Villa Savoye

Villa Savoye is regarded by many as the masterpiece of Le Corbusier where it is a great icon of Modern Movement with the icon of functionalist, and symbolized the

machine-age.

“A house is a machine for living in.”-Sbriglio (2008)

The house will sit in the middle of themeadow, like an object, without spoilinganything.—Le Corbusier

Projects

Villa Savoye is the paradigm of the machine-age which contains the “Five Points towards a New Architecture’.

The house is firmly driven into the ground - a dark and often damp site. The reinforced concrete gives the supports, makes the house looks up in the air and far from the ground. The garden is built over the house, on the roof. With the elimination of load-bearing walls, from the ground they are su-perimposed, forming the ground floor and the upper stories, up to the eaves. The hori-zontal windows which can run from one end of the façade to the other. The columns set back from the facades, inside the house. The floor continues cantilevered. The facades are no longer anything but light skins of insu-lating walls or windows. The facade is free.

References:1. Sbriglio, J2008, Le Corbusier. The Villa Savoye.2. Gans. D2000, pp. 37-48.3. Clarke, M2005, Walking through Le Corbusier: A Tour of His Masterworks.

The texture and weight of this sort made the essence of space while addressing the human need to dwell in the objective and unmovable. Even as it employed “sensation”, this inherently heavy materiality attempted to keep an architecture of space in the realm of the authentic, the real, the palpable, the tactile.

Projects

The Bottle School

Although the design and layout of the school is simple, but the solution of getting existing resources instead of using expensive flat glass and bricks proven to be studier and more sustainable. The stacked bottles have created a special rhythm patterned for the façade and the interesting box-like windows at the main entrance for the school.

References:1. Kate 2011, <http://www.mrkate.com/2011/08/13/bottle-schools/>

As its name suggests, it is liter-ally constructed out of bottles. As many schools in Philippines were destroyed in the typhoon Katrina, therefore the MyShelter Foundation decided to build a strong structured school that are strong to withstand the disasters which can last for long term by using the available existing resources, which is bottles.

An eco-friendly, low-cost and disaster-resistant structures inspired by the work of Andreas Froese of Eco-Tec in Hauduras. “Bottle is filled up with the liquefy adobe mixture so that it can compact the spaces and reduce the pockets of air in the mix, making the bottles a much stronger than avail-able hollow blocks.” (Kate, 2011. [Online])

Projects

The Thermal Bath

Light slits adds to the sense of fluidity of the overall space. A net-work of fissures are in the ceiling. The fissures are in the shape of the letter “T” instead of a cross.

The meticulous attention Zumther pays to materials and to the visual, tactile and even olfactory attributes. He applies materials with the sophisticated precision and he pursues the skills and techniques of construction.

Beautiful fissures in the ceiling. They bring light to the large stone cave

References:1. Hauser, Sigrid & Zumthor, Peter & Binet, Hélène(2007). Peter Zumthor Therme Vals. Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess, Zurich.

The building takes the form of a large, grass-covered stone object set deep into the mountain and dovetailed into its flank. It is designed to follow the role: the establishing of a special relationship with the mountain land-scape, its natural power, geological substance and impressive topograghy.

“It tries to make us believe that it is always standing there and seems to be the part of the landscape.”