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Analysis of fifteen significant rooms and documentation of the production of a sixteenth room within the limits of a 2.5m by 46m atrium space.
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Rooms + Cities
Sixteen Rooms
Sixteen Rooms
University of Dundee, School of Environment
Fifteen Rooms, a study
beyond my reflection
through the skylight
at the partition
ascending the city
the clock, the fireplace, the picture frames
ornament defines the interior
layers of artefacts
urban connecting device
multiple perspectives of a room
a container of memories
information and order
space dissolved by time
layers of enclosure
in the darkness I am projected outwards
home, away from home
Four Comparative Diagrams
Air Rights, a project
object, surface, frame
1
2
6
10
14
18
22
26
30
34
38
42
46
50
54
68
63
73
78
1
Fifteen Rooms:described through text, plans, diagrams and images
32
The small, rectangular, domestic room has one door and one bay window.
There are musical instruments mounted on the walls. The room contains a
sofa, which is pushed hard up against the North wall. The door opens into the
room, the window looks out over the estuary.
Tenement Room
0 1 3m
I
54
76
A room described in a novel. A typical garden shed containing all of the
appliances necessary for everyday life. A single locked door opens into the
room. A skylight provides the only view out. The room is lined with corked
tiles. It is a room constructed in the imaginary.
Fictional Room
0 1 3m
II
98
1110
An almost square room with two shuttered windows that open onto a piazza
to the East. The room is enclosed by white lacquered timber frame and infill
panel walls, linoleum covered floor and plastered cloth ceiling. There are four
doors, three open into the room and one out. The room contains a double
mattress with white sheets, there are two chairs. One chair faces a desk made
from timber sheet and two trestles, the other a small table and frayed oriental
rug. A laptop computer sits on the small table. There is a radiator on the North
wall, the pipes are exposed. A pendant light with a spherical paper and wire
shade hangs to waist height from the ceiling, just off centre.
Apartment Room
0 1 3m
III
1312
1514
A tower, circular in plan, enclosed by thick stone walls punctured with small
windows. The tall and narrow space enclosed within is occupied by a helical
staircase, allowing access to an observatory platform and views over the city.
Water Tower
0 1 3m
IV
1716
1918
The rectangular living room is enclosed by plastered walls and ceiling, the floor
is covered by a fitted carpet. Two windows open to the outside and two internal
doors open into the room. A wood burning stove stands in a fireplace in the
centre of the East wall. The room contains many personal objects and images.
Living Room
0 1 3m
V
2120
2322
A room of ornate cornice and ceiling detail, the plan form of the parlour
consists of a geometric circle placed in addition to a square. Four doors open
into the timber panelled square room, there is a fireplace set at the centre of
the South wall. From the circular addition there is a view to the garden through
seven timber framed windows. Eight supporting columns stand externally to
the bay window.
Parlour
0 1 5m
VI
2524
2726
A room with ambiguous boundaries, formed by a series of layered rectilinear
enclosing walls. A domestic space preserved and curated for public viewing, it
is adorned with the artefacts collected by its former inhabitant.
Museum Room
0 1 5m
VII
2928
3130
A long narrow foot tunnel is enclosed by two white tiled walls, the floor and
ceiling are both cast in concrete. Fourteen fluorescent lamps distributed evenly
along the two walls provide light. A mosaic decorates one of the walls. Puddles
of water have formed on the uneven floor.
Foot Tunnel
0 1 10m
VIII
3332
3534
The room contains a bar and old mismatching furniture arranged in
scattered fashion. Two large windows in the South wall open onto the street,
framing the performances that take place within. People are buying drinks
at the bar, or sitting at the tables talking and drinking. A woman plays the
guitar.
Bar Room
0 1 5m
IX
3736
3938
The attic contains timber trusses framing a triangular space three meters high
at its apex. The enclosing surfaces of the room which are formed by timber
sheets. The room, which is used for storage, contains many personal objects. A
single pendant lights the room and there are no windows, there are no visual
connections to the outside and no natural light enters the space. The sound of
the weather, as it acts upon the timber skin of the room, creates a heightened
awareness of the outside.
Attic
0 1 5m
X
4140
4342
The room is a rotunda form, enclosed by a dome with a central oculus as the
solitary source of natural light. There are eight entrances at regular intervals;
four on the ground and four which open onto a continuous balcony above.
Entablatures and recesses create a series of datum lines. Shelving holding
volumes of public records line the wall.
Archive
0 1 10m
XI
4544
PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT
PRO
DU
CED
BY
AN
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TOD
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ED
UC
ATI
ON
AL
PRO
DU
CT
PRODUCED BY AN AUTODESK EDUCATIONAL PRODUCT
PRO
DU
CED
BY A
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UTO
DESK
EDU
CA
TION
AL PR
OD
UC
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Programme
Axonometric of General Register House showing the public programme arranged as a sequence of archive rooms through the centre of the building
4746
An open skeletal concrete frame comprises floor slab, columns and ceiling. The room is created by the two solid surfaces, the clearly defined rectangular platform below and canopy created by the floor above. Although unoccupied and open to the elements, a sense of a room, formerly enclosed, remains.
Common Room
0 1 10m
XII
4948
5150
A raised Glass platform, rectangular in plan. Within a brick clad courtyard, below a glazed ceiling, sits a room within a room.
Egyptian Room
0 1 10m
XIII
5352
5554
The interior of a coastal cave. A single surface of limestone rock forms the walls
and ceiling of the room, sand and water form the floor. The space enclosed is
more than 80 meters in length and 6 meters across at its widest point. Light
enters from the two entrances at either end.
