Showing the world where NOT to live : Contemporary Modern Houses

"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