Microverse
family house
project detail
Microverse
("microverse - a microworld, a parallel universe existing between atoms" Marvel.wikia)
The site chosen for the construction of a house has its own qualities, charm and, for investors, personal significance. But in terms of stimuli that can be responded to with architecture, it is empty. Uncovered, open, not anchored to a view, landmark or green space. An empty field, gradually overgrown with the spores of suburban individual construction. It is only full of anticipation of all that can happen here. And we suspect that anything can happen here.
How to define home in such a vulnerable, unpredictable context? How do we create a safe space here?
One possible strategy to anchor ourselves here and armour ourselves against the unpredictable changes of the environment is to enclose ourselves in our own microcosm.
But therein lies a paradox, a contradiction between enclosure and openness. We consider the main advantage of living in a family house to be the possibility of maximum openness, the connection of living with the exterior, the attic, the garden, the terrace, the greenery. With growing your own tomatoes, children and dog running around, muttering around the barbecue during a garden party. With a sense of natural time; dawn, cherry blossom, ripening currants and footprints in the snow to the woodpile for the fireplace. How can you not give up these benefits of living in a family home and still protect your privacy?
We've tested more than ten different ways to relate to the garden while cutting yourself off from the unpredictability of the outside world.
In doing so, we realised how important sunlight is to us, and that one of the fundamental qualities of a plot is its good orientation to the cardinal points. Placing the daily rituals of family life in place, we followed the path of the sun, which gradually began to turn the layout and views on a diagonal, to the curves of a sundial. Parents rise in the morning rays, lunch is eaten in the shadow of the midday sun, children fall asleep with its setting. The traditional typology of the family home broke down into an abstract diagram that gradually began to materialize. The intimate parts of the house and the service facilities were combined and fortified in brick roundhouses facing the outer garden. The rondels are arranged in a loose planetary composition. Space and light flow between them. Across the site, from the exterior across the interior back to the exterior. The largest rondel hovers over the inner garden, accentuating it as the spatial centre of gravity of the house. It's the only one that's spoken. The others are segments suggesting by their incompleteness a flow beyond the defined boundaries. The barbarity of the rondels is accentuated by the rough brick structure in an earthy shade contrasting with the high-tech construction of the glazing of the living pavilion. The interconnectedness of the interior and exterior is reinforced by the uniform wood grain of the living areas. Through optical and psychological tricks, manipulations of scale and work with proportions, the impression of an unexpectedly generous and free space is created. An inner space of which the casual passer-by has no idea.