"A
house is a machine for living in" said le corbusier.
Most obviously he meant that it is for a group of people, called ‘family’, to
live in a building with privacy. But modern day architects seem to defy this
basic principle of 'privacy'
With technology moving forward so
fast from building walls made of paper to converting rooms to shipping
containers, these days it appears pretty difficult to get a normal house to live.
To start with, Farnsworth House by Contemporary starchitect, Ludwig Mies Van
Der Rohe set off with a kick.
Farnsworth house is a transparent house in a
verdant landscape expressed in glass and steel. No doubt, it is an architecture
marvel, but is just covering the bathroom with solid wall enough privacy
required for a home?
And before I could really get over
this new style of architecture that Mies had started, a play with glass and
steel, a doubt on privacy, when even Farnsworth wasn’t sufficient; there came
to my notice the Glass house by Philip Johnson. It purely comprised of large
glass walls running throughout the perimeter. The little bit of privacy left
and expected was met by creating a brick cylinder structure which housed the
bathroom and fireplace. But rest of the spaces are open to nature, in fact,
everyone.
I was awe-struck when there came to
my knowledge the works of Shigeru Ban, the 21st century architect who loves
experimenting and plays with different materials that can be used to build
houses. He started off such series of houses with Curtain Wall House first in
line. When I first read the title as curtain wall house in one of a lecture
series of "Places To Live",
I never thought it meant actual fabric curtains as wall. Architecture in the
modern day seems to be taking imaginations wild. My questions about protection
from weather were answered by sliding glass walls, but still kept me pondering
on the essence of privacy. It demonstrates how architects are adapting to
strategies commonly used in dressmaking, such as folding, draping, weaving etc.
Then followed the Naked House, which
is one where different rooms are like shipping containers and can be moved anywhere
inside the shed. There my issue of privacy was solved by closed cubicles.
His other project was Paper House where
paper tubes replaced the walls. Ten of eighty eight paper tubes supported the
vertical load, rest were used for partitions. Other than viewing the inside
spaces as simple universal spaces, i don’t understand how a normal human being
would like to live in there considering it as a house and segregate spaces from
one such space.
Next in focus is the Wall-Less House where
Shigeru Ban has taken maximum advantage of site and exploited imagination and
creativity to its limits. In this project the house floor curls up as a rear
wall nad goes up to the floor as a single unit. The interiors are even more
bizarre with again no solid partitions but sliding ones even for the most
required bathroom areas.
Is it that architects love to experiment
and create marvels to the extent that they design such houses as buildings that
were produced in the process of a break-through or are these seriously considered
as masterpieces? When Le Corbusier called the house as a machine, had he forgotten
the emotions contained in a house and why houses are put in the genre of
private type of buildings. It is simply because they demand a sense of privacy.
As my professor tried to explain to
me that these are such examples of fashion which are draped only on ramps but are
never used in the daily life. How is it that people are to consider
possibilities that go to such a far extent, even rubbing off the essence of a
space called ‘house’? Exposing
interiors as done in Centre Pompidou is clearly justified. It is a public
building and doesn’t demand any such sense of closeness which is why it is a
public building.
In my opinion there exists
a striking relationship between fashion and architecture and how they have
echoed each other in form and appearance. Architects like Shigeru Ban and
others who are involved in such projects believe in creating a sense of
freedom yet with an element of safety and warmth. But warmth certainly doesn’t
come to my notice where least minimum privacy is denied.
-Nishigandha Sakhardande and Sweta
Panda
Dept. of Architecture and Planning
IIT Roorkee
