KONUR ALBAYRAK 072069 - HAKAN SAĞLAM 072047

Villa Anbar in Dammam, by Peter Barber

'Maison à Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas

HOUSING UNIT

• Villa Anbar is a private house in Dammam, Saudi Arabia for a romantic novelist who spends much of her time in London.

• It is a single story building with a high walled roof terrace, central courtyard and front garden with swimming pool.

• Maison a Bordeaux is also a private house unit for a married couple with three children.

• It is a three storey building and its designed for a wheelchair man.

• Instead of designing a house on one floor which would ease the movements of the wheelchair, the architect surprised them with an idea of a house on three levels, one on top of each other.

KONUR ALBAYRAK 072069 - HAKAN SAĞLAM 072047

'Maison à Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas

The middle section is a smaller glass room where the wheelchair bound resident has his private living area.

The entire room is an elevator platform which rises and lowers to other levels of the house. Bookshelves line one wall of the elevator shaft.

The upper level, which Koolhaas calls the "top house," has separate areas for the husband and wife and for their children.

KONUR ALBAYRAK 072069 - HAKAN SAĞLAM 072047

• The ground floor, half-carved into the hill, accommodates the kitchen and television room, and leads to a courtyard.

'Maison à Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas

• The bedrooms of the family are on the top floor, built as a dark concrete box.

• In the middle of these two levels is the living room made of glass.

KONUR ALBAYRAK 072069 - HAKAN SAĞLAM 072047

Villa Anbar in Dammam, by Peter Barber

• by a series of increasingly private spaces which turn towards a central courtyard.

• between servants and members of the family, and between the family and the outside world.

• this structure is broken by simple acts. Thus, as a crack, a horizontal cut in a wall of the women's quarter serves as a vantage-point for surveying the unseen, that is, the male domain.

• It is also a critical exploration of the complex social and power relationship encoded within the layout of a Saudi house.

KONUR ALBAYRAK 072069 - HAKAN SAĞLAM 072047

Villa Anbar in Dammam, by Peter Barber

• At the entrance, a gate gives a view into the courtyard.

• two entrances to the house, and is followed up in the interior by separating men's and women's quarters.

KONUR ALBAYRAK 072069 - HAKAN SAĞLAM 072047

Villa Anbar in Dammam, by Peter Barber

'Maison à Bordeaux by Rem Koolhaas

One of these legs, a cylinder that includes the circular staircase of the house, is located off-centre. it gains equilibrium by placing a steel beam over the house which pulls a cable in tension.

The first question that the visitor asks is: what happens if the cord is cut? Koolhaas has created a structure which, equal to the life of the client, depends on a cable.