Grand Cave
0 10 50m
XIV
5756
5958
A vast rectangular foyer, defined by the concrete megastructure above, is
transformed into a public room by the act of social gathering on Sundays. The
space is structured by 24 massive columns and two escalators that carry people
up and down from the building above. Glass curtain walls reaching down to a
point four meters above floor level define the boundaries of the space.
Undercroft
0 5 25m
XV
6160
6362
Fifteen Rooms:four comparative diagrams
6564
production of labour
production of knowledge
fig. 1, sizeFifteen rooms set in relation to the average size of a room in a new British home
6766
I
VI
XI
II
VII
XII
III
VIII
XIII
IX
XIV
V
X
XV
IV
fig. 2, contextFifteen rooms (r) set in relation to their containing building (i) and reciprocal public space (x)
i
x
r
6968
fig. 3, formFifteen rooms represented through plan form, section form, and isometric
7170
fig. 4, surfaceFifteen rooms compared according to the porosity of their unfolded interior surfaces
0% 40%
7372
Air Rights:a project
7574
The site for the project, Air Rights, is an
open-to-below space, a 2.5m by 46m atrium,
directly adjacent to our studios, which
overpasses a busy communal thoroughfare
and exhibition hall. This interior is defined
by both tangible and intangible boundaries.
A board marked cast-in-situ concrete
balustrade encloses its horizontal plane, its
upper and lower edges defining the more
ambiguous vertical limits.
We describe this physically unoccupiable
space as the building’s most significant.
Sight, sound and light unify the floors
into one large room, while physical
connections remain divided. The balconies
and balustrades provide both platform and
shelter, allowing one to see and be seen; this
is shared space that mediates between public
and private experiences. This tension of this
duality imposes a constant conflict on its
spatial conditions. Tangibly, we inhabit this
space only from above or below; intangibly,
we travel its surfaces and occupy its whole.
The form of the project has arisen from our
initial analysis of the 15 studies of rooms
as documented in the preceding pages,
implemented in a new context and with a
greater attention to the collective thinking
of the unit. Using these studies, we sought
to reduce each room to a fragment to be
installed within the open-to-below space.
These initial proposals saw the emergence
of three over arching elements which
encompass the nature of rooms: object,
surface and frame; that is to say, what the
room holds, how the room holds us and
where the room holds us in relation to.
By developing a language for the interior, we
have begun to define the essence of a room,
to recognise its limits and its reaches, and
thus the complexity of the spatial conditions
it creates. Its surfaces are our boundaries, we
read them, project ourselves onto them, and
past them through its openings. Through
them we place ourselves not just in an
immediate context, but also into a wider
framework; rooms to rooms, and ultimately
rooms to city.
It is important to understand here that Air
Rights is a real project. It has a real budget
with real investors, real permissions to be
acquired, real time frames, real learning
curves and real set-backs, real back
scratching and real head scratching, real
feuds, real sub-plots and real red-herrings,
real misnomers, nay-sayers and antagonists,
and gladly, at the end, real dei ex machina.
However, this is not the register in which
we can understand the project: it cannot
care how we build it, who we are, or what
trajectories we take, so what can it do?
Air Rights frames a gap, an imperceptible
surface. Simultaneously it incloses an interior
and excloses an exterior. The inside is in the
outside and, likewise, the outside is in the
inside and yet here is a third space which is
neither. Air Rights is not an exhibition, it
is not an installation, a sculpture, or other,
it is not a lesson or a demonstration. We
understand Air Rights as architecture in
that we understand architecture as spatial,
we have created a space. As architecture
we hope that Air Rights will function as a
framework, a site for further discourse. This
remaining, nothing remains to be said.
Rooms + Cities Studio / 14.12.2012
fracture
partition
rotation
locus
“ It s sur faces are our
boundar ies , we read them,
projec t ourselves onto them,
and past them through it s
openings ”
“ the inside i s in the outside
and, l ikewise , the outside i s
in the inside ”
7776
7978
An assembly of six welded flat bar mild steel frames each connected to
4 others at right angles by an equivalent length of mild steel angles to
form a box frame. Each angle is separated from its two attached flat bar
frames by a 3mm gap with the connection made between each adjoining
frame by four bolts. The frame is suspended 2.6 meters above the floor
of a communal atrium between the surfaces of two concrete balustrades,
spanning the open-to-below space. A standard light fitting hangs by its
electrical cable, off centre, into the interior described by the frame.
Room XVI
0 1 10m
Rooms + Cities
8180
Dr. Lorens Holm
Helen O’Connor
Cameron McEwan
Charles Rattray
Neil Verow
Fraser Davie
Michael Grieve
Lorna Hughes
Qutham Jamjoom
Laura Keane
Alasdair McAlpine
Jennifer Moffatt
Jill Morton
Tom Piggott
Orlaith Phelan
Magnus Popplewell
Tom Rainey
Euan Russell
Charlotte Stewart
Fifian Yip
R. Y. Thompson & Sons, Dundee
G.T. Diamond Drilling Services
Gratefully, Greig Mackintosh and G.T. Diamond Drilling
Services; Brian Adams, Dr. Neil Burford and Lyle McCance at
University of Dundee School of Architecture; Alister Cuthill
at University of Dundee Estates & Buildings; Laura Simpson
at Duncan of Jordanstone Exhibitions; Ruaridh Macdonald,
James Scott, Claire Summers and Cecilie Waersted at
University of Dundee Division of Civil Engineering
Supervisors:
Assistant:
Critique:
Rooms + Cities Studio:
Fabricator:
Installation:
Thanks:
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