Project Challenge
The starting point for the renovation was a modest Victorian house in very poor condition, with rooms with small windows and dark interior spaces were separated from each other, as was typical of houses built in the era where privacy was a cultural priority. In another gesture to the Victorian public decoration, arrangements of existing interior spaces reinforce the ancient ideal of work and family life should be separate.
Although the client requested to renovate the space do the work in the house, while maintaining a clear separation from his family life was also important to create a modern and bright space that seemed small in size and continues to be spacious and connected visually.
Response Project
Echo: noun, “a similar or identical response, as the sentiments expressed, a lingering trace or effect”
The fact that the house has had few changes since it was originally built, is both a virtue and a challenge that allows multiple design opportunities. The footprint of the house is small (approximately 65 m2). Then, it was not possible to create a sort of loft on the first floor that seems to simultaneously open and give the necessary distinction between workspace and be. The house was preview as a vertical loft, an open volume using four-story from the foundation to the roof of the new intervention. The main level and previous level of foundations is open from side to side through a staircase, which highlights the views of the foundations of the stonewalls of the original house. Therefore, the above main space of the Victorian house, once segregated into separate pieces is now becomes open and spacious. The small original windows are replaced by large windows on both the front and the sides of the room, visually extending into the garden space front and rear, and finally, possible to have spectacular views from the patio (all over the house) to the Rideau Canal.
The space requirements include some very private spaces: a study may contain several thousand books, an office and a bedroom en suite. To achieve this paradoxical response to commission a house loft spaces as private but as the old Victorian house, study, office and the vault of books are designed as distinctive volumes suspended within the large volume of 4 floors. Since these volumes “float” within the shell of the original house, they gain the necessary visual privacy from the living room on the bottom and the street outside (despite increasing the areas of windows). While these spaces are small, are bright, airy, and larger read by having visual access to both windows and to other interior spaces of the house.
The most private areas of the house (such as closets, bathrooms and stairways) are located along the south wall of the house and were protected by a screen three stories. At the top level, flying over the main room and the front facade patio, in addition to appearing distinctly as a floating volume and forming a roof above the entrance. In this sense, the attic space above the Victorian house is redesigned to provide light and views which never existed before in the original house, and due to its elevated position, maintaining privacy.
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June 21st, 2010 at 8:49 am
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