The Jenga design

I was heading out to a customer meeting in Milan on a cool February morning, when my phone pinged. As I switched it to vibrate mode, I peeked at my email list and noticed that a revised architecture concept design was awaiting my review. Curbing my eagerness, I worked thru my schedule for the day. Later in the day, I pulled up the design on my laptop. I was quite impressed with the creative re-imagination of the structure in this revised version of the design.

Jenga block stacking game

Now, my primary peeve with the initial concept was that it was sprawling across the entire plot - in this design, it was curtailed to using one half of the plot. This was achieved by stacking three blocks of spaces in a Jenga like fashion. In case you haven't heard of it, Jenga is a simple game, played by stacking wooden blocks, removed from within the centre of the same stack. It's easier to play it .rather than explain how its played !

Reimagined structure

Our architect had reimagined the concatenated block space into a stack, as you can see here. This also took advantage of the varying levels of the site. The various boulders on the site had been taken into account while determining the location of the structure. The design was visually striking.

Additional sketches showcased two alternate views of the structure:

Frontal view from street

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Angled view highlighting the structure and massing

Three additional drawings showcased the spaces on the three levels:

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This structure would stand out in the development and I liked its distinctiveness. However, this same uniqueness introduced challenges in the usability of the space. The middle level had the foyer, living and dining (mislabelled as family) as well as the kitchens. The lower level had a home office for me, oddly juxtaposed next to a maid's room. The upper level had bedrooms and a family room.

This design necessitated a long empty passage in the mid level between the living and the dining area, it also forced vast terraces on the upper level without permitting individual sit-outs in each of the bedrooms.

So how could we improve on this ? Firstly, I suggested we switch the locations of the home office and the maids room so that it had the view of the tree on the boulder. Secondly we decided to explore whether we could connect the structure via a bridge to the same boulder thereby providing a path from the upper level to the landscape.

While the design was striking, the space arrangement was a challenge in this design. We had work to do.

...A blank sheet of paper

...The Northern walkway