STUDIO n°6

STUDIO:DOLLS’ HOUSE

NR. 6 Texts byMerijn MullerDirk SomersStefaan Vervoort

Works byAstrid Annaert Jan-Hendrik Beckx Jan-Paulus HoogterpTitus Lammertse Laura LinsiDuarte MirandaMaxime PranantoLies QuatanneFloris SchimmelInes TerstappenHamish Warren

ARCH

ITEC

TURE

AT

TU D

ELFT

CHAIR THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE INTERIOR

EXPLORINGDOMESTICINTERIORS

The STUDIO booklets are compact publications that present the teaching and research of the chair The Architecture of the Interior at TU Delft in the Netherlands. The STUDIO series investigates the connection be-tween positions and didactics of the Chair.

2 Studio: Dolls’ House

MSc2 spring 2014

PROLOGUE

07 Introduction Dirk Somers

08 Idea as Model (and its Discontents)

Stefaan Vervoort

14 References Dirk Somers

CATALOGUE: TU DELFT

20 Overview

22 Hamish Warren

24 Floris Schimmel

26 Laura Linsi

28 Titus Lammertse

30 Duarte Miranda

32 Jan Paulus Hoogterp

34 Interludium

CATALOGUE: U GENT

36 Overview

38 Jan-Hendrik Beckx

40 Ines Terstappen

42 Lies Quatanne

44 Astrid Annaert

46 Maxime Pranato

EPILOGUE

50 Reflections Dirk Somers

52 Literature

58 Biographies

3 Eireen Schreurs

Architecture of the Interior

The dolls’ house of Petronella Oortman, built in 1686, is the most famous Dutch dolls’ house of the 17th Century. Fully furnished as an idealized interior, in a cabinet lavishly decorated with marque-try of tortoise shell, it was worth the price of a real canal house. Dolls’ houses were meant to impress, but they also conveyed the ideas held by the upper class of Amsterdam on home life. As such they were fine examples of material culture of the time. The Dutch-Belgian teaching team Merijn Muller and Dirk Somers of Bovenbouw architecten and Johannes Robbrecht has recognized the theme of the dolls’ house as a valuable architec-tural assignment. Dolls’ houses are an ideal testing ground. They offer a controlled universe, in which the only context is a cultural one, and even that can be manipulated. With a number of idi-osyncratic references, provided by the teachers, students of the universities of Delft and Ghent went to work in two consecutive studios. The models were the exclusive products of the studios, no plans were drawn, no images produced. The results are well thought out and precious labors of love. They demonstrate very personal ideas on domestic architecture. They also show how these can mature into beautiful products, with the didactic experiment being what happens if the student is the architect, but also the construction laborer, carpenter, concrete pourer, furniture maker and even tailor. Dolls’ houses were never intended as a toy. And yet they show architecture at its most playful: full of material experiments, mov-ing elements and other surprises.

Eireen SchreursEditor of the STUDIO seriesChair The Architecture of the Interior

PROLOGUE

6 Studio: Dolls’ House Prologue

7 Dirk Somers

Introduction

This booklet brings together student designs from the MSc2 spring semester 2014 at TU Delft and the MSc1 autumn semester 2014 at Gent University. The Interiors MSc2 studio was the first ex-periment with a dolls’ house as a brief. The brief was received both with curiosity and scepticism. Is this commission viable? Have we not learned to make models that do NOT look like dolls’ houses? A set of reference interiors was offered to the students as a basis for discussion at the start-up.

During the first 2 weeks, the exploration of the brief oscillated be-tween conceptual thought and physical production. But after that period, everyone had gained confidence about where it was going. Enthusiasm grew by the week. During the final weeks the studio operated exclusively from the modelling studio. Students took an uncustomary amount of pride in their modelling work. Everyone experienced how the autonomy of the model object gave it a new aura. A true ‘objet d’art’ was being produced here. Not just a repre-sentation of something that was represented in other ways as well. The studio was concluded successfully. Experiments in wood, con-crete and gypsum lined up next to furniture-like objects and more conventional architectural models. The designs generally reflected on the potential of the dolls’ house as a piece of architecture. The results were beautiful and diverse and always very positive.

We resumed the Dolls’ house studio in Gent, during the autumn semester. This time, by referring to the work at TU Delft, the idea of a dolls’ house as a brief was much more established. We asked students to bring domestic life more accurately into focus. The work of Gunnar Asplund was used as a way of addressing the balance of figuration and abstraction. The models that were pro-duced have a more explicitly domestic feel than those made at the TU Delft studio. The absence of a modelling studio in Gent did not lead to more conventional production. On the contrary, students experimented with dyeing gypsum, welding copper and even sewing. The studio lasted an entire semester, which was twice the time of the Delft MSc2. But the pace of the studio work was kept high, and the discussions went deeper than before. Ultimately, we can conclude that the dolls’ house provides a wonderful pretext to talk and to learn about the buildings we love.

