Montecito Residence
a little too extreme in the style i prefer in architecture, but i admire the integration of the site studies for the sake of disaster prevention. i also like the usage of the hallway to separate private space from public space.
Floor Plan::Rendering::Photo
these photos aren’t the ones i used for my project (source: google image). this was my very first project as a second year in GT CoA (cuz really, the first year doesn’t really count). my partner and i had to study the building–research, draft, diagram, render and make models. when we each found a theme of the building, we had to design a theoretical addition that could theoretically be built inside of/on top of/attached to the building. This house is called “Schröder Haus” by Gerrit Rietveld. It’s located in Utrecht, the Netherlands and it was built during the “De Stijl” movement. i spent countless hours building the model and because of it, i’m attached to this house and the style.
yay mr. zumthor!
it seems like there are a lot of famous architects out there, ya know gaining fame through their unique designs, eco-friendly designs, or designs everyone hates. whatever, let’s just leave it at that. end of discussion.
i was working this week and a thought came to my mind: when a building becomes famous and becomes the next hottest thing in the city, how come the architects are the only ones receiving the spotlight? what about the civil engineers? them the electrical engineers? mechanical? plumbing too!! ahhh structural engineers~ don’t forget the landscape architects.
i mean, it’s true that the architecture firms can choose their preference of engineering firms from millions out there. it could be that the owners can handpick the engineers instead of going through the architects [whatever floats their boat, however they wanna pay the fees]. so given that the owners/architects have plenty of choices of engineering firms to pick from [say, if one engineering firm won't do a certain project for this amount of fee, then the owners/architects can easily drop them and pick the next best engineering firm they know], yes the engineering firms seem to play a smaller role in this design/construction process. it’s also true that the architects have the responsibility to check the entire project to make sure that the engineers did the job correctly and their portion of the project is coherent with the architects’ portion. yes, the architects are great, they have the best occupation in the world… [right] but i still think that when the project gets introduced to the world, the engineers should get the same amount of attention as the architects. some might say, ‘well, the design process is the hardest part since they have to come up with some kind of scheme, and that’s ultimately the architects’ role. on the other hand, engineers are just told to come up with a scheme that works with the architects’ design. there’s no creativity involved’. yes indeed, that is true and i’ll give my respect for all you architects. however, engineers have to deal with some whacky designs seemingly impossible to build, trying to calculate things out and squeezing their brains out, SO THAT they can make someone’s dream/design come true. [i'm not backslashing on architects here. i also acknowledge that the architects also have to squeeze their brains out, just to make the owners' visions come true. bleh]
what about the contractors? the ones who actually go on the site, knowing each material being used in the project, keeping the timeline of the construction and stuff?
they ALL should share the public fame. that’s all i’m saying. when someone brags about how great frank lloyd wright’s design is, you should ask, “hey, do you know the contractors he worked with? what about any engineers who were in that project? you know, it’s not just wright who built the building. because the other ones were there making wright’s design come true, the project lives in public fame”.
i am neither an engineer nor a contractor. i don’t dislike frank lloyd wright, a brilliant architect.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
