Part B

Circulation

·      The circulation of the house has a certain plot where the public areas are placed on the lowest part of the datum and lead upward to the more private areas of the building.

·      As it starts at the low entry plan where you are place in a small corridor that leads to another small waiting room, you are then lead through a dark staircase that opens up into a large Main Hall room.

·      You then lead upward to the Dining, Kitchen, library and meeting spaces.

·      These rooms are all connected slightly visually as a result of the raumplan but also by a stair case.

·      The private rooms including the bedrooms and childrens room are placed another level above.

·      I have created a 1:100 model which shows the primary staircase, the secondary staircase, and also the raumplan influenced walkways.

Raumplan

·      The raumplan involves using different ceiling heights according to the function of the room. 

·      I found that as the room becomes more public, the ceiling height raises.

·      One of Loos’ quotes were "My architecture is not conceived in plans, but in spaces (cubes).

·       I tried to demonstrate this in my model. The black represents service space, and the white,  served space.

·      I found that the entrance level and elevated ground floor was the most interesting in relation to the raumplan, as the second level mainly involved private spaces such as the bedrooms and playroom- rooms with mainly the same function, so ceiling heights remained the same.

·      Loos intended to create unnoticeable and natural transitions between each room although they had variations in heights.

·      As a result of this, inhabitants are able to view multiple spaces from wherever they rest (point to poster) e.g. dining into living

·      From examining the elevations, one can say that the window size directly correlates with the importance of the room and its function, and whether it is public or private.

·      Most of the service spaces have very small windows, and the living room has the biggest windows, this being the post public area in the house, and the bedrooms have the medium sized windows, as they are private areas.

Materiality

• what I really liked about villa muller was the stark contrast  between the white paint finish on the exterior and the rich materials used on the interior.
• This reflects loos’ quote that a building should be “dumb on the exterior only and reveal wealth on the inside”

·      Each room is sheathed in a unique fashion: the cipolin green marble hall, the mehagony dining room, yellow and blue playroom, the wallpapered bedroom, the maple wardrobe for the woman and the oak wardrobe for the man.

·      He believed that materials of a room should match its use and mood.

·      With extravagant materials such as marble in more public places and wood in more intimate rooms.

·      The yellow and blue paint used in the childrens playroom is another example of materials used according to function, the colours of yellow and blue are also known to have a ‘calming’ effect, appropriate for a playroom.

Chessboard + Raumplan

·      The surface of a chessboard is subdivided into a number of squares, and the significance of each square is determined by the piece, queen or pawn or king, that occupies it.

·      As the pieces move the significance of each square changes and the hierarchical patterns and power relations found on the chessboard have some correlation with the interactions found in the home of a nuclear family.

·      Each member has a space which they are associated with- significance of room is dependant on occupants

·      E.g. a kid who just had a fight with his dad would most likely avoid him, in order to do this the child avoids the spaces the dad has been with. So he may find a safe haven in the kitchen, but the room will have a hostile territory if his dad decides to visit.

·      Even though other houses may  have this spatial interaction, the ramplan provides a more complex stage for which these dynamics can play out. 

Site analysis

·      Villa muller is situated in a western district of Prague, in the Czech republic.

·      The suburb includes mainly free standing residential houses.

·      its located on the northern slope of a hill with a view to the castle of Prague.

·      Only the east and southern eastern sides are facing houses, the rest are facing public space.

·      The building is more extroverted to the North and more introverted to the South because of its exposure on the north facing slope.

·      One can enter from the south as well as from the north, however the main entrance with the access the garage is located on the south because of better accessibility – street has less traffic as opposed to main road with heavy traffic

·      The building is extruded as far as possible to the western end of the site to create a small, more private area in the garden in the east.