Project Three - Art Gallery

The Narrative

The gallery will be owned by an eccentric art dealer who will share the bed sit upper apartment with his eccentric wife. They share a love for the expressionist work of Egon Schiele and wish for a space that displays the artist's development in a sequence. The upper apartment will be designed so that the gallery below it, with its different ceiling heights, will appear to puncture or push through the upper level's floors. There will be peaking areas through out the apartment, so that the art dealer and his wife are free to observe or possibly peak at their collection below as well as visitors. Whether it be to ensure the security of their belongings or to simply spy on the various reactions of visitors as they view the artworks.

[Note: The blog will follow a backward order, aiming to depict and focus on the gallery space. Towards the end, contextual information will appear to be added, broadening the view of the spaces designed.]

The Gallery Sequence

The gallery space found at the ground level of the building explores the sequence of Egon Schiele's work, it aims to combine bodily movement with the experience of viewing each art work.

[with reference to above image]

The sequence:

a) Courtyard entrance: to create a transition from the buzz of King Street to a more composed gallery environment

b) Reading Room: intellectual context to gallery

[numbered = gallery space]

1) Egon Schiele and the Self

2) Female Nudes

3) Love

c) Courtyard

4) Life and Death (Contrasting the fluid spaces of the preceding gallery spaces, this space will be the most enclosed, intended for a stop rather than a pause through the paintings)

d) Storage space (secret entrance at Life and Death gallery, perhaps the final gallery exhibit on special exhibit nights)

e) Art Dealer's Office/Shop

Poche- Short Section and Long Section

West Facing Long Section

South Facing Short Section

Vignettes

After entering through a courtyard, a visitor is lead to a reading room where books on Egon Schiele as well as art and literature provide an intellectual context for the gallery. An angled wall leading to the first gallery space leads the eye and body into that direction.

Schiele's confronting self portraits are enhanced by the contrast between the bloated space that contains it and the small corridor space that draws the body entering from the Reading Room. This sense of compression and decompression, of drawing the body into a space and then releasing it, continues through out the gallery spaces.

From the decompressed space of the first gallery displaying Schiele's self portraits, the body is lead through a compressed corridor-like space bathed by light displaying Schiele's Female Nudes. This space fits a maximum of two people, drawing people who were once scattered while observing Schiele's self portraits, closer to one another. They are made to witness each other's reactions to the beautiful yet perverse paintings, intruding into the subject's sexual fantasies.

From the corridor space of the second gallery, the body is lead through to the gallery space focused on Schiele's paintings depicting love. Here, the space is once again decompressed, designed to not only make the body pause through each painting, but to pause and perhaps gaze through the courtyard in front.

Once a person has finished sitting and observing, they are lead to another compressed space which will lead them to the final gallery space.

Past the enclosed final gallery space, the last destination is the Art dealer's shop. Before reaching the shop "front" a visitor must pass through another corridor covered with the art dealer's Schiele influenced work.

Model detail Shots

East Facing Long Section

Section detail - courtyard, reading room, courtyard

West Facing Long Section

The site and line drawings of plans and sections

Ground level

Parti: compression and decompression.

- angled walls will draw the body inwards, then push it outwards.

First Level

Parti: The different ceiling heights of the ground level (esp. the gallery space) will define the different floor levels of this level

West and East Long Sections

Parti: -different ceiling heights

- openings that 'harness' the sun from the north

The Site

259 King St, Newtown

Artist - Egon Schiele

Project Two: Room and Narrative

A place to remember for a solitary socialite,

void of any memory of her previous life

A library for a woman who has forgotten. 

Project Two: Room and Narrative

Drawings: Poche and Axonometric

Project Two: Room and Narrative

Precendents

Literature

Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" came to mind after I thought of the character's "quest" for knowledge. 

Paper Architecture

Brodsky and Utkin's "Villa Claustrophobia" portrays an interesting building that makes its occupants look completely "into" the building, giving a sense of isolation and claustrophobia.

Project Two: Room and Narrative

A Woman in the Sun (1961) by Edward Hopper 

When I first viewed this painting there were three elements that spoke to me most:

High healed shoes: corporate society, banal, restricted

Beside the naked woman, as the only evidence of her previous attire, the shoes seem to suggest the idea of stripping away from society; breaking away and searching for sense of individuality.

Hills: tranquility, isolation, solitude

Light from an unseen window: duality, limbo

It is unclear whether the painting is set during dawn or sunset, creating a sense of duality, or even a middle ground.  Is it the beginning or is it the end?

Such ideas eventually led to my narrative:

A place to remember for a solitary socialite,

void of any memory of her previous life.

From this narrative I derived an objective for the women's room.  I wanted to create a space that would help the woman remember, a place to facilitate her longing for knowledge.  To acquire such knowledge, to perhaps trigger her memory, the ideal space for her would be a library.  

This library would not be divided into certain genres, nor would it have a specific route, it would be a space meant for wandering around with one pause at the centre.   A reading room bathed by light and almost completely enclosed. 

The walls will look like pages from a series of opened books, flicked open to enclose a space, light will filter into the shelves in random strips as if focusing on certain books during certain times of the day.  

The woman 

will feel lost in these rooms 

but not agitated 

until finally she acquires the 

knowledge she is after.

Villa Muller Model Photographs

Poche

Parti Diagrams

A true appreciation of the Villa Muller can only be experienced with an understanding of Adolf Loos' concept of the Raumplan.  The Raumplan revolved around the idea that space, rather than structure can be designed.  Spaces are not divided into various rooms, but instead, are interwoven into one another, essentially creating a whole.  Because of this, the Villa Muller and its various levels are not merely flat plains stacked upon one another, alternatively, they are various pockets (of different heights) occupying an array of plains.    

"I do not design plans, facades, sections, I design space.  Actually there is neither a ground floor, an upper floor or a basement, there are merely interconnected spaces, vestibules, terraces.  Every room needs a specific height - the dining room a different one from the pantry - therefore the floors are on varying levels.  After this, one must connect the spaces with one another so that the transition is unnoticeable and natural, but also the most practical."

- Adolf Loos

Enclosure: 

- There are various forms of enclosure encompassed in the Villa Muller, the two focused on the diagram revolve around the spaces used by the owners of the Villa.

- The main living space (central to the bottom diagram) seem to echo a "room matrix", with spaces open to one another, each appear to flow into one another.

- The 'level' above is occupied by the bedrooms of the occupants, it is far more private in enclosure, mainly Victorian 'corridor' in plan and indeed in section.

Structure:

- There is an integration of two structural systems in the Villa Muller, the load bearing wall and column structure.  

Geometry:

- To accomodate for the rather complicated section of the Villa due to various wall heights and levels, the plan follows a rather basic proportional system.

- The interior follows a ratio of 2:3; the dining is 1/6th of the arrangment

Circulation:

-  There is a [social] hierarchy clearly present in the section of the Villa Muller

-  Areas accessed by the occupants of the Villa (orange) access spaces through stairs placed at the centre of the Villa with a view of each level.  

-  Servants' circulation through the Villa is placed at the corner of the Villa, less open to the various spaces and limited to services spaces (kitchen and bathroom) 

Circulation continued:

- The entrance and its link to the main living space incorporates a 'theatrical entrance', an occupant/visitor must climb steps upwards and then turn left then right to finally access the main living space.

- Entrance to the main living space also includes an intersection of the various spaces of the Villa.  The 'theatrical entrance' is met by a crossroad.

Program:

-  An hierarchal approach to the plan is also evident. 

-  The private quarters of the sleeping area (space explicitly for the Villa's main occupants) is interlocked on top of the main living space which is on top of the servant's quarters.