Dirk SomersBovenbouw ArchitectureChair The Architecture of the Interior

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Stefaan Vervoort

IDEA AS MODEL(AND ITS DISCONTENTS)

Studio: Dolls’ House Prologue

9 Stefaan Vervoort

“This exhibition had its origins in a long-standing intuition of mine that a model of a building could be something other than a narrative record of a project or a building. It seemed that models, like architectural drawings, could well have an artistic or conceptual existence of their own, one which was relatively independent of the project that they represented.”1

With these words, architect Peter Eisenman introduced the exhi-bition and book project Idea as Model, organized at the Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies (IAUS), New York in 1976, and co-published by IAUS and Rizzoli in 1981 respectively. This project set out to advance an understanding of the scale model beyond its customary codification as an interlocutor between conceiving and making, between the origins of the architectural design and the building eventually realized. Eisenman, then-director of the IAUS, and curator Andrew MacNair asked 22 architects, artist-architects and architects’ teams to explore the model not as a conventional tool, but as a quasi-sovereign object. They called for objects that explore not “models of buildings as propaganda for the persuasion of clients,” but “the idea of a model as a conceptual as opposed to a narrative tool.”2 Thus distanced from naturalistic objects that substitute for a building, the objects assembled in Idea as Model were held as intimations of the ‘idea’ of the scale model, and of architecture more generally. At stake in the 1976 exhibition and the 1981 publication (which held documentation of 22 additional contributions by largely the same participants) was nothing less than the agency of the architectural scale model: its potential to gain a relative independence within the process of architectural design, and accordingly, to become itself an ‘actor’ within the creation of architecture. Both in 1976 and 1981, this experiment engendered several interesting objects. Stanley Tigerman’s Animal Crackers, a laconic and Pop-like house made from a cardboard cookie box, signalled the model’s position between object and sign, between the cul-tural creation of architecture and its social communication. The work stressed the obstinate materiality as well as what Tigerman later deemed the “realistic, materialistic representationalism” of the object.3 Amancio Guedes’s Godhouse, a wooden object carved from the “trunk of a figus lirata that grew too big, in the entrance of the Smiling Lion,” and which was described by the architect as a “temple as toy,” in turn delivered a reflection on the scale model as a nexus of totemic aspects (such as the souvenir) and the cognitive and psychological reality of the miniature (such as the dolls’ house).4

1 Peter Eisenman, ‘Preface’ in: Kenneth Frampton & Silvia Kolbowski (eds.), Idea as Model (New York: Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies/Rizzoli, 1981), 1. 2 Idem; and taken from the exhibition brief, cited in: Richard Pommer, “The Idea of ‘Idea as Model’” in: Idea as Model, op. cit., 3. 3 Stanley Tigerman, “A Theory” in: Suzanne Buttolph, Great Models: Digressions on the Architectural Model, The Student Publication of the School of Design, no. 27 (Raleigh: North Caroline State University, 1978), 78. Tigerman prompts a question relevant to the argument in this text: “There is a prevailing theory in architecture that the closer (in intention) a finished object is to its originating abstract concept, the more powerful that object will be. Now does that theory only apply to traditional ideas about Formalism/Functionalism, or can it also relate to symbolic content such as the metaphorical possibilities in theories/buildings?” 4 Amancio Guedes, “Godhouse” in: Idea as Model, op. cit. (note 1), 44.

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The scale of William Ellis’s Residence - a whitewashed, sculp-tural construction that lacked indicatory elements and closely resembled 1920s Constructivist sculpture, particularly Kazimir Malevich’s Architektons - was impossible to pin down, and inject-ed a continuous oscillation of scale into the viewing process. And Oswald Mathias Ungers’s Morphology of the Cube, three per-mutations of a cube based on ribs and corners, planar elements, and volumetric elements respectively, evoked not an actual archi-tectural design but rather those cognitive ‘transformations’ under-lying Ungers’s design method.5 Each in their own, singular manner, these objects addressed a fragment of the wide scope of features and connotations intrinsic to the scale model. Yet the intuitions (and contradictions) that Eisenman saw un-derlying Idea as Model resonated most clearly in his own contribu-tions to the show and the catalogue. Made in conjunction with the design of a single-family house erected in Hardwick, Vermont, in 1969-70, House II Transformations included a series of translu-cent Plexiglas slabs that represented six transformations under-pinning the design process, sustained by a grid of 16 plastic col-umns mounted on a wooden plate. The object lacked all indicatory facades and a roof structure, as well as discernable facades and interiors. Not unlike the clichéd views on the dematerialization of art in canonical art and architectural criticism of the 1960s and 1970s, it explored ways in which the model could approach an un-dressed, bare and ‘conceptual’ core, a spatial diagram of sorts.6 In curator Oliver Elser’s words, House II Transformations evokes “an idea of the extremely complicated process of form generation,” a principle, Elser adds, best discerned when one imagines the model “not as simply transparent, but instead, entirely see-through, invisible even.”7 Here, Elser indicates the anti-aesthetic impulse underlying Eisenman’s object: House II Tranformations advanced the ideational nature of the scale model, put in direct opposition to the material and aesthetic features of the object. In Eisenman’s equally decisive as oneiric terms, it was cast as “a representation of ideas (as opposed to buildings).”8 So much, too, was confirmed in the catalogue photographs, in which the object is placed against a darkened background, visually releasing most of its material fea-tures and morphing into an etheric series of colour strips. The model, floating in thin air, was ostensibly exported from the architect’s mind only to now await some further materialization. Eisenman’s contribution to the catalogue, House X, both con-tinued and redirected this inquiry. Produced in tandem with a residence for a couple in Bloomsfield Hills, Michigan, in 1975, the object, now distinctly material, flattened out like an axonometric drawing when seen from one oblique angle, yet raked into different, nonsensical directions when discerned from all other viewpoints.

