houses, and the three units are linked to each other by means of glazed connectors that ensure daylight. While the overall roof line references the archetype, the 'houses' are still distinctively individual, they help children get their bearings and understand the spatial and social organization of the school.

Stage 3: Gallery/Cafe. Thirdly, we see the building evolve into a gallery. Internal partitions are removed, and additional bridges are added.

I think the transformation of this archetype give endless possibilities. It is essentially a protective shell that holds spaces and functions, but at the same time, it is highly figurative, so it defines the overall images of the individual structures. The possibilities for adaptive design are inherent in the archetype.