TEXT WIP
INTROVERTED
BATH HOUSE
1. 1. MANIFESTO FOR PLEASURE.
The building is quite simply not a machine, if it were it would be designed by engineers. The role of an architect is to inject a sense of pleasure into the design.
2. PLEASURE THROUGH SOLITUDE/ESCAPISM/INTROVERSION
We live in a surveillance society
There may now be as many as 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain: one for every 14 people, and a person can be captured on over 300 cameras each day. Surveillance is just one example of the ways in which we are monitored and exposed through technology.
An introvert is someone who is energized by being alone and whose energy is drained by being around other people. In this era of technological exposure, might people seek pleasure from extreme escapism and introversion? An introverted bath house will provide a sanctuary for over-exposed urbanites in search of ultimate escape.
The design for the bath house, develops in reaction to both the need to address pleasure in design (as a reaction to modernism) and the pleasure induced through ultimate escapism and solitude.
PLAN
Each layer of the plan signifies a step towards the ultimate state of passive pleasure- sleep. The outer layer is the most open most public space, this is where people to swim laps and exercise. These open spaces are the largest: their walls lean outwards and the ornament is the most prolific and complex here towards the top of the room, forcing the occupants to actively manoever their body to see it.
Spaces within spaces create a layered and interlocking plan, creating increasing levels of privacy and solitude towards the centre. The spaces become increasingly interlocked and subdivided increasing the level of enclosure and darkness. Ultimately each person finds their own pocket of space to sleep in, at the heart if the spa, the ultimate introverted pleasure state of relaxation and solitude.
Hi Z. am really liking the wip plans/diagrams/models. Think the figures are super weird - not sure I like them but also might be a love/hate thing which always indicates a realm of potential so at the moment I will hold breath.
I would begin to play with scale so you can explore the levels and types of distortion that operate on the 1. global scale (on the entire plan in some way - perhaps on the roof level, or the ground level - again splitting the 'plan' into layers, 2. fragment scale, and 3 the room scale. This will force you to think about how and where you incorporate elements/spaces/atmospheres of distortion to create a particular kind of effect.
Also, I know this is the first time you've shown the figures, but if you keep them I feel they need to have an absolutely essential role to the project - so find a really absurd but totally believable role for these things.
TEXT: Think is not your best.
1. If you REALLY want to start with 'points' to introduce your text - find a spectacularly crucial quote or 2 to introduce your text. The quasi-definitions are unclear and general.
2. first chunk of text doesn't really state an agenda. Paragraph 1 mentions CCTV cameras, 2 mentions the introvert, 3 mentions the bath house.
None of them really introduce your architectural agenda - refer to your rebrief text - which while not there yet at least spoke of formal properties and investigations.
3. 2nd chuck of text - plan - reads too much like a walk-through. Rather write a text that describes your intent. describes experience and space. describes distortion - the whys, not necessarily the hows.
About the text: I am not sure that CCTV helps you to frame the argument. I do like a research on the pleasure and I would really try to understand how you can do it.
I think it is interesting that is the relation of the body and the architecture, how we use it with our body and how the architecture seduces us. And the programs of the bath house I think work perfectly... but more a mix of old school roman baths and contemporary spa. But still I would clarify how there is pleasure; it seems that there are different levels of pleasure: from the way I can use the space (and especially the more active and public) to the passive use of the space with the pleasure of a passive contemplation. A kind of trip from active pleasure to a passive one. I think you have the right program for the right brief and I would really research and try to understand how this architecture gives pleasure, initiate pleasure, allow for pleasure to happen... and what else?
hey! can't find the piece of text I told you about on friday but maybe this interests you...
http://images.google.co.uk/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&um=1&sa=1&q=andre+kertesz+distortion&btnG=Search+images&aq=f&oq=&start=0