5 “Mit dem Begriff der Transformation wird die Veränderung eines Zustands in einen anderen ausgedrückt,” Ungers wrote in 1983, “(d)as Denken in Transformationen (...) wirkt somit nicht einengend, sondern befreiend auf die Fantasie.” Oswald Mathias Ungers, Die Thematisierung der Architektur (German edition, originally 1983), ed. Walter A. Noebel, Deutsches Institut für Stadtbaukunst: Bücher zur Stadtbaukunst (Sulgen/Zürich: Niggli, 2011), 19. 6 See: Lucy Lippard, Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 to 1972 (New York: Praeger, 1973); Peter Eisenman, “Notes on Conceptual Architecture: Towards a Definition” (1970) in Eisenman Inside Out: Selected Writings 1963-1988 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) 11-27. 7Oliver Elser, “House II (Falk House)” in Das Architekturmodell - Werkzeug, Fetisch, Kleine Utopie, eds. Oliver Elser and Peter Cachola Schmal (Frankfurt / Zürich: Deutsches Architekturmuseum / Verlag Scheidegger & Spiess AG, 2012), 251. 8 Peter Eisenman, as cited in: David Shapiro & Lindsay Stamm, “A Poetics of the Model: Eisenman’s Doubt” in Idea as Model, op. cit. (note 1), 121.


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“When you approached the titled model and moved around it, the model seemed like a distortion,” Eisenman noted in the catalogue, “(a)ny displacement from the fixed viewpoint at once revealed the falsity of the model.”9 In the architect’s view, this strategy instigated a rupture on two distinct levels. Firstly, it uncoupled the liaison between subject and object in the experi-ence of the model, as the former was symbolically expelled from the illusionary, aesthetic orbit of the latter: “Simply because of its smaller scale with respect to the individual who walks around it,” Eisenman noted, “it challenges the traditional idea of possess-ing the model as an object. (...) The viewer is forcibly distanced from it.” Secondly, House X barred the model from logically substituting for a building, as the architectural design was only evoked in the oblique view (and using an axonometric projection at that). In Eisenman’s - again hermetic - terms, the model laid claim upon “another kind of object and another kind of reality,” that is, it stressed the model as “an idea in itself, (...) not a rep-resentation of anything.” Once more, the catalogue photographs of Eisenman’s contribution corroborate this double rift. Shown from different viewpoints, only one of which is ‘correct’, House X propagates itself as a self-reflexive operation that disjoined the model from all substitutionary logic. Eisenman’s second contribu-tion explicitly set out to perturb the aesthetic experience in order to stress the autonomy of the object vis-à-vis both the subject and the building.10

To be clear, Eisenman’s texts and contributions did not invoke any historical precursors. House II Transformations and House X first and foremost connect to the architect’s own agenda at the time, which critiqued the humanist ideals in classical and modern architecture and aimed to resituate them within an ‘autonomous’ and ‘objective’ sphere instead. Nonetheless, his contributions to Idea as Model did conjure up the continuing and in fact histori-cal unease of architects with the scale model. In Leon Battista Alberti’s architectural treatise De Re Aedificatoria (1485; trans-lated in English as On the Art of Building in Ten Books, 1988), scale models were discussed not amongst the elements and strategies of architectural design (in Book I, on ‘Lineaments’) but at the very start of the description of the objects and techniques pertaining to building and material construction (in Book II, on ‘Materials’).11 The model was transposed between architectural design and its materialization - but it was nevertheless attributed to the latter rather than the former domain. This surprising categorization was due to Alberti’s reservations for the cunning, illusionary features of the scale model.

9Ibid., 122. The following quotes all are derived from the Shapiro-Stamm interview, 121-123. 10The axonometric perspective that, in contrast to perspectival drawing, symbolically focuses on the object, stressed this point. See also: Bruno Reichlin, “Perspective Refers to the Viewer, Axonometry Refers to the Object,” Daidalos, no. 6, 1982, 81-94. 11 See: Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1988), book II, 33-38 & book IX, 312-313.

