Career Discovery: The Stacked House

A week has passed since my last post, and I've developed my idea of a stacked house greatly during that time. I chatted with my instructor, Ben Brady, who, by the way guys, is the coolest instructor in the whole program, and also the smartest. (Check out his blog online to see the kinds of work he is working on: http://benbrady.wordpress.com/) Ben told me that I had made great progress, and my floor plans I had created for the previous Friday had been well worth my time. However, somewhere along the way, I lost my "stacking" concept. Looking at the building from the front, it would appear stepped, like stairs, but from the side, it didn't have a stacked appearance at all. I also lost a lot of the concepts I had stated as my goal in making the house, such as creating light/dark space, public/private space, and interior/exterior space. So I went back to the drawing board and began experimenting with new floor plans. I wanted to simplify my project, rather than complicating it the way I had already begun to do. It was allowed to be simple, as long as it was practical and accomplished my concept statement's goals. So I decided my structure would be 3 identical stacked and sheared volumes, creating above and below space, and balconies.

The floor plans I created were much more practical, allowing for a floor to the vegan, a floor to the butcher, and a floor to be shared. On the shared floor, I tried to create as open a space as possible, by limiting the amount of doors and rooms. I wanted it to be one big space, divided into smaller spaces by walls but allowing an opening in the walls to exist for people to pass through. Below is the floor plan of the first and second floors. The bottom floor was for the butcher (note his meat shop located in an outdoor space), and he second floor is the shared space (note the open-ness by only having 1 door to the restroom). The top floor belonged to the vegan, with another balcony to overlook plants and an open space, still connected to the second floor with a balcony stairwell.

Here are a few ideas of how I imagined the house would look from the outside.

First attempt: There wasn't consistency with the doors on the exterior (one door had a space between it and the window, and the third floor did not). The roof was too thick, and the balconies too high (an average balcony is 3 feet high, mine here were 4... too high!)

Second attempt: I adjusted the consistency issues, but didn't like the color scheme. It was distracting.

Third attempt: This is my final hope for what my building would look like.

Here is a side-view/section of my building. I wanted to show this angle to show that the building is stacked both from left to right, and from front to back. Here you can observe the overhangs and the narrow passages that lead to larger balconies on the left and right side.