Free Closed-Plan

Responsive Relationships Across Architectural Scales

The project investigates the responsive relationship across the architectural scales - a furniture group, a room, a collection of rooms (a building), and a collection of buildings/a block. Then, it proposes a free closed-plan system that incorporates domestic space.

This project emphasizes the spatial experience from the human perspective and the subjective perception of territory marked by floating objects and personal artifacts. The objects in Heinrich Tessnow's drawings depict the life and character of a space; furniture groups draw the invisible spatial divisions in Mie's fluid open plan. Informed by the responsive relationship between the floating objects, the room, and the collection of rooms, this project proposes a "stuffed-wall" system. Integrating with enfilades' infinite possibilities of spatial combination and circulation, it creates a fluidity in closed plans and the subjective privacy in public space.

What motivated me to do this project?

Are you one of us who are constantly traveling for work?

I don't mean the three-day business trips, but the 3-month stays, working at the clients' offices and staying in hotels. My cousin lived in a hotel in Nanjing and during the weekdays and travels back to Shanghai for the weekends. He lived that life for 2 years!

Do you suffer temporarily living in a hotel or Airbnb for the long-term?

Do you get tired of packing and unpacking each weekend?

Do you feel you are wasting money renting an apartment that functions more like storage for your stuff, as you only stay there eight weekend days per month?

So here is the question:

Where do we live in our home city?

The traditional housing product, rental apartment, does not fit. Even new housing products are not working well either: Co-living rooms charge monthly rent; Airbnbs do not allow personal belongings.

We need a new housing paradigm for urban mobile populations.

>>> See research:

Dissecting Housing Options for Different Urban Mobile Population

Click on the video to play.

Then, click on the arrow on the right >

Furniture Scale

Furniture implies the height and orientation of our views.

Furniture implies the clearance of space around it.

Furniture implies the circulation through space, either a clear path or with multiple undetermined paths,

or imply a clearance not suitable for people to stay.

Even though furniture does not dictate our behavior, display tables still imply people to move around it,

while seatings invite people to stay for a duration of time and influence the height of people’s view.

Furniture composition can orient views and guide views to hide certain areas or engage the whole space.

The furniture organization promoting public functions.

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Furniture and circulation - public functions

The furniture organization promoting private functions.

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Furniture and circulation - private functions

2019516 architectural scale relationship

Room Scale

The room in the system proposed in the project has two nested volumes. The outer one defines an apartment when the resident is home.

The inner volume is a flexible space - it’s the living room when the resident is home, and when the resident temporarily leaves the apartment, for a day, a week or a month, the public programs such as book stores, cafes or restaurants can flow in.

The more private space, sleeping and study area wraps this flexible space. The inner volume would not disturb the resident to recognize the full space as the personal territory. Then when the resident temporarily leaves the room does not need to be evacuated and the personal belongings stay in the sleeping and working area while the public programs, because from the volume in the center you might not feel the existence of the sleeping area.

This is how a visitor perceives the room.

The flexible space is a neutral box that can easily be rearranged and change its character based on the furniture organization.

This is how the resident perceives the room.

The domestic side has the homey ambiance brought by the personal belongings, and the view of nature outside renders the secluded feelings.

Based on the concept, there are at least two possibilities...

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Collection of Rooms

When the rooms assemble together, the difference in the two possibilities starts to emerge. The triangular spaces are the thick walls with storage for the orthogonal version on the left; in the diagonal on the right, they merge into a chunk of space for service programs.

In the assembly of the collection of the rooms, a new entity of the public space emerges - the space at the building scale. Each room contributes to the overall spatial organization of the building and affects people's perception of the space.

A

Flower shop

To get to a flower shop from room A.

Flower shop

A

B

To get to a flower shop from room A:

When the resident in room B comes back and the flower shop moves its location.

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Aggregation of Collection of Rooms

First, let’s go back to the human-scale:

the outdoor view guides the attention of the domestic space towards the outside and reinforces the sense of privacy and the separation from the rest of the space.

Now the difference between the two variations from the same concept is quite clear:

The room with orthogonal outside boundaries implies a separation between the programmed public space and the greenery. Also, the block tends to be subdivided. Meanwhile, the rooms with orthogonal inner flexible space tend to bind the greenery and the programmed public open space.