Stefaan Vervoort

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His critique that “models that have been coloured and lewdly dressed with the allurement of painting” did not convey “the facts” but rather strove “to attract and seduce the eye of the beholder,” originated precisely in a wariness for the scale model’s capacity to disrupt designo and erode the professionalization of the architect.12 The aesthetic and conceptual ambiguity of the model was held a threat to the very definition of the discipline set out in Alberti’s treatise. “Better than that,” Alberti continued, “models are not accurately finished, refined, and highly decorat-ed, but plain and simple, so that they demonstrate the ingenuity of him who conceived the idea, and not the skill of the one who fabricated the model.” A similar warning for the cunning of the model occurs in Vincenzo Scamozzi’s 1615 treatise L’idea della architettura universale. For Scamozzi, models are corpi inanimati (unanimated bodies) that unleash their trickery upon the subject as he/she projects his/her fantasies onto the object: they are in need of “the voice of the architect or another expert figure to express in words and argumentatively demonstrate what they are, appending them with spirit and motion. (...) For all in all,” Scamozzi added, models “resemble little birds that are hardly discernable as masculine or feminine, and which may turn out as either eagles or crows once grown. For this reason, commis-sioners are fairly easily fooled under a cloak of models.”13 Thus echoing Eisenman’s rhetoric in Idea as Model, Alberti’s and Scamozzi’s writings warned against the hybrid, slippery, unpre-dictable nature of scale models. The material and visual features of the model - along with their mimetic and projective call upon the subject - seemed to require a distinct measure of self-censor-ship, or a type of interpretative-epistemological control by the architect. What these historical resonances indicate, then, is how the material and aesthetic formation of scale models have always met with anxiety in architectural theory and history. From the Renaissance onwards, scale models have been rhetorically and aesthetically curbed, and they continue to encounter much igno-rance and conceptual platitudes today. Authors either situate the model in between the architect’s idea and the material object - as in “the model is an idea, and an object,” in Patrick Healy’s terms - or perceive it an ‘autonomous’ object detached from both building and viewing subject - Karen Moon characterizes Idea as Model as “the point at which the model’s independence became openly recognized.”14 All the while, objects are categorized on the basis of vapid conventions - such as ‘sketch’, ‘design’ or ‘presen-tation’ models - and definitions of the scale model vary with each singular account - from miniatures to formulas to 1:1 installations and paintings.15

12Ibid., 34. In a footnote accompanying a remark on the historically unexamined status of the model, Eisenman freely quoted, from Alberti’s book II, that “it is better not to make impeccable finished and adorned model (...) but stripped and simple ones, so as to emphasize the strength of the concept.” Peter Eisenman, “The Representation of Doubt: At the Sign of the Sign” in: Eisenman, op. cit. (note 7), 150. 13Vincenzo Scamozzi, L’idea della architettura universale (1615), pref. Franco Barbieri, trans. Werner Oechslin, Centro Internazionale die studi di architettura Andrea Palladio (Verona: Colpo di Fulmine, 1997), 52. Author’s translation. 14Karen Moon, Modeling Messages: The Architect and the Model (New York: Monacelli, 2005), 19-20; Patrick Healy, The Model and its Architecture, Delft School of Design series on architecture and urbanism (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 2008), 51. See also Werner Oechslin’s writings on idea materialis: Oechslin, “Architekturmodell – ‘Idea materialis’” in: Die Medien der Architektur, ed. Wolfgang Sonne (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2011), 131–155. 15 For such definitions of the model, see: Marie-Ange Brayer, “Un objet ‘modèle’: la maquette d’architecture. Histoire critique d’un mode de représentation,” in “Architectures Expérimentales, 1950-2000”/Collection Frac Centre, ed. Marie-Ange Brayer (Orléans: Edition HYX, 2005), 15-24; and Albert Smith, Architectural Model as Machine. A New View of Models from Antiquity to the Present Day (Oxford: Architectural Press, 2004).


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16Richard Pommer, “Post-script to Post-mortem” in: Idea as Model, op. cit. (note 1), 10. 17Pommer, op. cit. (note 2), 9.

Not only are these analyses unproductive (they often apply to drawings, renderings, pavilions, or in fact, any other type of object) but they also obscure the singularity of the scale model. Indeed, I would argue that the material and visual features of the object, which singularly confront the space of presentation and the view-ing subject, and which concern the reception and dissemination of architectural objects rather than their role within architectural design, are crucial to the scale model. As we confront and project ourselves upon these miniatures, subject and object intertwine to evoke imaginary structures, buildings and cities - not “another kind of reality,” as Eisenman’s crypto-metaphysics had it, but a distinctly real and aesthetic relationship between the model-sign, architectural referent, and viewer. And as we cognitively and psy-chologically envision these models as if they were real, the body, that surplus of the aesthetic experience too large to enter, is necessarily left behind. Still, the body does not leave the aes-thetic experience untouched: rather, it disturbs it, through a so-matic confrontation with the object in space, which makes scale models oscillate between object and subject, presence and pro-jection, in what is simultaneously a haptic form and an imagina-tive buoyance. As the body is detached and yet still central to the model, those objects that directly engage it - like the 1:5 models by artist Thomas Schütte, or the miniature-cum-furniture pieces by Michael Graves - strategically navigate a feedback loop of mind and body that is intrinsic to the scale model. Only when we acknowledge and explore these aesthetic features, the oft-discred-ited ambiguity of the model can begin to be disclosed. As Richard Pommer wrote, pointing to the discontents in Eisenman’s House X - “a helpless model (...) like a crab squashed on a beach”16 - and intimating the importance of the model’s sculptural formation:

“(I)n its recoil from material reality, architectural speculation has not moved to the edges of pure idea. Nothing so radical! It has moved toward allusion; it has evoked the theater and mov-ies, myth and architectural history, landscapes and paintings, and the processes of allusion themselves – reality at a distance. (...) But such a sensibility is not well conveyed in typical mod-els or architectural drawings, or in any exhibition on demand. It is too dependent on nuance, circumstance, setting, detail, and even, ironically, on real buildings.”17

Stefaan Vervoort

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REFERENCES

As a basis for the studio, we composed a catalogue of interior architecture. This selection of interiors was used as a start-ing point to explore the design of domestic environments. Most inte-riors are interesting with regard to the relationship between the compositional principles of the building and those of the interior. A lot of interiors follow a tecton-ic logic: profiling, framed spaces, structure and infill… from the classical interior until the early 20th Century the vocabulary of exterior and interior architecture remained fundamentally unchanged. There is a building language at play. These references allow for the integration of inner and outer form. Such reference material al-lows us to understand the interior as an expression of built form. Another, more modern compositional logic is the interplay of figura-tion and abstraction.

