The Hidden Room

Luckily I had a pretty relaxed day today.  Went into to studio around 10 am which felt more like 4 pm because I'm usually there so early.  Got lunch with an old high school friend, which was awesome and I hope to have time to take breaks like that.  Then it was back to studio to work on the hidden room assignment for Monday.

Since I had so much time I went grocery shopping, so here's a picture of my model shopping with me.  I'm not sure if you can see, but my friend has his model on the conveyer belt in the back as well.  Again it was back to studio to work on the room.  I made some diagrams, but don't have pictures of them just yet.  In the meantime here are my sketch models of my ideas that I'll briefly explain.

The concept of this is the idea of an experience.  The hidden room (in red) isn't hidden in the traditional sense, but instead I've set up a series of rooms that forces the user to walk throughout the building before "discovering" the hidden room.  There are only a certain number of doors so I can control the circulation and manipulate the use of space inside.  Since the hidden room has to have an exit to the outside, I've tucked away the entrance in the side of the building to give it a traditional hiddenness.  Again, I don't have my diagrams, but the hidden room in this case would serve as a storage room.  Since the obvious and quickest entrance is from the outside nook, I wanted to deter entrance through here by making the space uninteresting.  There isn't a need to go to a storage area every time, so instead the person chooses to walk the long way throughout the rest of the building, or at least that's the idea.  

This is my favorite of my three ideas.  It's a series of stacked boxes, similar to the Seattle Public Library.  I originally got this idea because of Usen Castle on Brandeis' campus.  In the castle there is are many staircases, one of which leads to a tall open room where people have come and graffitied and drawn all sorts of art on the walls.  A few more steps away is a way to access the roof, and I've translated this idea to a hidden room.  Ideally the far right shaft would serve as stairs only.  The other three boxes would be a kitchen, living space, and bedroom.  My main problem is finding a place to put a bathroom. Anyway I also would like a ladder that leads to the open roof space just to the left of the hidden room.  The hidden room itself would serve either as a private meditation area, or more directly as an art space, maybe a place for hobbies or something.  The last part of my idea is that this would be an apartment module that could be placed in a city block repeatedly.  It is very narrow, but extends backward to increase the useable space, and could be considered for mass housing, you know, if it had a bathroom.

My last model is my worst and least favorite.  It's simple in form: four rectangular boxes and triangular hidden room.  The four main rooms would be the primary section of the house, serving the basic needs, and the triangular section is intended to be another sort of sanctuary, a low ceiling, tight and compact bedroom space.  Simple and clean, my hope is that the room is necessary programmatically, but hidden in a social sense.  A person would go here as a retreat, similar to the last model, and since it is so small, one would not spend much time here, only to sleep really.  My overall concept for this one isn't well defined, but I'm hoping pinups tomorrow will help me refine all my ideas.  If I can get the diagrams scanned I'll try and upload those soon as well.

After studio I made dinner, did some theory readings, then tried to relax and brace myself for the coming week.  Drawing class tomorrow morning, then Rhinoceros tutorial, pinup crits, then studio.  Here we go again.

Also my Russian/Asian readers are increasing so shoutout to them and shoutout to everyone still reading this even though it's really degraded into a personal journal.  Thanks for reading.