articulated room project
DESCRIPTION
Entry for the competition " A Room for London"TRANSCRIPT
A Room for London
View from west
Diagram 1
A Room for London
We are proposing a room that grabs the corner of the
south bank centre.
Our idea was to create a body in the roof, acting like a
living organism finding different views of the city. In this
way its articulated body adapts to the building’s shape.
(diagram 1) We would like to make people wondering
what is that shape on the roof.
Dialog with the building
The room is expected to change location, but it will
always keep the memories of its first address. The
project was designed to play with the surrounding brutal-
ist architecture, as the National Theatre, a building that
is a clever way of building a nuclear power station in the
middle of London without anyone objecting. This premise
can be applied to the room, seems to be there without
any permission. The design is based on sharp angles
and its repetition, which could be clearly identified as the
brutal architecture tools. (diagram 2)
Position
We located the project on the edge of the building,
because we need to be as much as possible on north,
to see Big Ben (on the left, almost hidden by the Royal
Festival Hall), and Saint Paul’s Cathedral (on the right
side almost hidden by the National Theatre) and to be
seen by the people as a new landmark, so the closer we
install the structure to the out line of the roof more people
will see it. We want to find more points of view related to
the London’s landmarks at the same time to create a new
spot in the city’s landmark. (diagram 3)
This position also avoids a cantilever solution that would
be too complex and expensive to construct in this kind of
light material. The room is grabbing the North West cor-
ner, and from the Waterloo Bridge we will see the room
entrance. The deeper the guest is going in the quieter
the area around is. In this way the room is protected from
noise pollution, more than any wide expensive insulation
system.
Diagram 3
Diagram 2
1
Section aa’ 1/200 Section bb’ 1/200
3A Room for London
Back and Front
There is a permanent dialog between the build-
ing, the surroundings and the city. The dialog with
the surroundings is achieved by using the same
brutalist language. With the city we achieved this
dialog playing with the dichotomy of back and
front facades of the standard terraced houses
that we can fi nd in London. In these houses the
front with its cornice hides the pitched roofs (back
facade), two architectures systems which ignore
each other. This is expressed in the transversal
section.
The project is playing with this representation,
the section prevails to defi ne its identity (diagram
4), and the end terrace is a specifi c response
(entrance patio and chimney in the room).
Orientation
The project is assuming an orientation. The north
is the front, with the views on the Thames, the
room is dripping over the building, the south is
closed from view and we use chimneys to get light
in.
View from inside of the bed room
Diagram 4
Diagram 5
Diagram 6
4A Room for London
Sustainability
In order to do sustainable project we need to
think in the all life cycle of the building.
This project is really specific because it is tempo-
rary and can be moved for different locations, so
adaptation and easy assembly are two essential
things.
During the design process we thought in easy
ways of assemble and disassemble. (diagram 5)
The building it’s composed by two bodies that
follow the same section connected buy an articu-
lation that allow an easy adaption to different situ-
ations, so we use all the time the same skeleton.
The bodies are made of a simple steal structure
where we attach the different chimneys that go up
and down. The ones that go up capture the sun
and make it slide in side providing light and heat,
the ones that go down focus on the different views
that you can have from the top of Queen Elizabeth
Hall but just two of them make part of the inside
space and needed to be insulated. (diagram 6)
This simple structure and this two articulated bod-
ies gave us the inside configuration. We placed
the entire fixed program in the two static bodies
(bed room, toilets and living room) to allowed the
rest of the space to be flexible for the two patios.
In terms of construction materials we want to use
pre-fabricated and standardized materials which
can be easily assembled and recycled. With this
kind of materials we want to avoid waste as much
as we can and other pollutants that normally we
produced in the construction site.
View from Queen Elizabeth Hall