Designers such as Josef Frank, Asplund, Le Corbusier or Tony Fretton each developed a com-positional feel for the bal-ance between abstract planes and figurative moments. Staircases, chimneypieces, bay windows and cupboards produce domestic recog-nizability in the abstract space of the box. The principle of figura-tion and the principle of the tec-tonic can also overlap. The Goten rooms by Katsura, Shinohara’s houses, or James Gowan’s Dodd house are all examples of this. Many of the dolls’ house designs investigated this compositional richness. First of all the struc-ture of the dolls’ house was estab-lished. Subsequently, the figura-tive potential of the structure was explored.

Dirk Somers


Caption Caption Caption

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Alvar Aalto The Aalto House

Directors office from ‘David Hicks on decoration with fabric’

E.G. AsplundSummer House

F.L. WrightSusan Lawrence Dana House

M.H. Baillie ScottThe White House

Gerrit RietveldSlegers House

Adolf LoosVilla Khuner

Adolf LoosVilla Muller

Adolf Loos Villa Muller

Dirk Somers

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Karl Friedrich SchinkelSchloss Charlottenburg

Pierro PortaluppiVilla Necchi Campiglio


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James GowanDodd House

Josef FrankHaus Beer

Josef HoffmannPalais Stoclet

Kazuo ShinoharaHouse in White

Katsura Imperial VillaNew Goten Rooms

Gunnar AsplundVilla Snellman

Gio PontiVilla Arreaza

Tony FrettonRed House

Sir Edwin LutyensMarsh Court

Dirk Somers

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Jacques DupuisMaison Durien

Sir John Soane Soane Museum


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Philip WebbRed House

Philip WebbRed House

Peter CelsingVilla Klockberga

Peter MärkliFamily House

Dusan JurkovicHouse in Rezek

Luois I. KahnFisher Hosue

Luigi BlauWohnturm in vier Ebenen

Dirk Somers

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Titus Lammertse

Laura LinsiHamish Warren Floris Schimmel

Jan Paulus HoogterpDuarte Miranda

Catalogue: TU DelftStudio: Dolls’ House

CATALOGUE: TU DELFT

Teachers: Merijn MullerDirk Somers

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Hamish Warren

The large book ‘Traditional Japanese Houses’, published by Rizzoli in 1983, offers an exten-sive documentation of Japanese dwellings and their construction. Its gloomy black and white pic-tures accompanied this project throughout the entire course. The model is a successful investigation into traditional Japanese wood constructions and their spatial potential. In the dolls’ house it is applied to the set-up of a typi-cal North-European terraced house, with stairs in the back and an attic underneath the pitched roof. Panelled doors and wallpaper are combined with intricate knots of wooden beams. Filigree structures fulfil the role of heavy masonry walls, giving an unexpected light-ness to the familiar image of the terraced house. The thin elements of the roof become heavier towards the bottom, ending up in life size legs that hold up the dwelling. It is because of this continuum of construction that the dolls’ house becomes an object that is some-where between a scale-model and a piece of furniture.


23 Hamish Warren

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Floris Schimmel

The massive and closed appear-ance of this dolls’ house gives it a mystical appearance. It is only by removing the lighter inserts that the interior of the heavy MDF block can be appreciated. Suddenly a complex spatial play is revealed; inner balconies connect to double high rooms and stairs find their way inside the walls. The model is inspired by Scottish tower cas-tles, with their thick walls that contain serving spaces. The rough MDF, stacked in layers of 18 mm, determined the size of steps and walls, enhancing the medieval feel-ing of the interior. In contrast to this heavy base, the inserts are of light frame construction. Here, the work of Louis Kahn comes to mind, with his wooden interiors that seem to extend into the ele-ments of the facade and ultimately in the building as a whole. But the medieval ‘studiolo’ is another reference, where the fragment of a refined interior creates domestic-ity against rough and heavy walls.


25 Floris Schimmel

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Laura Linsi

Freed from the referential role that it has in a scale model, materiality in a dolls’ house can preserve its own identity. In this project, the expressive possibili-ties of casted gypsum are ex-plored. It is influenced by the work of Belgian architect Juliaan Lampens, known for his dwellings made from bare concrete. In the model the walls, floors, ceilings and furniture are all constructed out of the same grey-pigmented plaster.

As in a real building, the meas-urements of the various elements are determined by the restrictions of construction, leading to thick bookshelves and chunky benches.The process resulted in a strong and primitive object, with ref-erences to the late works of le Corbusier. Additionally, the spa-tial set-up is quite modern and has led to a three-dimensional dolls’ house that can be appreciated from all sides. It is through deep views inside the dark model that the complex relationships between the spaces are revealed.


