Rooftop, Palazo Albritzzi, Venice – Recline Chair, Gioia Design Intermediate Unit 10 Valentin Bontjes van Beek SYNOPSIS +1 The aim of the unit is to explore a new rooftop typology for London, focusing on London’s residential architecture and the English terrace house, with a particular emphasis of constructing an architectural intervention, both inside and out, at 1:1 scale. The unit will research the notion of the ‘roof extension’ in terms of structure, tectonics, material, form and programme by investigating London’s capacity for vertical expansion, addressing the realities of an ever-expanding urban population and the inherent spatial limits imposed by the existing building stock and English planning laws’ relationship to upward expansion. The elucidation of a contemporary, bespoke, fabricated roof interior, elegantly mounted on top of an existing urban house, that both keeps the weather out and yet projects an innovative architectural sensibility, will be explored in relation to

precedents such as Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Falkestrasse in Vienna, the Beistegui apartment by Le Corbusier and Gaudi’s Casa Mila, along with assorted water towers, telecommunications masts, billboards, anti-aircraft surface-to-air weapon stations and other rooftop additions. The unit trip will visit Pierre Chareau’s Maison de Verre in Paris and selected seminal buildings and the occasional factory in Switzerland. SCHEDULE Term One will be concerned with two things: firstly, the acquisition of representational skills (drawing, modeling, visualising) that will serve both documentary exercises (surveying existing sites and architectures) and the simultaneous ability to develop more conceptual ideas and strategies; secondly, the term will focus on the creation of an access doorway from the second floor of No 12 Morwell Street to the roof of No 10 Morwell Street as well a full design proposal for a new ‘+1’ rooftop extension and its accompanying subsequent planning applications. Term Two will explore alternative sites in the city, and the selection by each individual student of a site to develop a new rooftop design (which will form the basis for TS3), which like Term One will navigate between pragmatic, concrete solutions prompted by very real conditions and constraints and more conceptual, far-reaching and daring scenarios and proposals. Term Three will return to the roof of No 10 Morwell Street and the actual fabrication of a full-scale rooftop extension that both presents one particular design proposal and acts as an envelope and container for others.

Tokyo Fragments, The Yellow Tent on the Roof, Makoto Shiina NOTES FROM A CLIENT Meeting times will be kept to a strict 9.00am – 5.00pm timeframe on Tuesdays and Fridays, with the possibility of very occasional emergency meetings. No specific drawing style or format will be privileged over any other, but during the year the client will expect to see a clarity of thought, enjoyment and expertise of representation in drawings, models and visits that include: - 1:25 set of facade drawings - 1:25 site model - the use of a video camera - the construction of a parapet - first planning application - useful 3D model, animated - second planning application - material samples - good selection of photographs (not too many, but not too little) - the use of a pencil sketch - demolition plan - design competition

- door frame design and construction - roof survey - the design of a doorknob/handle - integration of a recipe - site hunting - seductive text montages - local site visits - moments of being lost - factory visits - other skills including welding, casting, collaging, editing, talking, reading, observing and composing will be highly valued, as well as other more general talents that include eating, drinking, dreaming, smiling, entertaining and keeping form. The client also sees the year as having three distinct design components (which can be distilled down to aspects of scale). The first part will address a real scale construction – the design and fabrication of a 1:1 detail or integral ingredient; the second part will address an individual design proposal, from conceptualisation to contextualisation and represented through appropriate media; and the third part will apply more local ideas developed earlier in the year to the wider scale of the city, and to ideas of habitation and finding solutions for an ever-expanding metropolitan populace and ever-decreasing amount of usable space. In terms of the TS requirements for Third Year students, the first and second parts of this brief will provide an ideal ground for testing and designing a TS3 submission, in terms of materiality, performance and structural invention. The individual projects will be discussed with TS tutors as they emerge within in the unit structure. ASSESSMENT Assessment will be based on the following: • Presentation of a design project through a technically proficient set of

drawings and models at appropriate scales • Evidence of site and formal research, and the ability to identify a

particular design focus • Awareness of the tectonic context of the urban house, evidenced

through design and programme • Understanding of the relationship of a particular historical and cultural

precedent to the design proposal • Integration of appropriate technical, structural and material decisions

within the design development

OUTLINE CONTENT • Primary site research at a London site: exploring physical, structural, social and

historical conditions • Secondary research on the history and theory of roof extension architectures,

their clients and appropriate building technologies • Understanding the use of precedents: Coop Himmelb(l)au’s Falkestrasse, the

Beistegui apartment by Le Corbusier, Gaudi’s Casa Mila • Design proposal and construction sample of a 1:1 architectural detail, material

and tectonic strategies • Design proposal for a ‘+1’ roof extension on an urban scale through drawings

and models • Unit trip to the Maison de Verre in Paris and to Garubünden, Switzerland

Conversation on paper - the intend/content of drawing

VISITS London: White Cube Gallery, Hoxton Square – RMJ Rundel + Associates Rooftop House – The Piper Building, Pierre D’Avoine Architects Frank’s Cafe, Peckham – Practice Architecture Growing House – Roof Garden Apartment, Tonkin Liu Golden Lane Estate – Great Arthur House, Chamberlin, Powell and Bon Paris: Maison de Verre – Pierre Chareau Maison du Peuple – Jeon Prouvé 51 rue Raynouard, - August Perret, Paris XVI Swizterland: Factory visits – Schöb AG Factory visits – Neue Holzbau CH Selected building visits, Graubünden

La Maison de Verre, Dominique Vellay, Thames & Hudson, p.136/7 – sterilizer, in the surgery

Perspecta, Vol. 12 (1969) pp. 114

Perspecta, Vol. 12 (1969) pp. 118