the mis a ligned - uc berkeley college of environmental...
TRANSCRIPT
themis a ligned
Faculty Advisors: Andrew Atwood, Renee Chow
Master of ArchitectureThesis 2015-2016
University of California, Berkeley
Yan Xin Huang
This thesis explores misalignment as a design strategy to generate opportunities for communal interaction in the form of collective housing.
table of content
abstract
tectonic studies
formal studies
collective zone studies
elevations, sections and plans
structure and material studies
cut away isometric drawing
model
preliminary studies
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Houses today are organized in a very regular, orthogonal and highly repetitive system. Embedded in this system are isolated spaces created by boundaries between street and house, between neighbors and between programs.
In the San Francisco Marina district, strips of almost-identical duplexes line up on the two sides of streets, creating distinctive zones separate by the serial repetition of volumes, facades, walls and floor plates.
As these elements of a standard duplex unit are misaligned against the established order, distinctively contained spaces are interrupted and overlapped, opening up new spatial opportunities and creating richer mix of uses and collective living situations.
Through misalignments, spatial divisions are manipulated and social arrangements of the single-family living style are challenged.
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Four duplexes from the site are chosen to misalign. The base forms of these duplex
units are anipulated and misalign from the established regular order to create
interlocking and pulled apart spaces, generating new sizes and gaining new natural
elements such as daylight. The original architectural elements such as stairways
and extruded bays remained in place, which are then further misaligned to remove
redundancy and to allow unexpected spaces to generate behind them.
Floor plates and parti walls that divide private collective zones such as living rooms
are also misaligned to create connectivity in the space and generating a higher level
of collectivity.
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two families, one entrance
Existing collective elements in each duplex are identified, manipulated and exaggerated through
misalignment: public collective zone bounded by the façade and sidewalk is extended into the
duplex. Collective zones already shared by two individual units in a duplex are subtly displaced,
widened, and extended beyond the boundary.
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public collective zonecollectivity @ city scale
collective zonecollectivity @ building scale
private collective zonecollectivity @ unit scale
private Individual
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extend the public collective zone public collective zone merges into collective zone
rotate public collective zone to encourage direction toward stairs
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extend the collective zone displace and rotatedivision to extendcollective zone into private collective zon
expand collective zone
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misalign private collective zone miasalign private collective zone
merge private collective zone
28 29elevation
The general form of the design is a product of combining formal, tectonic and spatial misalignments.
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Going beyond architectural and spatial misalignments, materials and structures are also
considered in this design. These types of misalignment are intended to relax the hard
boundary edges created by the meeting of walls and floors. Edges of material change is
unexpectedly unregistered with tectonic edges, thus avoided the reinforcement of the
boundary, this allows occupants to question the boundary between tectonics, uses, spaces,
programs, and even privacy. Sometimes this misalignment could be used to create useful
elements such as tabletops and shelving units.
structure misaligned
44 45material misaligned - trim molding becomes table top structure misaligned - exposed studs becomes bookshelf
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Subtle misalignment of forms, tectonics, spaces, materials and structures removes
redundancy on solid hard edges and boundaries, allows occupants to constantly reimagine
the use of spaces based on their how they enter and encounter them.