27 Laura Linsi

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Titus Lammertse

The traditional dolls’ house has no facade: it is a collection of interiors, put next to and on top of each other. In this dolls’ house seven completely different interi-ors are stacked inside a slender tower. The rears of these rooms form the outer appearance, reveal-ing the construction that holds up the lining of the interiors. It is akin to exhibiting the scaf-folding of a stage design. Each interior is derived from a clear reference, ranging from paintings by Hammershøi to an early house by Mies van der Rohe. These refer-ences were carefully examined and translated to the model.

The interiors are stacked like a collage and connected by an eleva-tor. Consisting of a floor, a wall, a desk and a ceiling, the elevator is itself an interior fragment. As it slowly moves its way through the dolls’ house, it changes the appearance of the interiors and creates unexpected relationships between the different rooms.


29 Titus Lammertse

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Duarte Miranda

The archetypical dolls’ house is a section of a conventional dwell-ing; six or nine rooms are neatly stacked next to and above each other, from basement to attic. This dolls’ house starts from the same principle, even enhancing the familiarity thanks to the addition of a pitched roof. However, the conventions are challenged within this traditional set-up. As in the work of Alvaro Siza or Fernando Tavora, familiar elements such as rooms and stairs are subtly trans-formed. The introduction of split-levels and oblique walls give the dolls’ house an unmistakably modern appearance.

But what is most striking about this object is its physicality. Constructed out of large pieces of casted gypsum, the interior exhib-its a rich collection of rough tex-tures. Seams between the elements are not hidden but are actually accented. The traces of production become part of the design, turning the model into an object rather than a scale model.


31 Duarte Miranda

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Jan Paulus Hoogterp

As they are essentially toys, many dolls’ houses offer the possibil-ity of interaction: doors can be opened, facades can be removed or roofs can be lifted. This project has a spectacular take on the idea of interaction.

Starting as a tower, the model can be transformed into a single-storey patio dwelling by means of a few actions: two dolls’ houses for the price of one.

The joy of alteration is further expressed in witty inventions, such as a hammock that turns 180 degrees, or a crack in the wooden base that becomes a pond in the patio. However, the design goes beyond being simply a gim-mick, as all consequences of the transformation are carefully taken into account; spatial relations are designed to work in both the tower as in the bungalow, and horizontal surfaces are designed to function both as floor and ceiling.

At the same time, the model is an investigation in the possibilities of building with wood. Each level of the tower is designed with a certain type of wood construction. These constructions are stacked logically, from heavy in the bot-tom to light on top. Despite the different structures, a coher-ent whole is created through the careful use of proportion and measurement.


33 Jan Paulus Hoogterp

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Queen Mary’s Dolls’ HouseSir Edwin Lutyens

Studio: Dolls’ House

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Interludium

In the early 1920s, Sir Edwin Lutyens designed a dolls’ house for Queen Mary. It took 4 years to build and was completed in 1924. Queen Mary was 57 years old that year.

The dolls’ house was never intended for play. The object was con-sidered an historical document, a showcase for craftsmanship and an attraction to provide revenue for charity. Therefore, it was con-sidered necessary to stock the house’s wine cellar with 1/12 bot-tles filled with good wines and to provide state of the art plumbing with water running through the pipes. Carpet manufacturers wove carpets, books were written for the library and electric lamps were fitted for the rooms.

But none of these efforts elevate the object to the level of great architectural interest. The elevations show a dull Edwardian setup. The house’s interiors are a medley of classical palace interiors, all lacking the wit and invention we expect of a Lutyens design. This house was conceived to offer everyone a glimpse of the life of the royal family. Eventually, millions of British people would come and see the house, once it was placed on display.

The history of the dolls’ house is a rich one. Lutyens’ take on the theme is just one of many that illustrate the power of the dolls’ house to attract, and its potential as an object of collection and display. But as in other areas, Lutyens would be the last architect to work on classical themes. After Lutyens, the dolls’ house lost its role as an intermediary between desired life and everyday life.

Dirk Somers

36

Maxime Prananto

Ines TerstappenJan-Hendrik Beckx Lies Quatanne

Astrid Annaert

Catalogue: UGentStudio: Dolls’ House

CATALOGUE: U GENT

Teachers: Johannes RobbrechtDirk Somers

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Jan-Hendrik Beckx

The model is conceived as a col-lage of recognisable elements from typical houses. This makes it appear quite ordinary at first glance. As the viewer continues to look, the combinations and dif-ferent architectural styles of the elements conspire to tilt the fa-miliar balance, while preserving a certain cohesion. Familiar features coagulate in unexpected ways. Furthermore, there is a search for a delicate definition between inte-rior and exterior. This allows the spectator, or player, to visually and spiritually enter the house.


39 Jan-Hendrik Beckx

40

Ines Terstappen

The Scottish tower house served as a basis for the design of this model. The massive perimeter of gypsum envelops the intimate scale and functional requirements of the domestic environment. Textures are determined by the tactile quality of the gypsum. A helix route is secretly woven through the tower-like structure. The monolith tower eventually turns into a stack of big blocks that allow the imagina-tion to conceive an endless amount of other combinations.


41 Ines Terstappen

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Lies Quatanne

Four bays hold together the spaces of this dolls’ house. Frontal views provide wings that allow figures to enter the stage. Main stage and back stage are blurred. The boundaries between inner and outer space are vague. A colour code em-phasises the layered character of the dolls’ house.


