Final layout and 1:200 model (Wooden Horse)

The concept of wooden hosrse I have taken with my final studio assignment was to be a sea creature captured mid-twist, although not in a literal way, more fragmented. The roof garden also falls into a vertical garden, and the guest room is encased within a timber screen. Unit 7 is empty and is at the bottom of the split-level staircase. Light enters this space through a narrow slit window on the roof. Linda H has allowed around 4m at the North East of her block for a shared garden. Doorway from unit 7 leads into this communal area. The garage has tinted glass walls, in which the pool on the North-eastern end can be viewed. This glass extends to the upper level, which caters for the clients private use with bedroom, bathroom and study. Once again the wrapping window I have used as the 'undefinable line' in my second house design for Equus has been carried through in this design.

Development from Mystery Play to the Wooden Horse

The four square house design problem had allowed me to carry through my design intentions from Equus. The layout was taken from my second house submission and repeated and rotated on the block. The four houses were inkeeping with the compartmentalised concept given for the room placement in the Sea Captain's house.

The development of the wooden horse began with the translation of these compartments to a more shifting series of platforms. The house was intended to be a demonstration on fractured flow.

Analogue Model #1

The Sea Captain lost his parents when he was young, and then it seemed that the family he had made for himself also left. This would have resulted in his fractured personality, so the idea was to illustrate this through shards in the form of the design. The digital model displays material and minor forms (planar shifts etc) for reasons described below. I think when sailing and the sea is thought about the imediate symbols that come to mind are water, sails and the curve of a ship. The initial floor plate is dropplet shaped, and the roof canopy is sail-like. The feature of the design is the tower, (unit 7) which extends the entire height of the building. It also acts as a divider to the open plan house, between bathroom and living. It is the core of the house and provides a solidarity as well as a place to dwell. It is the lonliness and the strength. The bed has its own compartment to the side. Sharp-angled glass sculpture is over the entrance to the house and provides an extra exterior space, whilst bringing fractured light to the interior.

Digital Model #1

Analogue Model #2

The difference between the second model (from digital to analogue) is not dramatic. The Sea Captain is a simple charcater with compartmentalised emotions. The approach taken with this design is therefore simple and compartmentalised. The builing is divided into 4 different sized boxes, the narrower bottom one for the bathroom/laundry areas, the wider bottom 'box' as the kitchen/living area. Empty unit #7 joins these compartments with an open light box at the top. The bed is located in the upper-storey compartment. There are large openings in each of the compartments running off the wall planes for plenty of views out of the building and light in. The exception is the tower in which a view out is not necessary, rather a relection is given by the mirror here. The Captain is an asthmatic so surfaces are clean and non-fibrous in texture. Materials are expressed in the digital model, as are minor forms as they could be easily extrapolated in this medium.

Digital Model #2

According to Hejduk

"A Miniature Volume"

how much does
your heart weigh
I don't know
perhaps as much as
a miniature volume
I would have to turn
it inside out
like a leather glove
my grandfather gave
me a sea conch
to hold I dropped it
stuck like a top
under the drift log
an armadillo shed tears
he held the fishing knife
and split the violin
down the middle
put his hand inside
and removed the air
the limp gut strings
entagled jellyfish
net slipped and
smothered the swells
a dead sailor
filled with water
like a glass vessel
a widow walked
exhaling iris aromas
she reached out
and hugged the fog
to her breasts
light beams caressed
moist surfaces
night lips blow
sound Nantucket horns

The Sea Captain

Having taken up the family tradition passed down generation by generation the Sea Captain is nearing the end of a long and painstaking career. Without the blood line to continue the business that has been in the family for nearly 200 years, the Captain finds he is feeling that old familiar feeling of instability. This feeling is not one associated with being at sea, but rather on land. His feet were unsteady on that surface that was a place of impermanence to him. Now he faced the same feeling for it seemed to him a life wasted, he was failing his ancestors, and all the values he had obtained from them were lost at sea.

He had started out a deckhand on his father’s boat, which had once belonged to his grandfather, fishing in the Baltic Sea. His farther armed him with all the tools necessary for taking over the business when the time came. But when his father died fairly young from a sudden hear t attack, he was thrown in the deep end. At only 16 he had to work the only way he knew how to support himself and his widowed mother. Conditions were hard and there were many times when she had to nurse him back to health through bouts of pneumonia. Tragedy struck again when he was 19. A gang had come to his mother’s house and in the intended robbery, she was shot dead. The bandits were never caught. He returned home late in the evening to walk in on what they had left and what was taken from him.

The Captain would never forgive himself for not being home to protect his mother and carried his grief and regret with him for the rest of his life. He kept to the business of fishing seldom returning to the empty house. Apart from working with his small crew, he mostly kept to himself. Through hard work he was able to support himself quite easily. Everything he ever had he had got through sheer hard work. Luck also came his way initially because of the demand for fish inland, and the relatively small number of professional fisherman in Riga. He began to sell fish in larger quantities to towns and cities throughout Latvia. Business and demand continued to grow so he sold his grandfathers boat and purchased a larger vessel, hiring more crew members. Soon the humble fisherman found that he was becoming quite wealthy enough to take the business to the next level.

He set up an initial meeting with his cousin in the Ukraine who ran a steel company. After several discussions and negotiations he travelled to the Ukraine and signed a contract involving the exportation of his fish and the importation of his cousin’s steel to Ukraine and Latvia respectively. This turned out to be the beginning to the end of his personal fishing career. While in the Ukraine, the Captain was introduced to his cousin’s wife’s sister, and it was on this visit that he fathered his only child. Having found out about this after he had returned to Riga, the captain couldn’t afford to leave his business and remained fishing in the Baltic over the pregnancy. 8 months later he returned to Ukraine a last time to collect his son, as once again death had struck and taken the boy’s mother in childbirth.

Perhaps it wasn’t the best thing to do, the boy would live with a man who lived a life at sea, with no mother, and no other family around him. But he thought it was equally as immoral to leave him in the care if his cousin and wife. He hired a nanny for the boy, and made sure he had a good early education in Riga. The Captain, by the time the boy was 6, had realised that there was a market for steel in Sweden and introduced this idea to his cousin and partner. He took a loan through the partnership and purchased a merchant vessel suitable to ship the steel across the sea to Sweden. He kept his fishing boat and crew and the fish caught continued to be exported to Ukraine.

In his eyes the Captain had the perfect arrangement set up so it would be easy for his son to fall into the business. He felt that 12 would be a suitable age for the boy to learn the ropes and settle into fishing. Within a few years he would run the fishing part of the business, until he was trained into the shipping business and could take over for the captain.

As it turned out the boy was top of his class at school and strove to finish high school. By the time he was 17 it was clear that he was reluctant to fish and destined for greater things. He won a scholarship to study at a prestigious university in Russia.

The Sea captain loved his son and allowed himself to let him go. He was alone once again free to feel the misery of loss that was etched into him. He loved the fresh bite of the air at sea blowing through his hair. It was the air he needed. He had been smoking high tar cigarettes since the age of 12 and suffered from bronchial asthma. The sea air was the only air that he could inhale easily. At 52 he knew his days at sea were numbered perhaps at the most another 5 years and the bronchitis he suffered would drive him to a peaceful life inland and indoors. To see the sea, to feel the breeze and to smell the all familiar smells of salt and timber was what would make him feel at peace. His son was lost to him probably forever; he was getting married in a month to his Russian fiancé. There was nothing left for the Captain to do but accept that he would either have to find a suitable man to replace him as Captain, or leave his family legacy and his hard work, to be washed away.