Circulation in the Villa Bordeaux

Designing a house with one floor would have been a natural architectural response
to the clients disability. It would have created more ease for the wheelchair and
unified the circulation of those on foot and on wheels.
Rather, Koolhaas devised a house - or three houses - connected by three different
vertical circulations. These circulations are also distinct to the users and their
difference is accentuated by their position and structural relationship to the house.
The disabled clients moves through the three levels of the house via a large, open
platform. The platform rises and falls to provide the client with access to each level
of the house. The platform merges to the floor at each level of the house and allows
the house, essentially, to come to the client. An almost continuous set of
bookshelves, also rise through the three levels and form a wall along the platform's
vertical path, thus responding to the moment of the platform.
Reaching each floor, the platform completes the floor and becomes integrated into
the wheelchair's horizontal circulation of the floor. The platform becomes part of the
kitchen on the ground floor, links to the aluminum floor on the middle level, and
forms a working space on the top floor. With the integration of the vertical and
horizontal circulation, the mobility of the disabled client within the house is actually
freer than that of the pedestrian members of the family.
The path of the platform through the three levels of the house creates a vertical,
rectangular void at one end of the building. At the other end of the house, the three
levels are pierced by a large, seemingly solid metal column. The column conceals a
spiral staircase, which extends from the ground floor to the bedroom level, with
pedestrian access on each floor. In contrast to the platform, the spiral staircase
provides a restricted, covert pathway to each level.
The contrast between these major vertical paths (the platform and the spiral
staircase) both in structure and spatial configuration, provide an accentuation of the
different modes of transport their support, and reverse the traditional mobility
experience of the users.
Pedestrians have a second vertical circulation path, via a suspended staircase found
behind the platform's bookshelf. This staircase

ARCH 1201 - Project 2 Week 1

Selected house: Villa Bordeaux

Selected analytical:
A spatial and dimensional study of the house's circulation, implying a
narrative or plot connecting a series of uses
 An examination of the psychological relationship between the different zones
of use in the house and analysis of the ways these are articulated and
developed via architecture.
A close look at the architectural relationship between the detail and the
whole of the house, and garden and map, in terms of the building's use.
Early analysis: images

Circulation
Cest une maison pour un invalide La question ntait pas de savoir comment
nous allions faire au mieux pour un invalide. Le point de dpart est plutt un dni (a
denial) dinvalidit. - Koolhaas
Translation This is a house for an invalid. The question was not to know how we
would do our best for an invalid. The starting point was rather a denial of invalidity.
- Koolhaas
Psychological relationship
A complex universe. A complete universe.
Details vs. the Whole
Moderated experiences, transitional forms

Introduction to the Villa Bordeaux - Project One Arch1202

The Villa Bordeaux, or the Maison a Bordeaux, is a private domicile designed by
OMA/ Rem Koolhaas.
The project was commissioned in 1994 and completed in 1998 at the behest of a
family living in Bordeaux, France.

The Site:
The building plot is located 5km from Bordeaux's city centre. The plot is located on
a hill, providing a 180 degree view of the city and the nearby river.

The Brief:
The client - the family - had recently experienced a tragedy with the disabling of the
father in a terrible car accident. Confined to a wheel chair and will limited mobility,
the clients sought a building that provided new freedoms to the disabled client,
while still providing for the needs of the other family members and still ensuring a
stimulating, pleasurable environment for those inside.

The Design:

The opportunities provided by the site, in combination with the challenges facing
the clients persuaded the designer, Rem Koolhaas, to pursue a 'flying' villa. The
house provide a new freedom of movement and access to the clients, unleashing
the full potential of the building and the environments.

The Engineer:

In order to help him realize a structurally challenging design, Koolaas turned to a

long-time collaborator - engineer Cecil Balmond. Balmond was tasked with giving
wings to a 'box' - a private domain to be perched on top of open, glazed living area
on the floor below, which is itself set on top of a partially buried ground floor.

The building's central design issue concerns the levitation of a large mass - the
second floor. Creating a lightness in the building, notes Balmond (Informal, 2002) is
not a particularly novel problem in architecture. The key, then, was to find a way to
lift the top floor without resorting to heavy structural solutions of the constrains of
convention. Balmond points out that the Villa Savoye, while an elegant example of
lightness, still does not escape the convention of being lifted into the air on legs -
not unlike a table.

But with the setting on the hill - Koohaas and Balmond have a position that defies
the security of a stable, conventional configuration. Instead, they conceive of a
building perched atop a hill ready to launch.

Ultimately, Balmond's solution to the problem of levitation is to break the symmetry

of the building in order to create a dynamism within the structure - to make it lift off.
The asymmetry creates a tension, and instability that prods and pokes at the
building's balance and creates a sense of momentum within the building.
Specifically, the buildings supports will be flipped in elevation - on top hung and one
bottom hung. In addition, the energy of the building is reinforces by side-ways shifts
in the plan and the distribution of the load - pulling one way and then another. The
plans and sections of the building demonstrate the defiance of the building in the
face of gravity and.

The core:
 In order to restore structural stability to the house, Balmond
devises a core for the building - a shaft that rises through the three floors and
encloses a spiral staircase. In order to avoid a perception of stability, the core is
offset on the building. Yes, the offset requires another solution in order to keep the
building from tipping over. A counter weight was added to the building - a cable
suspended from an beam laid across the roof. The cable tethers the building to the
ground.
.

The 'box' - top floor:

The mass of the building is found in the top floor of the

building, which contains the family's bedrooms. The walls of the top floor allows for
privacy, but they also create perspectives - with small portholes cut into the walls at
different heights and vantage points for the different family members. The walls
themselves also provide a structural function. There are cuts in both the roof and
floor slabs - to accommodate sliding glass walls, a moving platform for the
wheelchair- bound client as well as light wells and open space/ This creates more
challenges for the transmission of the building's load. The upper floor walls also
then act as horizontal ties.

On top of the roof, a girder bears the weight of the building through a top hang -
created through rods buried in the concrete walls.

The first floor:

The majority of the public space is found on the open-

plan, heavily glazed, indoor-outdoor first floor.The largely uninterrupted space on
the middle floor creates

both an opening to the natural environments, and makes the top floor appear to be
floating - a flyng box.

Ground floor:
 The ground floor of the building is partially
buried in the earth of the hill, with an entry to the courtyard on the other side. The
buried nature of the bottom floor further enhances the notion of the building lifting
away from the earth - as it the building is lifting right out of the landscape. of the
building. It is notable that the complex configuration of the three levels does not
pose a a problem of the disabled client. The rising wheelchair platforms allows the
building to come to the clients. The shaft of the platform also creates a visual and
spatial contrast to the tubular core of the building on the opposite end of the
building.