How to Go From Thought to Thorough: an Architectural Pursuit of Project MOD-319

Buildings are designed for people. The spaces we encounter daily should reflect the ever-changing lives we lead. It's essential that in these buildings, users do not feel restricted in their experiences due to the limitations of their surroundings.

With MOD-319, it was conceived from the beginning to create a space that can adapt to the occupant's needs. This modular design illustrates how a single living area can be segmented with integrated storage, seating, and partitioning panels, effectively transforming it into multiple spaces linearly within a compact 700-square-foot space.

When designing a building, one's initial thought depicts how the design comes to fruition. Take cooking, for example. When thinking about what to cook, the concept of the desired meal depicts all the ingredients and processes that make that initial thought a reality; design is the same.

Architecture and design are responses to the world surrounding its occupants, and when thinking of what MOD-319 needed to do as a small space, it was discovered that this function may not be up to the architect to decide. The idea of having this building function as a home, but in the necessity of its occupants, drove the idea to keep all elements modular. Walls, seating, storage, and arrangement all needed to be modular for this idea to succeed. Because walls would be a non-modular implementation, the idea was to divide the space linearly, rather than horizontally, and have a single sliding privacy screen to help drive the home's more private spaces. 

Now that the idea has been set, it is time to find a location to host this thought. The area comes before the design because the site's characteristics embed themselves into the finalized design. For instance, does it snow? What is the sun's position on site? Are there legislated constraints? Does the site have a strong history and culture? These questions will affect the decisions made during the design step of this process. So, for this step, it is essential to pick a site that allows your thoughts to grow. In terms of painting, how is the canvas going to affect the final piece?

For this project, it was decided to pick a location close to home, with an equal amount of history and conditions that allow the building to ring true in its quest for a small and modular footprint. The site's history lies in my family tree through my Great-Uncle Syd. During his life, Uncle Syd was an architect and used a plot of land in King City, ON, Canada, as his home base for creation and exploration. The site experiences Canadian winters and sits level at the bottom of a forested pit. This linear landscape follows the same idea as the linear thought at the beginning of the project, making it a great location to merge with the building visually and hierarchically. This site also implements demands for the building to have effective thermal dynamics and interaction with the surrounding forest, grounding the user in nature. 

The design process takes your thoughts and chosen site and implements them into a stream of creative output. Starting the design process with the intent to iterate allows the designer to grow with their building as it comes to fruition. Sketches, sitemaps, precedence for structure, and materiality all help with the design process, driving the original thought into an entirely tangible building.

The design started with drawing inspiration from Greek outdoor theatres and staircases and using their tiered layout to divide a shared space while supporting wayfinding. This quickly spiraled into arranging the building as a sizeable theatre-like environment. This also addressed how the space would interact with the occupants and made them move through the space as they pleased, inserting modular elements such as storage, then fell underneath the second level of the home. Making these storage areas large, ensured they could be used as the occupant needed without implying what should be stored, unlike a pantry or small drawer. Sleeping was the most significant design problem because it demanded privacy in such an open space. The door to the toilet room was then decided to curve with the same bend as the bleacher and rotate on a freely movable joint in the floor and ceiling. That way, once the door was opened, it could clip into the sliders and slide left and right freely as the occupant needed. Sliding the privacy wall to the furthest left wall of the third level would then act as a semi-private corner.

Regarding an exterior, following the same simple shapes that make up the interior in a triangle-linear arrangement felt appropriate. The home would then fall into the hillside, helping preserve material and promoting thermal dynamics through the house as a natural insolation. A large corner window was added to follow the sun plain, giving the space an abode of natural light in the day while covering all public sightlines to the road. Overall, the space was designed to follow a wabi-sabi interior style with pops of color to reenact the various seasons that the building experiences, all while grounded to the forest of King City. 

Once the design process has been refined to a building you are proud of and happy with, it is equally as essential to communicate the design effectively to others. Communicating designs can be as complex or straightforward as the designer wants. Simple images and diagrams sometimes work better than ample explanations of text and can also exist cohesively with your building's design, further reinforcing the core ideas. Some familiar images used for architectural communication are floor plans, sections, elevations, diagrams, renders, post-digital collages, and physical models. Combining the different photos gives the viewer all the tools they need to construct and make sense of the building you're designing. A successfully communicated building also allows the viewer to understand the spaces' intent and parti, in addition to physical arrangements.

For communicating MOD-319, I wanted to conceptually show what the space looked like through a textured section drawing and a floor plan, while also showing its flow and modularity, with different examples of how the space could be used. It was also essential to show the exterior and interior of the home in a realistic rendering. Having realistic images paired with the drawing set allows the viewer to piece together the space. Each image had its purpose in showing how the space worked in function or how it worked in aesthetics.

The final step is to take all accumulated ideas, thoughts, designs, and communications and arrange them to allow people to see and believe in the building. Effectively achieving a believable and appreciated building is a feat in itself. Still, with well-conceived ideas and practical design, it can be as easy as a viewer just imagining themself walking in the space. Remember, intentional communication can be overlooked, because rather than thinking about the communication at hand, they are thinking about the ideas being communicated. 

The final arrangement of MOD-319 was simple but thoughtful, just like the building itself. Using minimal page arrangement and concise text ensures that the building is communicated effectively and thoroughly. The images display the building in a way that shows its various uses and how the occupant can transform the space while providing the necessities for everyday living, such as the ability to cook, use the washroom, and have privacy. It was also important to show the building's substantial thermal dynamics and how the space's aesthetics play into the overall concept of MOD-319.