43 Lies Quatanne

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Astrid Annaert

This model consists of a composi-tion of spaces connected to each other within the boundaries of a fixed straight volume. The rep-etition of constructive elements and monotone colours results in different layers of rooms with a varying approach, and different possibilities in terms of applica-tion. The contrast between recog-nisable elements and alternative ways of using them within the con-text of an unrealistic model of a house are central to this complex dolls’ house.


45 Astrid Annaert

46

Maxime Prananto

Conceived as a string of thoughts and memories of domestic places, the dolls’ house is to be read as a long stroll from space to space. In each of these, the potential of self-projection is crucial.

Elements of everyday life can be recognised and, at the same time, confused. The dolls’ house aspires to be an independent and all-inclu-sive object, diffusing the bounda-ries between architecture and furniture and between construction and fill. A unified sense of mate-riality brings together elements that we would otherwise consider as detached. This way, the dolls’ house manages to pose questions about its own conception.


47 Maxime Prananto

EPILOGUE

50 EpilogueStudio: Dolls’ House

Dolls’ House Petronella Oortman, 1686

51

Reflections on the making of a dolls’ house

1One might assert that the dolls’ house is the most accessible fea-ture in the universe of architectural representation. The miniature house uses the familiarities of domestic life to trigger the viewer’s curiosity. Taking a glimpse into the domestic atmosphere of a strange house has a voyeuristic aspect that is quite unlike gazing into any public building. The miniature house magnifies this aspect through the elimination of walls or roofs. Hence, the dolls’ house lives by grace of the tension between explicit intimacy and blatant exhibitionism. Seduction is not an effect of the dolls’ house; it is its raison d’être.

2A key component of a successful dolls’ house is projection. Can we project ourselves inside the house? This mental transfer oper-ates via a balance between visual accessibility and spatial inti-macy. If the house is too open, we lack the desire to explore the interior. If the model house is too closed, it has the same effect.

3The dolls’ house is always a collection. Traditionally, the miniature house is a collection of rooms that differ in character more than in size. Like in any collection, its merits lie in a consistent approach to diversity. What does the collection teach us? Is the collection well framed? Does it miss key elements, or conversely, does it suf-fer from excess?

4A dolls’ house always refers to other buildings. A dolls’ house cannot exist without a reliance on other buildings. Yet the dolls’ house is, first and foremost, itself. A dolls’ house is a condensed derivative. The dolls’ house is architecture’s stock cube.

5Our architectural take on the dolls’ house frees the model of its direct roll as a representation. The dolls’ house relies on the real world, but is not a reproduction of that world. Primarily, the dolls’ house represents itself. Cardboard is cardboard and balsa wood is balsa wood. Students become their own contractors.

6There are no plans to a dolls’ house. At most, a number of con-struction drawings. But these should be burnt after the house is finished. In any case, students were not allowed to display draw-ings during their final presentation.

Dirk Somers

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Boeckl, M. and F. Achleitner (2003). Architekt Luigi Blau: Häuser, Interieurs, Stadtmöbel Beiträge zu einer Baukultur. Wien, Springer.

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Jetsonen, J. and M. Lahti (2005). Alvar Aalto houses. Helsinki, Rakennustieto Oy.

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EpilogueStudio: Dolls’ House

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Tony Fretton Architects (London) (2014). Buildings and their territo-ries. Basel, Birkhäuser.

Welzig, M., et al. (1998). Josef Frank (1885-1967) das architektonis-che Werk. Wien etc., Böhlau.

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Frampton, K., et al. (2005). José Antonio Coderch casas. Barcelona, Gustavo Gili S.A.

Hultin, O., et al. (1996). The architecture of Peter Celsing. Stockholm, Arkitektur Förlag AB.

Lima, Z. R. M. d. A. (2013). Lina Bo Bardi. New Haven, Yale University Press.

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Simon, A. and Knapkiewicz & Fickert (Zürich) (2012). Knapkiewicz & Fickert: Wohnungsbau. Zürich, Park Book.

Isozaki, A. and V. Ponciroli (2005). Katsura imperial villa. Milan, Electa Architecture.

Saito, Y. (2004). Louis I. Kahn Houses 1940-1974. Tokyo, Toto.

Witt-Dörring, C., et al. (2006). Josef Hoffmann interiors 1902-1913. Munich, Prestel.

(1966). David Hicks on decora-tion - with fabrics. London, Leslie Frewin.

Woodman, E. (2008). Modernity and reinvention the architecture of James Gowan. London, Black Dog.


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Midcomfort Komfort durch Programm, Gestalt und Stimmung. Zürich, ETH Zürich / Professur Šik.

Märkli, P. and M. Mostafavi (2002). Approximations: the architecture of Peter Märkli. London, Architectural Association Publications.

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Bock, R. and A. Loos (2007). Adolf Loos opere e progetti. Milano, Skira.

Maniaque-Benton, C. (2009). Le Corbusier and the Maisons Jaoul. New York, Princeton Architectural Press.

Spechtenhauser, K. (2007). Maison Blanche Charles-Edouard Jeanneret Le Corbusier history and restora-tion of the Villa Jeanneret-Perret, 1912-2005. Basel, Birkhäuser.

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Snodin, M. and K. F. Schinkel (1991). Karl Friedrich Schinkel a universal man. New Haven, Yale University Press.

Kuper, M., et al. (2006). Gerrit Th. Rietveld casas = houses. Barcelona, Gili.

Legler, D. and C. Korab (2006). At home on the prairie the houses of Purcell & Elmslie. San Francisco, Calif., Chronicle Books.

Villa Necchi Campiglio a Milano. Fonde Ambiente Italiano

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Weintraub, A., et al. (2006). Frank Lloyd Wright the houses. New York, Rizzoli.

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Knox, T. and D. Moore (2009). Sir John Soane’s Museum London. London etc., Merrell.

Girouard, M. (1983). Robert Smythson & the Elizabethan country house (earlier: Robert Smythson and the architecture of the Elizabethan era, South Brunswick - N.J. 1967). New Haven London, Yale University Press.

Shinohara, K. (2011). Kazuo Shinohara casas houses. Barcelona, Gustavo Gili S.A.

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Merijn Muller studied Industrial Design and Architecture at TU Delft, where he graduated at the department of Interiors, Buildings and Cities. During his studies he worked for Kossmann.deJong Exhibi-tion designers in Amsterdam and Stephen Taylor Architects in Lon-don. Since 2009 he has been work-ing in Antwerp for Huiswerk Ar-chitecten, which became Bovenbouw Architectuur in 2011. As a part of these agencies he has been respon-sible for various projects, ranging from a small house-extension in Mortsel, to a large housing devel-opment in Mechelen.He taught as a guest-teacher, together with Dirk Somers, the MSc2 courses ‘Doll’s house Studio’ (2014) and ‘The Aedicula’ (2015).

Johannes Robbrecht holds a degree in civil engineering-architecture from the University of Ghent. Since 2002 he has been a collaborator at Robbrecht en Daem architecten, of which he became partner in 2012. Since 2009 he is a lecturer archi-tectural design at the Universiteit of Ghent, department Architecture and Urban Planning.

Dirk Somers studied architecture in Antwerp and Milan and graduated in Urban and Environmental Plan-ning at KULeuven. In 1999 he was Young Flemish Designer in the con-text of the first Meesterproef of the Flemish government architect. In 2001 he set up Huiswerk Archi-tecten together with Erik Wieërs. As a passionate designer, he has built a repertoire with Huiswerk Architecten that receives both national and international acclaim. He regularly holds lectures on top-ics such as tectonics, materiali-zation and urban architecture and often takes part at workshops and juries at universities in Flanders and abroad. Since 2003 Dirk Somers is teaching Architectural Design at Delft University of Technology. From September 2011 on he is also design professor at Ghent Univer-sity. In October 2011, Huiswerk Ar-chitecten ceased to exist and Dirk Somers has set up a new office: Bovenbouw Architectuur. Bovenbouw Architectuur has recently had ex-hibitions at the Biënnale in Venice (2012), at the Architekturgalerie München (2013) and in 2014 in deSingel, Antwerp.


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Stefaan Vervoort (Antwerp/Ghent, B) is a Research Organiza-tion Flanders (FWO) PhD candidate at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning, Ghent Univer-sity, with a research project en-titled ‘Models as Sculpture’. His research focuses on the exchange between art and architecture in the postwar era, as well as on the material formation of modern and contemporary art museums. He is editor of Raymond Barion (with Mihnea Mircan and Stijn Maes, Ant-werp: O.C.A.M./Extra City Kunsthal, 2014) and Luc Deleu - T.O.P. office: Orban Space (with Wouter Davidts and Guy Châtel, Amsterdam: Valiz, 2012) and curator of the exhibition Orban Space: Luc Deleu - T.O.P. of-fice (with Wouter Davidts, Stroom Den Haag, The Hague (2013) and Ex-tra City Kunsthal, Antwerp (2013)). Articles and reviews have appeared in several catalogues and in the art and architecture journals Cam-era Austria, De Witte Raaf, Metropo-lis M, Oase, OPEN!, The Journal of Architecture and San Rocco.

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Students:

Docenten:

Concept: Eireen SchreursCopy editing: Talen UvAEdited by: Caspar Frenken, Sereh Mandias, Eireen SchreursGraphic Design: Hans GremmenPhotos: Marius Grootveld (p16, 18, 20, 21-33, 36, 38-47)

Images: All images and photographs presented in this booklet were pro-vided by the authors and students, unless otherwise stated. The pub-lisher has attempted to meet the conditions imposed by law for the use of the images. If we omitted any proper acknowledgement, we encourage copyright holders to notify the publisher.

Cover image: Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House by Sir Edwin Lutyens

Spring 2015

To order a copy or pdf of this publication, please visit:www.tudeflt-architecture.nl/chairs/the-architecture-of-the-interior/publications

Astrid AnnaertJan-Hendrik Beckx Jan-Paulus HoogterpTitus Lammertse Laura LinsiDuarte Miranda

Maxime PranantoLies QuatanneFloris SchimmelInes TerstappenHamish Warren

Merijn Muller (TUDelft)Johannes Robbrecht (UGent)Dirk Somers (TUDelft, UGent)

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